Are we correct about our community's potential?

Question

Yesterday i had an idea...

"I had a hard time finding good sources to learn Buddhism and when i found some the content was questionable.But years after i finally have a good collection of teachings that i use for my learning.But even today some poor guy out there is having the same struggle that i once had.So why shouldn't i help them?"

In this thought i translated some Theravada teachings and posted one in our community yesterday.

What makes "Dhamma" worthy of worship?

So few hours after a good friend i found on this site advised me to have the self control of waiting a question instead of turning Buddhism SE to a blog post.Spent the day thinking about it and i came across this feeling....

Imagine yourself as a man with boat on a river.You have been in both sides of the river many times and have no problem doing it because you have a boat.But thousands try to swim across the river and rarely anyone asks for help before they jump in. If someone asks for help while getting washed away from the tides you are to slow to reach them.

So the question is whether you are going to be gentle and wait for a request or offer to help them anyway?

I have trouble understanding the key value of this community is it Keeping a site unchanged in a ever changing world or Helping poor new comers to find their way and answer good questions to help every ones understanding get better.

I am from Sri Lanka,as to our Theravada teachings one must always share his knowledge of dharma with other because it helps clear his view and it helps another ones path.It is also described as the Highest form of offering than anyone can possibly do in a "Buddha shasana" (In an era of a Buddha)

I saw this conversation in the comments section of my post

I am asking the same question now. We have the best community here, no one can say lies here,no one can spread non-Dharma as Dharma here. Here we have absolute proof of what we get to read.So tell me why we are so shy? Why don't we start being a good source of Dharma as well?

Answer 1

In my opinion, if you have some knowledge you want to share, you should do the following:

1. Ask the question that you actually had in mind when you started looking for knowledge you want to share.
2. Wait for comments: Perhaps your question is not clear? Or it is understood in a different way than you expected? Improve the question accordingly.
3. Wait for answers from other users. Did they understand your question correctly? Did they provide insights that may be useful for improving the answer you want to share? Improve the question and the answer you want to share accordingly.
4. At that point, in my opinion it is OK if you provide your own answer. But make sure it is an answer to a question that somebody really might have asked, and the question is more than just an excuse for sharing whatever you want to share.

By the way, I'm not saying that you shouldn't share your knowledge if you can't follow this procedure. You simply shouldn't share it here, because it's a site for answers to genuine questions people have. If you want to present your knowledge in another form, simply do it somewhere else, for example in some Buddhist blog service. We could also make a blog for Buddhism.SE, but this is a topic for another meta question.