Questions to the whole community, but especially to coders

[Tim Skellett]

Hi,
I am what you would ungrammatically call a "leecher"; i.e. I am a fairly new member, I am only a customer, I have like only 8 posts or so, and I have never yet uploaded a hack of my own.

I am not good at coding; I damn well wish I was, but all I can do is struggle painfully along, asking a whole lot of questions here as I stmble my merry way. Sure, that makes me dumb or whatever; the thing is, I am very grateful for all help I get, and I say so. I am also very grateful that so many coders here make their hacks available free to people like me; I simply cannot afford to pay coders -- trust me, if I had the money, I would be commissioning coders for projects right. left and centre; but very very simply, I do not have the cash, so I am very grateful for vb.org and other sites like it.

Now, can I give anything back? I really wish I could; but all I have got so far to contribute is one template change minor hack all of my very own which I will upload much later, and that's it; no big hack contributions, no cash. I really wish I could give back more, but I can't --- which makes me what some would call a leecher.

However, surely you can understand my position; you might find someone like me frustrating, but trust me, I find it far more frustrating than you do;while I struggle to learn vB coding, it takes a very looooooooooong time, and all I can do in the meantime is ask questions, tons of questions. Sure, I would love to contribute something meaningful back, something more than just saying "Thanks!" -- but for the meantime, I can't.

My question is, what is it exactly you coders want from people like me? We mostly do our best, no doubt; the actual number of rude users here is extremely low, in my observations; it's not like coders are being abused everywhere. The whole vb.org site seems to me to be a very good one indeed, extremely helpful, and with a very good signal-to-noise ratio. Yet I have seen coders here complain about the attitudes of users; and I don't quite get it. If someone only wants to associate with fellow coders, that must necessitate a completely different kind of site, with very strict entry conditions; an open site like vb org is much different.

So, how can I and others like me make this site better? What exactly is wanted or expected of us?