Sadly, this thread is in need of a clean up.

I still think that there is a need to debate the amount of posts or number of visitors to the site, so I think there is a need for the thread.

But I do not think that any drop in traffic is caused by school kits with urgent needs of complete solutions getting told that a forum can help, but full prioritized attention and turn-key solutions requires them to hire a consultant. The flooding of "give me" threads can be seen on almost all forums around the world, and could most probably be measured and used to show to what degree different countries got wide spread Internet access available to the youngsters. The "give me" visitors have most probably had access to Internet from before they could read and write and have not learned that Internet isn't a magic machine that can solve any problem but a carefully crafted tool driven by a huge number of dedicated people that constantly adds content. But to spend voluntary time adding content, there has to be some form of meaningful feedback - tthat it is worth the time, and that the information is helping others. "give me" people don't ever say "thanks" or "please" or "great idea". They just consider instant solutions to their problems their birthright.

An earlier comment here was that if people behaved the same in real life, a lot of people would be missing a lot of teeths. In real life, people would not run into private peoples homes or into company R&D departments and "require" solutions to problems they have. And in real life, people would not be so interested in supplying turn-key solutions to a student, since it would be obvious that both the student and the helper would be part of cheating. When moving to the net, a lot of people gets very happy when they see a problem they know the answer to. They are just dying to produce a full solution to the problem, to prove how good they are, without thinking about the implications.

On one hand, a student are not really helped by getting a solution without any involvement of own work. You can't learn without work, even if it would be nice to just go to sleep and wake up with a new set of skills magically integrated. Students that gets their grades without the required knowledge are an economical burden for the society. They are also a danger, since they may be involved in products where human life/health may be at stake.

On the other hand, a student who do want to learn, must be given help at their current level or slightly above their level. Jumping 10 steps forward will not really help. Before someone may learn how to design a solution, they must already have the requierd knowledge to look at a finished solution of similar complexity and understand how it works. Getting a turn-key working solution that is too complex to understand will not overbridge that requirement.

The next thing here, is that people creating "give me" threads, haven't even spent enough time figuring out what the original problem was. Jumpping ahead and "helping out" with the most obvious solution may be the very wrong thing to do. Maybe the suggested solution is trying to solve something that shouldn't be solved. Not just as in "have no need for that solution", but as in "would be a counterproductive solution".

So in the end, people who want to get help on a forum just have to spend their time focusing on their needs, and then try to compose a descriptive message. Problems with the language is seldom a problem, as long as it can be seen from the post that the requester have spent time focusing on the problem.

Besides showing that own time has been spent, it does help if a requester comes out at least slightly likable. Not a requirement, but all the "urgent", "need to", "must" etc are strong words that does strongly affect the readers. But not in the way the poster intendended them. A professional forum is likely to have a lot of professional members. To a professional, the word "urgent" is a request for VIP treatment. It is a very wrong attitude for people to expect to receive VIP treatment for free. Basically assuming that other people who asks questions on the forum should get less priority. Or that a professional should stop their ordinary work and make themselves available for helping out a student who after two months of their allotted project time suddenly realises that it is time to turn in a solution.

No, Chris. I really do not think people are dropping off from the forum because we are not bending backwards to help students cheat, or not ignoring rude implications. And I do believe that it is meaningful to not just ignore the posts, but to notify the poster that they will not give the requested help unless they are willing to get involved in the process, and also are willing to show some form of professionalism (remember, you don't need to be a payed professional to show professionalism).

And when discussing a subject, it does not carry the discussion forward using constructs like "I laugh at" etc. It is way better to spend time trying to make a post where the arguments matches perceived evidence, and to try to motivate subjective arguments.

My guess is still that a decline of visitors is related to the choice of processors being introduced at school. 8051 chips have existed for a long time, so neither the staff nor distributors thinks it too sexy to have the schools supplied with 8051 development boards or processors. But the school system is an important route to introduce people into the 8051 world. When a user already have 5 years of experience with a number of processors before introducing a 8051, he/she is expected to have enough knowledge to be able to solve most problems without need to ask questions on the net. So I would expect that there is a very small trickle of professionals looking around for a forum dedicated to 8051 chips, unless that forum is also very strong on generic hardware issues.

By the way, I would probably limit my Key Skills to subjects I have spent at least a year or two with (and hopefully not too many years in the past, since there is progress in most areas). On direct request, I would mention knowledge in other areas by qualifying them with "I have also done some work with xxx".