Okay I was not going to post here because I thought PokemonTrader, enlightenedbulbasaur and fourthstartcg already explained it well enough, but I might as well drop some concrete examples here to really illustrate that members here really do try their best to help others, regardless whether you’re an “old guard” member or a new member.
An example of a question that can be pretty much answered by doing some searching on the forums is this post that have been posted shortly at the writing of this post: www.elitefourum.com/t/grading-questions/30568/1
Yet as you can see, the new user was given very friendly advice almost instantly from other members with a lot of guidance and helpful tips. The response rate is frankly faster than typical customer service in a store. There is nothing wrong with posts like these, and if I was not writing this post and came across this, I would have gladly answered at the best of my ability.
There are definitely times when members don’t really answer a question; that is because they either do not have a perfect answer or you’re just asking for members to do 99% of the work to make a profit for yourself:
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Example of when I saw pokecollectoramy’s post and I really wanted to help, but I do not have any information that I can help with (I felt super bad for this one!): www.elitefourum.com/t/price-check-xy176-champions-festival-worlds-16-staff/30380/1
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Example of a post that I feel that more effort should be done in researching before asking a question (nothing against the poster!):
www.elitefourum.com/t/price-check-on-this-collection-please-help/30124/1
People would not be really willing to help you out if you do not help yourself first.
Thing is, if you spend enough time on the forums researching and understanding what piece of information you’re missing, members really do try the best of their ability to answer you, ESPECIALLY the older members I find. You would also know who to contact because specific members are good at specific niches and they would almost always be happy to help. For example, when I was stumped with the authenticity of my Zorua illustrator cards (https://efour.proboards.com/thread/19944/zorua-illustrator-back-supposed-glossy), I knew from reading and researching other posts that PichuFan is really knowledgeable in Japanese illustrator cards, so I specifically tagged him and he helped me out immediately. If I wanted specific Yugioh card discussions, I know that I can ask Dragonwarrior for his opinion because we collected card in approximately the same era.
New members need to know that to answer a question seriously takes a ton of time, and not everyone has that luxury. That’s why it’s really best to do a lot of research before asking questions; I genuinely feel bad when I have to ask a question to other members because I know it takes time to construct a detailed answer. I recently asked qwachansey a pretty specific question through messages, and he gave me an extremely detailed answer that took probably 20+ minutes to write down. However, without his help, the information was simply not out there; I genuinely needed some guidance for information that did not exist on the forums. Now imagine if all new members expect detailed answers from all the “old guard” when it can be easily researched…they will simply have no time to do anything else. Things are probably even busier for our moderators and admins with more and more new members…I’m sure as I am writing this right now Churlocker is preparing all the PSA submissions that everyone has submitted through Ludkins.
It’s completely fair to be worried with an expensive purchase and asking for guidance. It’s also really fair to have your own opinion about a subject matter. However, if the information is already available in the forums, or if it’s speculation, expect some friction with other members (or less replies) because we either saw the thread/post hundreds of times, and we all have our own different opinions.
Is the forums perfect? Definitely not, there has been times when I really disagreed with an opinion of someone else, or when I feel like someone is unjustifiably crucified for having their own personal opinion. However, I find the majority of the time, members really do try their best to help everyone out.