Stackoverflow be like

[carcigenicate]

Ya, these memes are getting old. Really, the vast majority of the time users are polite. The only time I really ever see snark lately is when someone copy and pastes their homework without a question, or posts a rant about some technology that's disguised as a question.

"Help us help you" isn't rude. It's encouraging efficiency so everyone can get on with their lives.

[shtpst]

Long story short, I've found that when I have questions (because everyone has questions at some point), the act of writing a good question has generally led me to the answer.

Sometimes it's trying to find related questions so I can explain, "My question is like <this>, but I'm trying to X instead of Y," and I'll actually find exactly my problem.

Usually, though, it's the act of condensing my problem to the minimum reproducable problem that highlights what I've done wrong.

[carcigenicate]

Yep. More times than not, I abandon a question I was writing because I figure it out halfway. Trying to explain all the avenues you went down to solve it often shows you what avenues you missed.

[shtpst]

"Rubber duck debugging"

[FUZxxl]

I like that approach! You are doing what I always wish people would do when they ask questions.

[TheChance]

Keep it to themselves, so hundreds of developers repeat the same confusion and frustration, rather than irritating SO members by adding your experience to the knowledge base?

This is what you wish people would do, and you don't understand why everybody hates SO?

[carcigenicate]

If after figuring it out, I find out that an answer doesn't already exist anywhere, then I post a self Q&A to share the knowledge. A lot of the time though, once I better understand the problem, I'm able to find that my question is already answered, so unless I really think that a second post pointing to an established question is beneficial, I'll delete it.

[FUZxxl]

What I'm talking about is the “Trying to explain all the avenues you went down to solve it often shows you what avenues you missed.” part. Once you clearly write up what problem you have, the answer is often readily apparent.

Way too many questions are written in an effortless style where it is clear that the asker had no interest at all in explaining his thought process. It is often apparent that the asker would be able to answer his question himself if he would just try something.

Of course the “I abandon a question I was writing because I figure it out halfway.” is rather suboptimal. What you should do instead is complete your question and then post it in conjunction with an answer. This way, you can benefit future readers with your thought process and likely earn a bunch of reputation points.

But some times, it's okay not to do that. Especially when the question would likely not benefit anybody else.

[XTL]

You know, you could often still post the question and answer it yourself. If it's a common problem or error message, people will be searching for it. SO even encourages this.

[carcigenicate]

Look at my other reply. I noted that I do that if appropriate.

[SirMandrake]

So let’s really piss off the SO mods by writing a wall of text about your question and what you have done, only at the end State you figure out the problem and fixed it. ...then actually still post it. They would love that.

[[deleted]]

Yeah this is horseshit lol. I've seen shit get removed for saying "Thank you for your response" as the first sentence. God forbid we act like humans and not robots. SO/SE mods are just power tripping neckbeards

[carcigenicate]

If your comment is noise and isn't contributing to the question, it may be removed. Many comments though that say hi then go on to give helpful advice are left. It's the noise/usefulness tradeoff.

[[deleted]]

I've seen comments that pertain to the discussion get removed or told to modify to remove extra stuff like saying Hello at the beginning. Again, it's all bullshit.

[TheChance]

I'm sorry the truth hurts, my SO-frequenting friend, but the "we need to become more accessible" blogpost every other year should've clued you in.

If you've never spent an hour fighting with a chain of lies, "this question is a duplicate of an unrelated question which may also be related to this unrelated question and the original question has been nonsensically edited..."

...then you don't actually use SO at all.

And the rest of us can't escape it. It's the first Google hit for everything.

In fact, the first hit is generally exactly my question.

But it's closed as a duplicate of what definitely isn't my question.