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This is very...presumptive. When I run into an issue, and happen to land on a stack overflow page when searching on it, I don't just try and find a solution th

This is very...presumptive. When I run into an issue, and happen to land on a stack overflow page when searching on it, I don't just try and find a solution that lets me do what I want to do. I try and figure out -why I'm having difficulty- in the first place. This might be because I don't know the language/library/whatever, or have forgotten some key bugaboo in the stack I'm using, or that its documentation hasn't been updated, or that the holistic knowledge I need to get a useful example isn't really spelled out anywhere canonical (all that exists are descriptions of API endpoints, not a manual or tutorial that tells me how to bring it all together). In which case, a simple "here's how you do it" is -entirely sufficient-; SO can deliver this. But it also might be because I have a fundamental misunderstanding, as per the OP's example. In which case I read the answers on SO, or anywhere else, -to correct that understanding-. And frequently, SO delivers on that. While there may be a one liner "Just do XYZ" to hack around it, there is almost invariably (and in fact, it's usually the highest rated) an answer from someone explaining the code or idea in question, and the right way to do it. Again, SO can deliver this. This decision of which sort of answer you're looking for isn't due to a specific source of answers, but what sort of answer is good enough for you. If you have an issue of the latter variety, where you have a misunderstanding, but the former kind of answer is sufficient for someone, where they just are enabled in that misunderstanding, rather than correcting it, then that speaks ill of the person accepting that answer, not of SO enabling that (along with the correct) kind of answer.

DanBC 11y ago
Some people like this "reject the premise of the question" approach -- "op, what you want to do is wrong, and here's why. This is what you want to do instead, and here's why." But some people loathe it, because they're forced into some stupid situation by an idiot boss and they know the right way to do something. They don't know the right way to do something, which is why they're asking the question. But now the question isn't about getting them help, but about an argument over whether they're asking the right question or not. Question askers should probably include a line about whether their happy for the premise to be rejected or not; answerers and commenters need to lay off a bit. (Not completely: the answer is also for the future people who arrive via search engines, and those people probably want the right way answer).
- gavinpc 11y ago
  I asked about this in the fairly early days of SO [1]. Nowadays, it's clear that you're not just answering the OP, but thousands of other people. I think that's worth taking into consideration. > Question askers should probably include a line about whether their happy for the premise to be rejected or not This is a good alternative to being too hard-lined one way or the other. [1] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45536/on-answering-the-actual-question http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45536/on-answering-t...
  - ant6n 11y ago
    Exactly because others will come from Google to get an answer to the question is the reason why answerers should actually answer the question. Often somebody will write something like "How do you solve X? --- I'm trying to do A and encountered this problem, so how do I solve X?" And then the people will tell the user how to solve A without solving X. Except that everybody else will come from Google looking how to solve X, and that's infuriating. I also don't quite get how Stackoverflow is so accepting of people talking down on others in this way. Like if somebody asks "Can a near-zero floating value cause a divide-by-zero error?" and the best rated answer is "Floating point division by zero is not an error." (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12114498/can-a-near-zero-floating-value-cause-a-divide-by-zero-error/12114665 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12114498/can-a-near-zero-...)
- lostcolony 11y ago
  You're correct, and that was unfair of me to say; it may not be an issue with the person, but with the set of considerations being imposed on the person, internally or externally.

DanBC 11y ago

Some people like this "reject the premise of the question" approach -- "op, what you want to do is wrong, and here's why. This is what you want to do instead, and here's why." But some people loathe it, because they're forced into some stupid situation by an idiot boss and they know the right way to do something. They don't know the right way to do something, which is why they're asking the question. But now the question isn't about getting them help, but about an argument over whether they're asking the right question or not. Question askers should probably include a line about whether their happy for the premise to be rejected or not; answerers and commenters need to lay off a bit. (Not completely: the answer is also for the future people who arrive via search engines, and those people probably want the right way answer).

gavinpc 11y ago
I asked about this in the fairly early days of SO [1]. Nowadays, it's clear that you're not just answering the OP, but thousands of other people. I think that's worth taking into consideration. > Question askers should probably include a line about whether their happy for the premise to be rejected or not This is a good alternative to being too hard-lined one way or the other. [1] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45536/on-answering-the-actual-question http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45536/on-answering-t...
- ant6n 11y ago
  Exactly because others will come from Google to get an answer to the question is the reason why answerers should actually answer the question. Often somebody will write something like "How do you solve X? --- I'm trying to do A and encountered this problem, so how do I solve X?" And then the people will tell the user how to solve A without solving X. Except that everybody else will come from Google looking how to solve X, and that's infuriating. I also don't quite get how Stackoverflow is so accepting of people talking down on others in this way. Like if somebody asks "Can a near-zero floating value cause a divide-by-zero error?" and the best rated answer is "Floating point division by zero is not an error." (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12114498/can-a-near-zero-floating-value-cause-a-divide-by-zero-error/12114665 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12114498/can-a-near-zero-...)
lostcolony 11y ago
You're correct, and that was unfair of me to say; it may not be an issue with the person, but with the set of considerations being imposed on the person, internally or externally.