> Attempt to answer the question, or don’t comment at all.
Don’t tell them to RTFM, Google it,
No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.
Someone asking a question that is answered in the documentation or has been asked and answered over and over should be pointed at those sources. One of the most important skills anyone is going to learn in a technical position is finding answers to questions you have that have already been answered. The next important skill they have to learn is doing a little bit of your own research in understanding your problem.
This goes especially for places like StackOverflow which is not a discussion forum. It's value is diminished by asking and answering the same questions over and over.
EDIT: I'll mention the last part of the statement I quoted too, it's unfortunate the lumped the second half of the statement with the first.
> correct their grammar, or give your opinions about their choice of technology
Correcting grammar is not helpful in any way in this context. If you can't understand what they're getting at, ask for clarification. Nitpicking grammar is just being a dick.
Opinions about what they're using may have one very narrow use, if what they're using to do what they're trying to do is just so very wrong. And we're talking 'I'm trying to create a pure HTML page to run this Nuclear reactor' levels of wrong. Most of the time, you do need to keep it to yourself. Especially on sites like StackOverflow, which is not a discussion board.
> If you don't understand the answer, leave a comment asking for clarification.
In SO this will get shot down and clarifications will get edited away. It's brutal there and not helpful. I firmly believe the benefit (since it is a QA site, or is it a lets re-write the manual site?) outweighs the detriment.
> Having people ask you the same questions over and over again who don't care at all about wasting your time drives away the people most able to answer questions.
Honestly a lot of the people that answer and moderate questions there are unfriendly, the snark is high, it might be good to get a new batch of answerers in there and have the old move on. Obviously my opinion.
> Are people really this incompetent at finding information online nowadays?
I've thought for a bit about the question, and I don't think so.
Rather I think people don't understand how forums work, these questions are often from first-time posters or people that frequent the site very rarely, and still haven't learned asking simple questions a Google or forum search away is bad etiquette, makes for bad reading and will annoy the heck out of the regulars.
In their newbie eyes, the forum is the place where you ask your questions, provided they are relevant, but without considering how inane or oft-repeated they are.
> Related: I've often been looking how to do X, find an SO question asking that, but the answerers there refused to answer until the person explained why they wanted to do X, and then all the answers (correctly) told the person that they actually needed to do Y and explained quite well how to do Y.
> I actually need to do X, so those answers are useless to me.
I know what you mean. Whenever I (rarely) ask a question on Stack Overflow, I always have to defensively load it up with language anticipating misinterpretations and instructing people to answer my question and not some other one.
Otherwise, internet-point-chasers will fall through the woodwork giving easy, worthless advice. Even with all the defensive language, a few always show up.
> If you haven't researched your qustion for hours before
Is this not the point though? I generally spend hours chipping away at a problem until I'll resort to asking StackOverflow. There's no point wasting everyone's time if the information is already out there.
> I annoy everyone else (who are all about 10 years younger than me) with my constant questions.
Are these technical questions or domain related questions ? If it's technical questions, I would highly recommend you to get books or videos equip yourself against these new challenges. I'd also recommend you to pick-up(ex:jquery) one area and go in-depth.
Its not hard to learn anything, If you put enough effort.
Honestly, I'll be annoyed with constant questions too, I expect others to do some basic google search or wiki and spend at-least 20 minutes before coming up with questions.
p.s : I'm more or less at your state, but i have different problem. Managers are telling me to 'go and ask questions to everybody' but I'm like 'I don't want to question without having basic understanding of what it is!' I'll spend my time understanding the problem first before I can seek them solutions.
> They do a pretty good job considering what amount of shitty, low value, googleable questions they get.
Yeah see this is the problem. Fuck that man. The vast majority of people who want to ask questions are very new. They barely know how to phrase the question they’re trying to ask. If they knew how to ask it, they probably wouldn’t need to post a question. They could search for it. SO is full of elitist pricks who are very rude to people who are trying to ask a question and don’t know how and are feeling frustrated. It’s a beginner hostile environment. And that’s not intuitive. Because you DO end up hitting stack overflow for a lot of basic questions from 10 years ago, and that’s nice, but it is bad for people who lack the expertise to navigate that historical index.
Discord is not indexed, but it’s largely full of people who are willing to help newbies construct their question and then answer it. It’s night and day a better experience. Same for chat gpt.
