Especially useful when the specific thread is now the first result on Google.
Yeah this is one of the main reasons why Stackoverflow’s question closing policies are bullshit. We’re going to close the question so nobody can answer it… but they can still upvote it and it will still be ranked highly on Google!
Bunch of idiots.
You know the SO Devs actually tried to improve this a while ago - I think you would be able to reopen your question once or something. Of course the power-hungry mods hated that idea and the abandoned it.
At this point it’s unfixable. They depend on their unpaid mods and they’ve already attracted the sort of people you absolutely don’t want to moderate a site.
The only hack I’ve found is that if your question gets downvoted/closed you are allowed to delete it, wait half an hour and ask it again. Much better odds of success than editing the question.
You can help by gaining points on multiple SE sites and participating in elections. Please vote!
You can’t. The kinds of people who are nominated are the wrong kinds of people. I’ve participated in many SO elections and none of the candidates ever mention any of these issues.
Hacker news isnt an appropriate forum for most questions tho, that one is valid
Yeah, this list of sites is making me think of asking for a book by loudly asking a library, a series of coffeeshops, a chud microbrewery, and an 11-year-old bully. Try quietly reading in the library first, I guess.
Try chatgpt and the like, it’s gonna give you same barely correct answers, at least it isn’t gonna send you out, well… Most of the time
ChatGPT is give you general answer not the right ones from my experience
Sometimes you get the right answer if you fine tune your question…but sometimes don’tSame with stack overflow, in my experience at least) i just googled questions btw, not started them, so in my personal experience chatgpt is google++
It’s enough to start the own research.
Yes, that’s what I’m thanking about)
Am the grammar an spelling part of joke?
I love it when the top Google result for a problem is a thread saying to Google it. Exactly what I needed, thanks asshole.
If it’s a question I know how to answer but believe it really it would take 30 seconds of searching for a regular person to find…
I’d give the answer but be a bit snarky about it.
Does the snark really make you feel better?
Honestly, yeah sometimes. It’s my emotional reflex to frustration that was programmed into me by my parents and I haven’t done enough cognitive behavioral therapy to undo it.
As someone who discovered my Type 1 ASD at 40, the gods know that I have a lot more work to do on my self-awareness and abrasiveness.
Not saying you should adopt this, but sometimes I read aloud what I type and imagine myself replying to a student in real life in the way of and with the tone that people sometimes have on StackOverflow.
My gut reaction at that point, usually, is to rewrite a response or post completely with a more generous dose of humility and compassion.
I don’t always get it right, but when I remember to do that and read replies, I like myself a little bit more.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more, and I realized that I talk to other people the way I talk to myself. This probably wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t so critical of myself.
I think I need to not only put in the effort to reread the things I write when communicating with others, but also to just be kinder to myself in my internal monologue.
I spend too much time being frustrated inside my own head, and that makes it easy to use that same tone when I’m interacting with other people.
Thanks for sharing your advice. I think verbalizing my thoughts the way you suggested will be really helpful.
This probably wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t so critical of myself.
Same.
I spend too much time being frustrated inside my own head, and that makes it easy to use that same tone when I’m interacting with other people.
Same.
My Dad’s neighbors always say:
Hurt people hurt people.
And as a counterpoint to that, from Slavoj Zizek:
Never presume that your suffering is, in itself, a proof of your authenticity.
Just because we wrestle with ourselves internally, it doesn’t justify our perniciousness to others.
Uncle Iroh nailed it:
Sometimes the best way to solve your own problems is to help someone else.
I just don’t wanna sound like an asshole when I attempt to do that!
If it’s on Stack Exchange, you can help us keep the community decent by assuming good faith and being patient with newcomers. Yes, it’s frustrating. And yeah, sometimes, it’s basically impossible to avoid sarcasm and scorn, just like how HN sometimes needs to be sneered at, but we can still strive for a maximum of civility.
If all else fails, just remember: you’re not on Philosophy SE or any of the religious communities, it’s just a computer question, and it can be answered without devolving into an opinion war. Pat yourself on the back for being a “schmott guy!” and write a polite answer that hopefully the newbies will grok. Be respectful of plural perspectives; it’s a feature that a question may have multiple well-liked answers.
As someone who works in IT, and specifically networking and security, the “trade subs” are honestly what I miss.most from reddit. Places like sysadmin, Cisco, Fortinet, talesfromtechsupport, etc.
Or, anywhere: “But why do you want that?”
Context is always useful, though. Because sometimes the person asking has gone down the wrong path and you could help them see the problem from a completely different angle.
Or maybe that context will let you know that yes, they have to use that ancient tech because that’s what they have to use at work and no they can’t install the latest fancy tech that does it so easily…
“Here is the answer, but why do you want that?” is a tolerable invocation of the X-Y problem.
“But why do you want that?” is derailing. It’s an effortless, all-purpose, I’m-so-clever bot post, and it drags a straightforward technical hurdle into some MacGuyver-ass lateral thinking puzzle.
I was once trying to incorporate 2D characters into Blender, with normals. There was no higher goal. That was, itself, the point. But instead I got a bunch of useless advice about how to model my simple example object, and snippy bullshit about doing things properly in 3D. Nobody had a damn thing to say about the discrepancy between the scanline renderer and the path-tracing renderer.
Just use phind.com you will get the relevant references. Chat got but better as it gives the source.
