kbd shortcuts and unwillingness to comply

Question

Related to comments on How to move points proportionally to keep edge flow good? , which are getting out of hand and inappropriate to where they're occurring.

I like helping people. However, I am only willing to go to so much effort to help people. I don't go to effort to do things that I think are a waste of time unless I'm getting paid, right?

I like to provide information that people would find useful, including keyboard shortcuts for Blender operations I reference. I am not going to use tags because it's tedious and I don't see any point to it. So my question is, what would the BSE community prefer?

1) I walk away and stop answering questions.

2) I continue to answer questions but provide no keyboard shortcuts.

3) I provide whatever keyboard shortcuts are convenient for me and people that care about keyboard shortcuts can edit my posts as they wish.

To me, 3) seems like the best option for people using BSE.

Obviously there are going to be differences of opinion on this, I'm looking for something approaching community consensus, which I'll respect.

Answer 1

First off the comments you linked to are not inappropriate or out of hand. A user asked you to make your answer better by adding <kbd>. Suggesting improvements is one of the designed uses of comments.

Now on to your problem.
Unless you are planing on writing answers that just names the tool and not how to get to it; then I think you will find the <kbd> is much quicker.

Lets take the "Show Hidden" tool as an example. (I'm sure you know this tool, and use it all the time. However if you do not know how to get to it (and I always assume someone reading my answers will not) then you will have to show them:

AltH

Or

From the 3D view header Mesh > Show/Hide > Show Hidden

Which would you prefer? (I do both)

To get the best benefit out of your answers you should have the shortcuts wrapped in <kbd> tags. We even have something of a style guide for them.
It really is not that much work. I have typed <kbd> 1,830 times in my posts (and that is just on BSE). It's something that takes very little extra effort and almost no extra time, yet makes the post much better.
Just do it.

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If all that did not convince you, then yes your option three is the least bad.

Answer 2

I walk away and stop answering questions.

That would be an act of a little kid. Looking at the comment thread you were far from harassed, people just gave you feedback that kbd shortcuts are better readable and would appreciate you for formatting them.

No one forces you to do anything, format your answers however you like. The best answer gets the upvotes and I think you now know what such answer looks like. It has pictures, gifs, is well worded, structured into paragraphs and among other things has formatted shortcuts.

Putting time into this is not a waste

• you save a fellow user's time if your answer doesn't require formatting.
• you make better answers that gets you more points and you can brag about them when getting work from clients or when job hunting.

Basically the more effort you put into building this site the more it's users will like you and the better public image you will get. You can even get one level fancier with shortcuts to reach god tier:

⇧ Shift

If you don't care about any of this, that's fine, but I wouldn't count on other people editing your answers to look better when they know you are purposely making them that way.

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That said formatting them could be easier, true. Could require less key strokes like > quote, **bold**, *italic*, [link](http://), etc. Something similar like this {Ctrl}+{C} or this <Ctrl>+<V>..

There is this: Button to insert <kbd></kbd> for users, requires browser extension.

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My walking away would solve people's frustration when keyboard tags are not used (...) It's not a threat, it's an offer. And you don't speak for everyone on the site.(...) It is clearly something that matters to some people.

You are right that I can only speak for myself. But consider this:

This site is a competition. It's a hunt for points. Regular users on this site want those points - they give benefits (more rights on this site and the bragging I mentioned when looking for work or job). It's the currency here, people give bounties in them.

Something that can be improved is an opportunity to post a competing content. Anyone being frustrated by your answers would be stupid, trust me. If there is someone like that, do not pay attention to them, ignore them, their frustration is their problem and you don't have to solve it by walking away or providing no shortcuts, you don't owe them that.

People commenting (to increase readability of posts) are like people suggesting improvements to a competitor. If you reject those suggestions, it's tedious and not an option for you and the suggested benefits are not worth the effort - they can:

• post competing answer (opportunity to get points)
• edit yours

If there wasn't the 1st option and voting on answers, I would understand why someone might get frustrated - it would be like someone not conforming to standards of wiki editing for example. But this site is different. There is reward and there is opportunity to compete. Would you be frustrated if your competition did something you think can be done better?

Because of this, it's not your fault if there is someone frustrated with your answer. Some answer is always better than no answer and they can post theirs anytime if they think yours is low quality.

You might even find some benefactor altruistic people here that will edit the shortcuts for you without any frustration of doing work for you to help your answers be more readable and probably get more points. Anyone else can post competing answer.