I have spent a fair amount of time on the unreal engine discord helping what I assume are kids who have never done any programming before realize that their questions make no sense and that they don’t know what a variable is. They are extremely thankful.
SO just makes people feel bad for not being experts on the topic for which they are seeking help to learn.
> Is there a way for me to flag something as incorrect?
THat's the problem with these types of sites (and the problem with SO), most of the answers and submissions are by people who don't know what they are doing.
I think these sort of sites always need a big disclaimer on every page (PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION CODE). It's the blind leading the blind.
This was my first thought too. It's frustrating to see these questions when the answer is blindingly obvious to someone who takes even a small amount of time to do research. It makes them read as if they're all asked in bad faith, of which I am not convinced they are not.
>Saying "oh hey try ctrl f on that documentation page you looked at" would be a valuable response, saying that asking the question is dumb isn't a positive contribution and is likely to make the asker defensive and unlikely to really learn from the experience.
> Asking for things you can look up how to do on the Internet just isn’t a good question
That is becoming less true by the day, as forums, blogs, etc., are filled with AI-generated pablum or with simply incorrect content. You still need an expert to tell you right from wrong, and the best option is to have a senior person in your team be that expert.
> And they receive hardly any help to get it right. Neither before (in their education), nor during/after (when using SO).
I've never asked a question in order to know what the question guidance is like, but _undoubtedly_ there is a well written "how to ask" page <https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask> and (one that I cite in comments so often I have a bookmarklet for it) the "please rubber duck your way to the question before vomiting into SO" that used to be called MCVE <https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example>
Now, saying "ain't nobody got time to read all that text, I got bugs to write!" is a reasonable response, but saying "there's no guidance on how to write a question less likely to be closed" is untrue
So, the one example you provided you hadn't taken the 10 seconds to validate?
You're not providing value here. Please make an effort to make meaningful and additive comments instead of spewing misinformation or made up anecdotes.
>I feel that this is a rather poor question, and comes off as a little immature and naive.
Well forgiveness please that not everyone is a technology expert who knows exactly how to phrase questions professionally. Instead of belittling someone who lacks the domain knowledge you claim to, why not politely answer them in good faith if you have something to say. A sadly common thing on this site, privileged people with a bit of a superiority complex quick to snarky responses and criticisms on honest questions and show & tells.
> It's not like people are personally asking icey or you dozens of questions a day.
On here, no, but in real life, yes, I get asked dozens of questions a day people could easily answer themselves if they just Googled. There's a reason programmers start getting annoyed with people being lazy; they're making you do their thinking for them and you get sick of it.
> I think most people are like that. Why be snarky about it?
Because one gets tired of doing other people's thinking for them when they're capable of doing it themselves.
> and I still occasionally ask a question without thinking to google it.
That's the problem, that happens to me constantly by people who just don't think; it's rude; your process should start with Google before bugging someone else who's just going to Google anyway.
> I have a dumb question about a popular PHP framework that I seriously am not able to Google. But I also cannot ask the question on Stackoverflow because I have no reputation (or points or whatever) to offer. Plus I would probably get slain by the mods for asking a dumb question.
If you can't easily Google the answer and it's not obvious it's not a dumb question. What have you got to lose by asking?
No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.
Someone asking a question that is answered in the documentation or has been asked and answered over and over should be pointed at those sources. One of the most important skills anyone is going to learn in a technical position is finding answers to questions you have that have already been answered. The next important skill they have to learn is doing a little bit of your own research in understanding your problem.
This goes especially for places like StackOverflow which is not a discussion forum. It's value is diminished by asking and answering the same questions over and over.
EDIT: I'll mention the last part of the statement I quoted too, it's unfortunate the lumped the second half of the statement with the first.
> correct their grammar, or give your opinions about their choice of technology
Correcting grammar is not helpful in any way in this context. If you can't understand what they're getting at, ask for clarification. Nitpicking grammar is just being a dick.
Opinions about what they're using may have one very narrow use, if what they're using to do what they're trying to do is just so very wrong. And we're talking 'I'm trying to create a pure HTML page to run this Nuclear reactor' levels of wrong. Most of the time, you do need to keep it to yourself. Especially on sites like StackOverflow, which is not a discussion board.
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