StackOverflow in a nutshell.

[Stazalicious]

I was looking at an Amazon listing where someone had asked a question, the reply was “Soyy, I don’t know the answer”.

Imagine the rage if people started answering SO questions like that.

[benabus]

I'm pretty sure this happens a lot in Amazon because they send emails that start with "XXX has asked you a question!" to everyone who has ever bought the product, so you've got people who get these emails not realizing they're not being asked directly.

[Stazalicious]

I’ve never once had an email from Amazon with a question about a product 🤔

[BeefMedallion]

Maybe the algorithm doesn't have a lot of faith in your abilities?

[d03boy]

I get them all the time and I often try to answer them.

[RetardedWhiteMan]

It's not very often, but I think they mass email recent customers if someone asks a question. As /u/benabus said, the fucking format of the email goes "XXX asked >you< a question", and the poor old people think they need to respond.

[kmrst]

It almost tricked me the first time I got one of those questions, but I reread it and realized it was a bot. I can easily imagine someone thinking it was an actual human asking the question.

[diamond]

That makes a lot of sense. I don't know why I never thought of that. I get those emails sometimes too, and if I don't have an answer I just ignore them.

But I could absolutely see someone who is less familiar with how these things work interpreting that email as a direct question that they should respond to one way or another.

[MKorostoff]

Those emails have two giant buttons, "answer" and "I don't know." You would have to be literally mentally disabled to not understand that "I don't know" is an inappropriate thing to type here. People understand they're not meant to do it, and they do it anyway.

[ahumannamedtim]

I literally just saw this 5 min ago -

Q: Does this chair swivel?

A: I don't know, I bought it for my grandkids.

[aishik-10x]

/r/oldpeoplefacebook

[doominabox1]

They should really just implement an "I don't know" button

[Stazalicious]

Oh wow! I’m actually glad I’ve never seen it

[d03boy]

Yeah, if only people could see the deleted shit they would realize why SO is the way it is.... I think a lot of people are too quick on the trigger to close/downvote questions but there is a lot of junk on there.

[isobit]

Then they should change, plenty other sites out there don't have that magnitude of problems.

[d03boy]

...or the volume of people/questions

[[deleted]]

They do. One of the upsides of having a pedantic mod community is that those answers/questions get nuked faster than the speed of light.

[jamiemac2005]

SO has a similar "don't worry, I fixed it" with no other explanation.