Technical forums are places where you can sense that there’s a hope for humanity! No kidding. If you think about it, it’s a place where humans help each other out without expecting anything in return (in almost all cases), what I just said is a fact. So now if you agree that forums are a great place, How about contributing? So if you’re not contributing already, here are the five reasons that may prompt you to start contributing:

1. Help someone out.

2. Solve a real-world problem

@paras_doshi and also learn from the real life challenges that people are facing with a certain technology 😉

— Florin Dumitrescu (@fdumitrescu) June 26, 2012

[Thanks Florin Dumitrescu for pointing this out!]

3. Discover great resources on Inter-webs. This is so because, while answering questions – people drop awesome links in their answers and invariably they are great free resources:

@paras_doshi and learn. I discovered one of the best coding links for help are StackOverflow and Quora.

— Hardik Pandya (@HPsay) June 26, 2012

[Thanks Hardik Pandya for pointing this out!]

4. Learn from other super-smart people and Network with them

5. Test (or “Validate”) your technical know-how

Technical forums like MSDN or StackOverflow are best places to “test” technical know-how. And yes, help someone!

— Paras Doshi (@paras_doshi) June 26, 2012

And One more:

Earn reputation (Build your Brand, they say)

What do you think? If you are already contributing on technical forums – what motivates you? And if you’re not contributing already – what’s stopping you? And I believe that everyone knows about tons of things which others are interested in. You just need to find a place to share that!