OK, there's been a fair bit of debating here, but what's immediately clear to me is that (sadly with one exception) almost all of the posters above are quite evidently highly professional translators committed to their trade.
This is almost always the case on the forum topics I've seen, i.e. those who contribute are individuals who - merely judging from their remarks - aspire to the highest standards.
They/you are as such - if the GermanEnglish site is typical - not at all representative of the Proz/Kudoz community!
I'm not sure exactly what Lia meant, but for me "documentation" would also include references from (relevant!) dictionaries or online glossaries and/or a brief explanation from the Asker.
If you've got the time to answer a question at all, then surely you have the additional 10 seconds for the latter, right?
The title of my reply was chosen for the following reasons:
Herny Hinds wrote:
the fellow translator who is getting paid for the job should do the homework, not the answerer.
Absolutely. But every day we see questions with zero context/input from the Asker. Quite often - although by no means always - a quick Google would provide a solution.
Oliver Walter wrote:
If the asker does not have this knowledge and experience, perhaps they should not have accepted the translation job.
Again: every day we see questions posted by individuals who are quite clearly out of their depth.
Instead of some kind of "I request documentation" option, I'd rather first see some kind of condition that the ASKER provide "documentation", i.e. context or at least some thoughts of their own.
As for the original post, it seems that Lia is primarily addressing the Kudoz points aspect. In the scenario described by her, I always - in accordance with the prompt - give the points to the "most helpful" one, which generally will NOT be the one accompanied by a "." or "-".
I have the same policy re. giving Agrees.
CMJ_Trans wrote:
Also there does seem to be a tendency for people to go off in a mad dash to agree with the first answer past the post
Yes there does. Something I've never understood. And this is perhaps (?) what prompted Lia to start this forum topic.
CMJ_Trans wrote:
However, and this is why so many contributors are irritated, the site has become increasingly a place where freeloaders go to save themselves the trouble of doing their own research ... such parasites should be weeded out. They drag the rates down and they lower the standards of the profession.
Like I said, CMJ, I think you're preaching to the converted here. As for weeding them out: another forum poster recently suggested rating questions. I would in principle suggest rating Askers - but various complications likely make the idea impracticable.
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