When should I start to give back?

Question

So far I think tex.se is a great resource for any LaTeX issue I have. Answers given here has been of great value to me, but I started to feel a bit guilty. So far I have only been taking from the platform. I have tried to answer some questions, but so far it seems I lack enough LaTeX knowledge to be of any help to others.

I still remain my position that one should always show effort that some previous investigations have been done, but where lies the edge where one should stop taking and start giving help to others ?

Answer 1

I don't think there's any particular time that one should start answering questions, and as the site become more mature, it may be harder to find questions to answer at your level that don't already have answers on the site. But there are various other ways in which you can contribute, without directly answering questions:

Vote!

• Voting for both questions and answers is helpful. This doesn't mean you should vote indiscriminately (especially on answers) but if you find answers that you learned something from, vote for them and their associated question (usually).

Find duplicates

• If a new question looks quite simple or is something that resonates with you as a relative beginner, it's likely there's an answer already on the site. It's helpful to do some searching yourself and find an appropriate duplicate or related question and leave a link in the comments. There is also a really nice StackApp to make such commenting more user friendly. See Useful StackApps and other User Scripts for TeX.SX.

Help with tagging

• Tagging is a bit of an art that requires some experience, but it is definitely helpful to remove clearly inaccurate tags and search for more appropriate ones. For some advice on tagging see:

  • What's the policy on retagging questions based on answers?

  • Our set of tags

Read the documentation

• It's astonishing how many questions can be answered by carefully reading and understanding the existing documentation to a package. As percusse recently described himself: "Turning the TikZ manual into rep points since 2011". (Admittedly a self-deprecating and undeserved description, but most of us have benefited from exactly this kind of answer.)

Try to add answers anyway as your experience increases

• There's a lot to be learned from trying to answer questions, and especially on this site most users will comment on answers to improve them rather than just downvoting them or posting new answers that are only slight improvements on yours. And there's also the Delete button, if you really post something that's not very helpful.

Answer 2

I note you have answered a question previously but had 0 votes. I just checked and your answer seemed correct so I just voted, but it was harder to check than it could have been. As for questions, it often helps to put a complete document in the answer, and to put a picture in (I just took the liberty of adding the image to your answer). If people see the image provides what was requested, they are quite likely to vote, whereas checking the answer is correct is often too hard.

Of course votes are not really that important, but they are some kind of indication that someone noticed the answer, in particular the person asking the question can get a quick visual clue that your answer is going to help if there is a picture of the output.