Why your question is NOT "urgent" or an "emergency"!

Asked by Walter Roberson on 22 Feb 2012

Latest activity Commented on by Walter Roberson on 25 Apr 2018

540 views (last 30 days)

Recently, many posters have indicated that their Questions are "Urgent" or "Urgent, Help Immediately", or even an "Emergency". This frustrates the volunteers immensely. The volunteers do the best they can in the time they have available, and it is emotionally overloading to be asked to "jump" on to problems at the expense of their personal lives and other duties. It is also not fair to the other people asking questions when people try to push in to line ahead of them.

I, for one, am getting positively cranky about the constant demands for "urgent" help. I am overwhelmed by the "urgent" requests, and I am not being polite about them.

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The below is a collection of some of the responses people have made on the topic of "urgent" or "emergency" questions:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/urgent

"urgent adjective

1. compelling or requiring immediate action or attention; imperative; pressing: an urgent matter."

So basically you are saying that this is sufficiently important that I should cancel my appointment that I have been waiting a month for, and pay the $150 cancellation penalty, because it requires IMMEDIATE action? Is there an international crisis in automated ball detection in cricket that YOU personally were chosen to solve on a day's notice? Will there be riots in some countries if you are unable to solve it in time?

Urgent is when the nuclear reactor containment system is about to collapse. Or when I've run out of chocolate.
This is not a resource for HELP NEEDED URGENTLY. If you need help urgently, then you should be hiring a consultant, such as http://www.mathworks.com/services/consulting/

Note: I am not a consultant, and I am not employed or contracted by MathWorks or any related company or organization in any capacity.

Disclaimer: I did receive a baseball-style hat from MathWorks once.

I like the questions with emergency, urgent and help as subjects. It makes me want to see how ridiculous the question is. It decreases the quality of my answer.
Urgent matters like this should probably be raised as support cases.
Urgency does not make the impossible possible.
My parents told me when I was able to speak: "Never shout "help" if it is not urgent. Urgent means: The sox your are wearing are burning and severe harm is imminent. If you do not wear the sox currently, it is not urgent, such that there is enough time to shout "my sox are burning in the cupboard" instead of "help"."
If your government has not asked the Canadian Embassy to contact me, then this isn't an emergency.
If you post that something is an "emergency" then you should be able to document that there was a literal and immediate risk of loss of life, or at least of serious and literal risk of damage to health (e.g., a broken leg.) If emergency officials such as ambulance or fire department or police or doctors did not get involved, then it was probably NOT an emergency.

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Every day, I receive numerous email messages marked as "Urgent". If you would like your Question to be treated with more respect than I treat these, then marking your posted question as "Urgent" is strongly advised against.

For example, the below message was quickly sent to the Great Recycle Bin In The Sky:

Hurry now and claim your fund from the Central Bank of Nigeria or your fund will be confiscated by the wicked officials of the CBN. [...]

20 Comments

Show 17 older comments

Jan on 7 Mar 2017

@Aaron: I'm glad to see, that even easy and trivial questions are answered in this forum. But this usually happens only, when the OPs show any own effort and take some care with formulating a specific question. The threads, which contain the term "urgent" have a high correltation with the "do-it-4-me" style and I estimate that more than 50% of them do not contain enough useful information to be answered. Frequently questions for clarifications remain ignored or unread. Meanwhile I associate the term "urgent" with "not important for the OP". I have suggested several times to edit the question and remove this term to increase the attraction for readers.

Time-sensitivity is the nature of programming problems, because they break the ongoing work. Therefore tagging a question as "urgent" has the second meaning, that it is more urgent than all other questions. An this is the annoying point.

I agree with you that this forum should support students in learning Matlab. But I expect that they have learned in the elemntary school how to ask a answerable questions and how to start work on time.

I have the impression, that it is the intention of this thread and the "smug comments" to instruct and encourage students to ask good questions, at least to avoid the pitfall of vain "urgent" term, with the goal to increase the chance for getting an answer.

