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Re:Who are the polite Indians? by roel_v on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:30AM (#1886695)
No offense, but if that's the full explanation, then why aren't the helpful Indians in the majority, too (there should be 2 or 3 times as much 'good' content from Indians than there is from Americans / Western Europeans)? Now there are plenty of Indians who do provide good content, on this site and elsewhere, but not in the per-capita rate one would expect from your theory (I feel, I don't have data on this). So IMO at best your theory only explains part of the phenomenon.
Re:Who are the polite Indians? by aniket_ray on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:51AM (#1886789)
People have down-voted you but I actually agree with your empirical evidence. Most knowledgeable Indians don't really give much back to the greater community.

Most Indians (including me unfortunately) consume far far more content than we produce. I am concerned about this too and I've been thinking about this and I do not have concrete reasons for this yet.

I could throw up a few reasons though. It may be cultural, since many of us just do not know how to share. It may be a work-life balance issue where people who-know-stuff consider this work and won't do this in their free time. It may also be because the Indian economy is growing fast, growth opportunities are immense, so spending time on tasks that don't directly give them anything has a huge opportunity cost.

Re:Who are the polite Indians? by FraaJad on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:57AM (#1886816)
Once again, the incentives.

There is no obvious cultural incentive for smart Indians to share their knowledge on the "anonymous" internet. People look for "leverage". Sad, but true. This is the same reason why contributions to Open Source is so low from Indians.

As Aniket pointed out, knowledgeable Indians give back far less than they are capable of.

I have had the chance of observing this closely. My own mentor who is a PhD wouldn't divulge anything to anybody unless there was something in it for him. He is a great teacher, but not when it comes to sharing the "jewels".