TIA - Why Bother?
If you have no idea what I am talking about, TIA is a
TLA
for Thanks in advance
. It makes no difference to me if you spell it
out.. With that out of the way, let's roll.
I mostly come across TIA on usenet and on non-professional mailing lists when someone asks a question. And I flinch every time.
In these settings, the community as a whole can benefit from the posed questions, answers and other discussions that may follow. Respect that. When finishing off with a TIA, a number of things can and will be assumed by readers (note that they may not apply or may be assumed in error):
- It is not likely that you will spend further time on the topic.
- You may, but it is important to realise that we, the participants
you'd like to join in, are spending (a lot of) time out of interest in
the topic and because we like to help where we can.
We like feedback.
The feedback can be anything fromThanks, it worked
(at least we and other readers, present and future, know) to pointing out errors and discussions of implementations. We, too, can learn from it. - You assume that this is a minimal effort question.
- It may be - and it may not.
What appears to be a simple problem can have any number of related details that either make it difficult or simply hard to get right as a general case. It may require quite some time to explain details, write up good examples or even provide full solutions.
We may also need more information from you. - You assume that this is a personal service.
- It is not. As I said above: the community as a whole can benefit. Respect that.
That said, there are settings where I happily accept a TIA. Mostly this is in a professional setting, where I am expected to (and possibly payed to) answer questions or carry out requests. I'll skip all the assumptions above, but reserve the right to be grumpy if it is fairly obvious that I cannot do what you ask with the present information (and you appear not to want to spend much time providing further details).
All this may not mean much. I am a helpful soul, but if I have little time at hand, I am more prone to skip your message. I also tend to give less comprehensive answers and may even rely on (very) subtle hints. The latter is my way of off-loading some of the work on you - or get you out of the bush. If you are lucky, I have the time and hope that my answer can benefit a lot of other readers (I always do, but you get the gist).