This is for those of you who have been around for over a year and more or less actively contributed.

There's a trend I've noticed which applies to myself as well as others: the stereotypical SkillShare enthusiast tends to get more and more cynical as he or she gets tired of answering the same questions ad nauseam. After that there's the occasional comment here and there, but nothing too elaborate.

Then the forum gets taken over by people who I have no idea where they came from, and the dance begins all over again.

So, here's to all of you who moved on:

1. What are you doing with your time at the moment?

2. What did you get from all of your involvement at SkillShare?

3. Are you still lurking around even though you're not posting?

HA HA ... nice, a post for us veteran Skill Share users. I still lurk, but am frustrated by the things you mentioned. I've always hated and advocated against elitist "members only" web presences; but the more "the masses" are using services that I use and that used to be small communities the more I am disliking the community. I remember when Skill Share was a tight little community helping each other out ... now it just seems to be the go-to-place to have people fix their one-off hack or something of the like.

However, that is where I've been spending most of my time these days ... in private forums. Discussing the same topics, but keeping the community much tighter and much smaller.

Even things like Twitter are becoming less and less fun the more "crap" there is to shift through. That and Skill Share just got too popular for my tastes. I remember when someone had an issue and I would respond within an hour or so to help ... now it seems the responses come in within 10 minutes ... it is awesome but I can't keep up with that pace; I got too much shit to do, LOL.

I also get annoyed when someone creates and account, asks one question and never comes back ... sort of takes the community aspect out of it all.

- Skill Share User #6

I find myself doing less and less front end development; moving on to a different role in the process of building websites. That fact, combined with the decline in quality posts on the forum have lead to a decrease in my involvment here.

I lurk occasionally (obviously), but frankly, I'm tired of seeing the same questions. As you guys have already pointed out, people don't seem to be searching the site for answers, and tend to be abusing the forums with off topic questions; questions that have been asked and answered repeatedly, spamming, or posting the look at my site and tell me what you think type topics.

CSS Beauty is one of the top referrers to my portfolio site and provides me with a fairly steady stream of leads for freelance work. Unfortunately, as I interact less frequently here, I suspect that benefit will disappear as well.

Hi, I do suppose this IS aimed at veterans and hope that you guys stick around to help out people like me.

I've been a lurker for a long time, and have found this forum helpful in that I've had similar questions and thus able to find the solutions accordingly. I hope those "annoying" one-offs you guys are mentioning haven't completely turned all of you off as I have just registered recently with a request for advice. I feel like a newb but meh, what can you do?

Aside from my boss and coworker at my day job, I look at forums like this as my sounding board and replacement for a proper real-life mentor. Thanks.

Kari stated: "Nowadays people complain about IE and what not, without bothering to learn the basics first. You just aren't supposed to copy/paste your design from bits and pieces from around the web and expect it to work perfectly. You're supposed to understand what you're doing in the first place."

From my experience the best way to understand what you are doing is by trial and error. Hence copying and pasting code - testing to see if you can make the script work as equally well, if not better, than the site you borrowed it from. I thought this was "learning the basics." With so many books out there saying "this is the way to go" or "no proper designer does that, do this instead" it can be challenging to find the correct book. Everyone learns differently.

As I fall into the category of the "new user asking the same questions posted by previous newbies" I feel that I need to post here. Yes it is quite boring to answer the same question over and over again but for one who is new to CSS and doesn't know what exactly to search for, having questions go unanswered by "bored-with-same-ole-same-ole" experts is very daunting. Where I'm a whiz with back-end programming I fall short of the CSS expectation. I've too experienced the same questions day in day out with server programming - so I do understand where everyone is coming from. But - is it to much to ask for a more gracious welcome and assistance? I think the users with the "could you just do it for me attitude" could just be fed up with trying every tutorial in the book with no avail; and you're right, they could just be lazy too. lol

I personally see nothing wrong with someone posting a link to their site and asking "Hey, what do you all think?" Unless, it has been posted in guidelines that that sort of question is not allowed. To me it builds an understanding of constructive criticism and perhaps sparks a burst of inspiration.

I do look forward to new posts with previously unanswered suggestions - it helps learn new tips, tricks and developments.