“Do you lurk around the edges of discussion groups? Scraping information for your benefit but wishing you had the knowledge to contribute something in return? Well you can. Sign up today!”
I read a number of newsgroups as well as subscribe to the “RSS” feeds of many weblogs. It’s just not possible to interact with each of them and I sometimes feel like I’m lurking around the edges and never able to contribute.
There are several ways to pay back and say thank you for the knowledge you’ve gained.
- Submit a story or experience you have had that is relevant. Select an existing topic and illustrate that. Stories are great for sharing knowledge and you may find somebody with similar experience. As I write this, a story about how I use photo cataloguing software that I put on my personal website and announced in a newsgroup not one hours ago has already had 23 reads (and another before I finished this sentence!)
- Summarise the salient points of a threaded discussion so the next person along doesn’t have to back track through ten or more posts. This is a key principle of why wikis work.
- Take step 2 further and begin hosting a FAQ of the most frequently asked questions. The quick and dirty way is a list of topics in the newsgroup and a link back to the original posts. The long and rewarding step is to work through the topics. Remember though, the existing community can be used to help.
- Offer what you know. You may not think it much but you are not to judge its value. Many seemingly innocuous posts can trigger the right idea in somebody else.
And if all that fails, post a message to the group just to say thank you.