Electricity is lethal stuff. When people posts questions here and get 'advice' how sure are they that the answers is accurate and well founded. After all it may well be DIY'er advicing a DIY'er - maybe nothing wrong with that but a bit worrying. Is it always assumed that a professional is answering? Do you care?
provided there are some competent people around anything dangerous should be spotted and pointed out pretty quick
I agree with pugwash 80 % of the people on here are tradesmen, the ones that are nt are easy to spot if you have a bit of noddle yourself, I also see your view if a question was posted and replied to almost immediately by a novice or cowboy then the end result could be disastrous!
Yep I always try to think about what kind of person is answering the questions. Interesting thinking what you guys are really like. Do you live in my street? Do i know you? Are you asking me questions in the day and posting the answers for yourself? More seriously, there are maybe three kind of answers. Bad general advice, Good general advice, and advice which runs off at a tangent which may be interesting discussion but is not what a questioner wants. Then sometimes people do not read the questions quite as carefully as they might, or drop in to the middle of a discussion which has already wandered away. My advice to anyone seeking advice: make sure you read lots of answers about what you want to know. That way you stand a good chance of getting some well informed answers amongst the lot, and you can start to see how the best answer. Sometimes there is more than one right answer. And while there is an official british atandard way of doing things, other countries may do it completely differently.
If you want to be sure that your question is answered by a verifiable tradesman then why not have a look at http://novoserve.no-ip.biz/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl Memebers of this forum have to declare whether they are trade or DIY and can only be classed as trade once they have been verified. If you ask a question and get an answer, you can immedaitely see whether the responder is trade or not - just a thought. Col