Adam on 7 Mar 2017

I agree with Jan. Someone telling me their question is 'urgent' immediately gets my back up and I rarely answer such questions. It has nothing to do with Matlab, it is just common good manners and if someone who lacks the good manners to formulate a question without making people who give their free time think they need to hurry to answer it gets discouraged and quits a course then it is probably for the best, to be honest.

Anyone who genuinely wants to learn will put in some effort to asking their question and to understanding the forum they are asking in. They may get it wrong first time, but if they genuinely want to learn they will read the threads, like this, that they are directed to and they will adjust their question style and they will get answers that should help them learn.

The vast majority of people who get directed here are and similar threads are the lazy ones who just paste in a homework question and can't even be bothered to spend enough of their own time to throw some sentences of their own making together to go with it. If these people don't learn and adjust their questions then they clearly have the kind of attitude that will get them nowhere anyway so they might as well just quit Matlab or their course. It's not difficult to just ask a question politely even if you are totally new to Matlab and have no clue about the language.

Walter Roberson on 7 Mar 2017

Aaron, you are mistaken. I have enclosed extracts from the (Compact Edition of) the Oxford English Dictionary.

"Urgent: I. 1. Pressing,impelling; demanding or calling for prompt action; marked or characterized by urgency."

b. Of commands messages, etc., by which a matter is strongly pressed upon a person's attention."

Likewise the more recent https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/urgent

"Requiring immediate action or attention.

‘an urgent demand for more state funding’

2(of an action or event) done or arranged in response to an urgent situation.

‘she needs urgent treatment’"

You will notice that none of the definitions have to do with time sensitivity, only for immediate action and strongly pressing matters.

The only common term in English that has higher priority than "urgent" is "emergency", and even "emergency" is not always "urgent". For example, "emergency rations" are for consumption in extraordinary circumstances when nothing else might be available, but potentially on a "when you have time" basis; but if someone is going into hypoglycemic shock, then getting food into them is "urgent", something that has to be done now.

"The last thing people here should be doing is discouraging students trying to get a grasp of the basics by directing them to smug comments like this."

Nothing on this page discourages students from trying to get a grasp on the basics. Nothing on this page discourages anyone from marking something as time-sensitive. This page is about discouraging anyone from requiring priority attention.

Walter Roberson on 7 Mar 2017

"I've had more than one promising student drop out of a first year engineering class because they felt they couldn't compete with their peers."

Back when I was in university, Engineering programs deliberately overloaded first and second year students. They accepted far more first year students than they had space for in upper years, and then overloaded them, counting on the fact that a lot of them would drop out. I no longer recall the exact percentage, but it was on the order of expecting 40% to drop out in the first two years. This was talked about as "only wanting the best and brightest". It was closely related to the rationale for severely overloading medical students: "The real world is tough, and what we do is safety critical, so it is better to fail out the people who will not stand up to the load while they are still students, before they get into situations where they are being relied on to save lives and they can't stand the pressure."

The problem you are trying to guilt-trip us about originates in the way your engineering department deals with students, not with how we respond to students.

"As a person that answered questions many moons ago, and now helps students in the classroom, linking them to this page does a great disservice."

There are some non-curriculum matters that are important that students learn, but which are often given little or no attention in university undergraduate programs:

How to figure out what is actually needed for a task; how to come up with good topics; how to ask good questions to lead further; and how to research well once a question has been selected; how to learn well
Time Management
How to communicate effectively with people

Here, we continually prod people on the first of those. The most popular (non-joke) post is our FAQ on how to ask good questions. The large majority of the most frequent contributors have strong policies of avoiding just giving code solutions to non-trivial questions, in favor of helping people learn the concepts so people can do the work themselves.

The second most popular (non-joke) post is this one, which is aimed at the topic of effective communications. Could it have been a "tutorial" instead of a rant? Sure -- but a tutorial would not necessarily be more effective. You can phrase as, "Oh, be cautious in how you phrase things, because there is a possibility that someone might get upset" -- or you can phrase as, "Darn tooting right doing that upsets people; and people are not going to put up with it!" Which phrasing do you think has the more long-lasting impact?

With regards to Time Management: we do not have any FAQ that directly addresses that. This post addresses it indirectly, implicitly saying "If you leave things to the last minute, don't expect us to rescue you!" Which is our Time Management.

