I spend quite a bit of time helping out people on the discussion boards.  When I'm answering questions these days I try to keep this old proverb in mind:

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

I believe the key to success in the ever changing technology industry is not about learning an enormous amount of information but more about learning how to find the information you need.  If I give someone a few lines of code that fixes their problem they paste it in and what have they learned - "if you get stuck, just ask and someone will fix it".  If I can explain why something is happening or point someone to the resources they need to find out (fellow champion _wizard_hu is excellent at this) then hopefully they'll have more of an idea what to do themselves the next time.

I was one of those annoying kids who was always asking "why?", "how?", "what does that mean?".  My grandmother set me on the right path by never answering my questions but showing me how to use the dictionary, encyclopedia or whatever other source I could use to find out for myself.  These days we have the internet and search engines so surely there's no excuse.

However, when I looked this proverb up to check the wording I found this site with some "improvements":  http://www.amatecon.com/fish.html

Here are some of my favourites (converted into some tips for getting the most out of the discussion boards):

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks."

So, before you post a question on the discussion boards - search!  Search the wiki and use your favourite search engine.  Double check the same question hasn't already been asked on the board you're posting on (they often have).

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day."

Just because you've learnt how to search don't spend too long surfing the amazing amount of information this has revealed to you - there's some coding to do!

"Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.  Unless he doesn't like sushi - then you also have to teach him how to cook."

Don't be afraid to post questions though.  Just because the information's out there and you can find it doesn't mean you will know how to use it.  Be specific with your questions, provide as much detail as you can (even if you think it's irrelevant), what device (or emulator) and SDK are you using, what's your application trying to do and why - someone might solve your problem by pointing out a better way to acheive the result.  Also, show you've made some effort - provide a link to the example or wiki page that you're using for reference - that way you're much more likely to get a fast, high quality response.

I'd like to finish by pointing out what I think is a great initiative, code snippets, that I hope Nokia expands further - making the fishing easier for everyone.

Mark