Craig Steiner said:

While I certainly don't mind students visiting 8052.com, the drawback is that many of them are just interested in 8052s and/or microcontrollers so that they can pass their class. Since they don't really care about the topic long-term they are less worried about whether they are wasting other people's time--all they want is the answer now so they can finish their homework.

The question is how to deal with this, or even if it should be dealt with.

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Perhaps nothing needs to be done other than a heads-up to folks seeking advice/answers: "If you want your posts/questions to be taken seriously, take them seriously yourselves and formulate them accordingly."

"Professionals" (by my definition, which you will no doubt note is conspicuously absent) are probably reasonably good at "filtering" the students and are self-moderating. There isn't anything wrong with student questions if the the student has an earnest interest beyond simply passing the class. In most cases, if the "professional" has the time, the response is forthcoming; if not, or the post appears to be homework, the post gets "killed" or simply ignored.

A post's presentation, in other forums, maillists and newsgroups, seems to have a direct correlation with who responds, how they respond, and the quality of the response. For example, some posts (to a normally text-only medium) might have HTML tags embedded in them. Personally, I'm not about to waste my time "parsing" through these posts to find the content within the mis-presentation, and many other experienced developers don't either and refuse to acknowledge these non-conforming posts. Likewise, I won't (or try not to as a matter of principal and time-management) respond to otherwise "malformed" posts (e.g., SMS in a non-cellphone or chat medium).

On the other hand, I do give extreme latitude to those who appear to be non-English posters who (to me) are apparently doing there best to communicate in English. But I won't read a post that isn't in (or does not come close to) English or extremely basic Spanish. I feel bad about this, but for now, I don't have the time or motivation to learn another language. But then I don't interlope in German or Finnish Forums expecting them to deal with me (although, to their credit, they probably could). If 8052.com had a "translate" feature, I'd probably use it.

If I'm any example of some of the busy professional developers here (and I may not be), here's what I'm currently working on: the tail-end development of a project with three components: a PIC-based RF transmitter, repeater, and receiver with serial comms to a PC. Also, the post-beta phase (customer modifications) of an 8051-based data logger and PIC-based RFID reader. And lastly, the front-end development phase of a (put your neck brace on to avoid performance whiplash) a reference/demo platform for Xilinx V2-Pro FPGA's (four 300MHz PowerPC RISC processors and 16 3.125GB/s serializer-deserializer channels in one device). So my point is that if some possibly well-qualified busy "responders" can not quickly parse through a poster's issue, it's likely that they won't bother giving it a second glance. Not that I'm in the "well-qualified" category, but I'm certainly busy and when I'm in the "heat of battle" project-wise, I don't (or try not to as a matter of principal and time-management) give "malformed" posts a second glance. Those who can tolerate wading though a post's form or content abnormalities, and have something to contribute, will respond; others will not.

So in summary, once again, perhaps it should just go on record at 8052.com that: (reiterating) "If you want your posts/questions to be taken seriously, take them seriously yourselves and formulate them accordingly." Doing otherwise could "cost" you a response from a possibly qualified individual that could solve your problem or address your issue in short order. Sort of reminds me of the old "garbage in -- garbage out" saying. Or maybe that should be "garbage in -- nothing out"!