"I've had more than one promising student drop out of a first year engineering class because they felt they couldn't compete with their peers."

Aaron, how do you react when a student you do not know, whom you have never seen attending the TA sessions, whom you have not seen asking questions in class, rushes up to you at 4 o'clock on an evening you are supposed to go to a restaurant with your Significant Other, and says, "Aaron, my term project is due in 28 hours; you must write my entire term project for me, or else I will fail the entire year! It's urgent!" -- and you can tell they haven't done any preparation work for the project at all, and barely know what it is about ? Not only that, but they are the third such student with that kind of request that day alone?? And that sort of thing happened often, How long, do you think, before you would start getting hard-hearted and saying "No! No! No! I am not going to put my life completely aside so that you can get away with not having to do your work yourself!"

Walter Roberson on 24 Apr 2017

I do not have enough "spoons" to deal with urgent requests.

Umar Salman on 25 Apr 2018

Apologies brother but please if you have the request, kindly grant it.

Walter Roberson on 25 Apr 2018

Umar Salman:

Sometimes when I see urgent requests, it is while I am in the bathroom getting ready to leave for a medical appointment. If I were to take the term "urgent" seriously, then I should literally get off the toilet before I am really finished, and go work on the "urgent" matter until it is finished, not even taking the time to call my medical appointment to say I will not be there.

Because that is what "urgent" means in English. It means DO IT RIGHT NOW, that the only thing that could possibly be more important is saving a nearby life (e.g., you would be excused if your house is on fire.)

11 Answers

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Answer by Walter Roberson on 4 Oct 2015

If you had time to post your question, it wasn't an Emergency.

1 Comment

Image Analyst on 24 Apr 2017

And related:

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Answer by James Tursa on 1 Mar 2012

Is there a way for TMW to make this post PERMANENTLY appear as the very first post? Or for TMW to scan all new posts for the words "urgent" etc. and redirect them to this post before allowing the new "urgent" post to go through? Just wishing ...

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Answer by Jan on 31 Mar 2012

I'm using a limited urgency scale:

Level 1: Somebody should polish the silver.
...
Level 10: My socks are burning.

Imagine I'm working on the computer and my wife plays with the kids. One kid has performed something really bad, e.g. plugged her head between the posts of the steel handrail. Shouting out loud: "Jan, come, it's urgent" would increase the panic level of the child with the known unwanted side-effects. A friendly and calm: "Jan, visit us in the staircase, urgency level 7" will be much more target-aimed to catch my attention.

Here in this forum the situation is different for me. Whenever somebody uses the term "urgent", I'm convinced that he or she does not want a fast answer from me, but most likely from Walter.

1 Comment

Walter Roberson on 31 Mar 2012

These days I only answer "urgent" questions if I am bored. I barely read them. I've been getting my Recommended Daily Allowance of stress from other sources, and so haven't needed to supplement it by dealing with "urgent" questions.

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Answer by Sean de Wolski on 22 Feb 2012

Just a thought: you could come into Answers with the -urgent tag searched:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/?term=-urgent

2 Comments

Oleg Komarov on 22 Feb 2012

Empirical evidence!

Walter Roberson on 22 Feb 2012

The terms are showing up in the titles and contents.

I am the person who has added most of the "urgent" tags, upon specific use of the word in the Question. It is useful as a tracking mechanism, to help assess what does or does not get answered quickly (or at all), and to see how often people are using the term.

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Answer by Walter Roberson on 28 Feb 2012

I get the urge sometimes to edit the "Urgent"'s and replace them with other words, but I haven't found quite the right words yet.

.... Please help, it is very very Ostrich

.... Xanthodontous!! Image magnitude!

.... Cognitive radio question. Extremely topiary!

Suggestions ?? This question is very bort!

6 Comments

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Walter Roberson on 28 Feb 2012

Lemme think... "Urgent" is an adjective, so we don't want to substitute an adjective just in case the result seems to make some kind of sense. To emphasize the "noise" of "urgent" we want a word variety that cannot fit. Such as a noun or a verb.

