Giving back to the community..

This train of thought has been running in my head for quite a few days now. Thought of keying it in. It is about giving back to the community what one takes from it.

Let me start with giving the abstract some concrete shape. I am speaking about information here. Factual information derived from measurement or research, to be specific. Being a software engineer, I tend to hunt for almost all factual information I need, on the Internet. Not that I believe that all one finds on the Internet is authentic, but to a large amount, it serves the purpose.

I can say this about most of the software engineers I see around me (not only in my company, but many I know in other companies too). To an extent including myself as well. We search for information, feel mighty pleased when we are able to track down what we are looking for, and swear if we are not able to get the desired information. Let us discuss on poor searching skills at some other time. Another post would be devoted to that cause.

Now the crux of the discussion. Till its limited to searching information, well and good. It's like availing of oxygen. Done obviously, without realising. How many of us are active on public news groups or mailing lists to read what others might be searching for? How many of us try and post answers or give useful leads for queries that we can solve? How many of us end up cracking a hard problem and bother to post their finding on some forum to keep the solution available for others? Ask the above questions to yourself.

Factual information could consist of technical information, travel routes, workarounds for blockers, photographs/images, the list goes on.. All that you need to search at any point in time classifies under factual information.

Let's play our part in keeping the infosystem (information ecosystem) alive. Enough relying on others. And stop cribbing about why information about things in India is not so well represented on the web. You have a role to play in the failure too.