I was going to propose that we use the nouns (only) from the famous poem, "Jabberwocky" -- the invented or totally obscure ones. Those are: bandersnatch borogoves jabberwock raths toves wabe

On the other hand when I look at the list, it is much sparser than I expected: most of the interesting parts of the poem are adjectives.

Still, I expect that exclaiming, "Oh, borogrove, man, borogrove!" would perhaps be a bit less contentious than "Belgium, man, Belgium!"

Bjorn Gustavsson on 29 Feb 2012

Bort! Bort is a Swedish word meaning: away, removed, rid, delete. I find that absoluteley ideal. Others might find other similar words in other languages preferable, but "bort" is good!

Walter Roberson on 1 Mar 2012

Without going into details, I have found out that in some languages, "bort" has a meaning that is not acceptable for this usage.

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Answer by Melissa on 9 Mar 2012

First off, I wish to thank all of the volunteers who help those of us who really need it. I also would like to apologize for those who feel that their procrastination or superior complex makes the need for "urgent" postings.

1 Comment

K E on 13 Nov 2014

Odd to feel superior when you are asking for free help!

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Answer by Andrew Newell on 22 Feb 2012

Just for curiosity, has anyone seen a genuinely urgent question?

2 Comments

Walter Roberson on 23 Feb 2012

Many "I will fail my assignment / honors-project that is due in 3 days / tomorrow / 2 hours", but those I would refer to more as being "Time Sensitive" rather than "Urgent".

There have been a very very small number (two?) of Questions which explained the reason for their time sensitivity and asked for expedited responses in a manner that I personally thought was reasonable under the circumstances ("a grant proposal deadline just fragged us; we can go with what we have but it would be great if someone could suggest a better way").

John D'Errico on 7 Mar 2017

There are some circumstances where criticality is important. A hospital waiting room must be able to distinguish between those with a critical need, and those who are hurting, but can be temporarily bypassed. Answers is not a hospital though, in the sense that nobody will die if their question is not answered immediately.

If you will fail your assignment if someone does not snap to attention though, this is NOT a factor at all. That merely makes this a learning opportunity for the next assignment. Time management is something that all students must learn, and some will only learn it by rueful experience.

It simply is not a bad thing if a student fails to complete an assignment. If that also causes them to fail a course, were they that close to the edge that a missed assignment pushed them over, then something else would have done the same next week.

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Answer by Oleg Komarov on 22 Feb 2012

..and you're being polite.

I will link your post on the tutorial.

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Answer by John D'Errico on 7 Mar 2017

Nobody ever posts a question where they really don't care when it gets an answer. So, from the point of view of a person going to answer a question, every question is equally urgent. The person who insists their question is terribly important and must be answered immediately in front of all others is therefore the equivalent of the person who cuts into a ticket or food line, ahead of hundreds of others who waited patiently for their turn.

Good time management is an important skill, one well worth learning. Start your project as early as possible, and you will find time to finish it.

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Answer by Walter Roberson on 13 Feb 2018

Edited by Walter Roberson on 13 Feb 2018

tl;dr : research article finds people pay too much attention to tasks artificially marked "urgent", at the expense of tasks that are actually important. This implicitly differentiates that "urgent" does not mean "important".

https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jcr/ucy008/4847790?redirectedFrom=fulltext

n everyday life, people are often faced with choices between tasks of varying levels of urgency and importance. How do people choose? Normatively speaking, people may choose to perform urgent tasks with short completion windows, instead of importance tasks with larger outcomes, because important tasks are more difficult and further away from goal completion, urgent tasks involve more immediate and certain payoffs, or people want to finish the urgent tasks first and then work on important tasks later. The current research identifies a mere urgency effect, a tendency to pursue urgency over importance even when these normative reasons are controlled for. Specifically, results from five experiments demonstrate that people are more likely to perform unimportant tasks (i.e., tasks with objectively lower payoffs) over important tasks (i.e., tasks with objectively better payoffs), when the unimportant tasks are characterized merely by spurious urgency (e.g., an illusion of expiration). The mere urgency effect documented in this research violates the basic normative principle of dominance—choosing objectively worse options over objectively better options. People behave as if pursuing an urgent task had its own appeal, independent of its objective consequence.