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I do generally agree that Stack Overflow as a community is too enthusiastic about closing down some questions. It's always particularly frustrating to Google fo

I do generally agree that Stack Overflow as a community is too enthusiastic about closing down some questions. It's always particularly frustrating to Google for some weird error message and find a Stack Overflow discussion which has been killed off because the question was inappropriate :) But, that said… I'm not sure this is a particularly convincing example of this phenomenon. This is an example of something which can easily be found by reading the documentation, and I'm not convinced that Stack Overflow is the correct place to ask for other people to do your research for you! In individual cases I don't doubt that it's fine, but I imagine it gets frustrating to deal with repeated questions of this character, especially when we now have the benefit of such easily-accessible online documentation. There is a balance to be struck, I guess. No reason to be rude even when silly questions are being asked.

jrumbut 10y ago
I think the point the author is making is that what can be easily found in a language's docs is subject to the same learning curve as what can be easily done with the language. Skill in docs reading comes with skill in the practice and understanding the concepts of a technology. Someone can make an honest and unsuccessful search for something that is blindingly obvious to another. If new users have difficulty using the documentation, that is sufficient proof that the documentation doesn't adequately serve new users (besides new users who magically know how to learn like experienced users) and that's where Q&A communities come in. The rules say you have to do research and you have to show what you've tried to do. It doesn't specify a standard skill level you need to meet.
- amag 10y ago
  The problem of writing documentation is that it's not possible to write it to suite every person. While most documentation certainly can be improved upon it's always the matter of where to best spend my time. Developing a feature or document an old feature in yet another way to serve people with a different mindset than my own. With the risk of sounding a bit of "it's programming it's meant to be hard", I feel the author is a bit spoiled. It's not as if the information wasn't there, she just needed ctrl-f "%r". This is also something you need to learn when learning how to program. In fact I would say that looking up information online is a fundamental programming skill (it didn't use to be, back in the days it was finding stuff in books, but we're mostly past that now, ctrl-f is so much nicer). So she just learned a very valuable lesson, I'd say.
  - jrumbut 10y ago
    I agree with your take on documentation, and I agree that there are some difficult concepts even in basic programming that you just have to work hard to learn. Reading dense documentation is a programming skill, so it doesn't seem ridiculously out of bounds to be still in the process of learning it when on a programming education site. What I'm trying to say is more along the lines of "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all." 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.
    - exolymph 10y ago
      >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. 100% — this is the point I was trying to make
      - amag 10y ago
        I agree with the sentiment that being snarky doesn't help, but I think ddebernardy is correct when saying: "Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub." Personally after having answered a lot of questions - in a nice, helpful way, mind you - questions whose answer could simply be "RTFM", these days I just avoid them. The problem with these kinds of questions are that more and more they offer nothing to the person answering them. A lot of them are asked by people who created an account on SO just to ask that question and then throws away the key (to that account). So don't expect to get any feedback, whether karma, comments or to be marked accepted. Don't expect there to be an interesting discussion with other devs with different experiences. I mean, I was answering questions on forums long before there was any karma involved just because I like to help/teach, but for that to be interesting to me who answers questions, there must be some sort of feedback. Karma is one way but I always preferred the good ol' discussion. It means I get to learn something as well. Questions answerable with "RTFM" offer very little of that. I guess what I'm saying is that people who answers question on SO (or similar sites) are not getting paid to answers those questions. They do it for fun, learning experience, karma, status or whatever. So there has to be something in it for them as well.
- maxlybbert 10y ago
  The original question (not the blog post, but the question) was "I've been looking for the list Python format characters for a good 30 minutes. I can't find any. ... I need a list with them along with a description if possible please." What better answer is there than a link to the documentation that has that list? In this case, I don't really care if the person posting the question put any research on their own. They specifically asked for a dump of everything, and got what they asked for. If that wasn't helpful, perhaps they need to ask a different question.
brudgers 10y ago
The big idea of StackOverflow was to move information out of silos. The first targets were message boards and expertsexchange and mailing lists. But part of its success has been making information more accessible than official documentation -- all of the vagaries of Javascript's scoping is right there in the spec.
ddebernardy 10y ago
> It's always particularly frustrating to Google for some weird error message and find a Stack Overflow discussion which has been killed off because the question was inappropriate :) I'm a bit torn on those, tbh. The answer to those types of questions (and many other low quality questions) are typically in a blog post or in the docs a couple of positions further down in Google search results. At the very least the latter will provide a few interesting leads and hints on what's wrong. A user who asks such a question on SO directly, without as much as a reference to the latter, is basically sending the message that they can't be bothered to do their own research or thinking, and are de facto abusing the time of those who do. But they'll never learn the problem-solving skills that are so critical to being a good engineer. Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub. (One could of course argue that some engineers lack the curiosity and the basic problem-solving abilities that are necessary to be a good engineer. But that is another problem altogether.)

jrumbut 10y ago

I think the point the author is making is that what can be easily found in a language's docs is subject to the same learning curve as what can be easily done with the language. Skill in docs reading comes with skill in the practice and understanding the concepts of a technology. Someone can make an honest and unsuccessful search for something that is blindingly obvious to another. If new users have difficulty using the documentation, that is sufficient proof that the documentation doesn't adequately serve new users (besides new users who magically know how to learn like experienced users) and that's where Q&A communities come in. The rules say you have to do research and you have to show what you've tried to do. It doesn't specify a standard skill level you need to meet.

amag 10y ago
The problem of writing documentation is that it's not possible to write it to suite every person. While most documentation certainly can be improved upon it's always the matter of where to best spend my time. Developing a feature or document an old feature in yet another way to serve people with a different mindset than my own. With the risk of sounding a bit of "it's programming it's meant to be hard", I feel the author is a bit spoiled. It's not as if the information wasn't there, she just needed ctrl-f "%r". This is also something you need to learn when learning how to program. In fact I would say that looking up information online is a fundamental programming skill (it didn't use to be, back in the days it was finding stuff in books, but we're mostly past that now, ctrl-f is so much nicer). So she just learned a very valuable lesson, I'd say.
- jrumbut 10y ago
  I agree with your take on documentation, and I agree that there are some difficult concepts even in basic programming that you just have to work hard to learn. Reading dense documentation is a programming skill, so it doesn't seem ridiculously out of bounds to be still in the process of learning it when on a programming education site. What I'm trying to say is more along the lines of "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all." 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.
  - exolymph 10y ago
    >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. 100% — this is the point I was trying to make
    - amag 10y ago
      I agree with the sentiment that being snarky doesn't help, but I think ddebernardy is correct when saying: "Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub." Personally after having answered a lot of questions - in a nice, helpful way, mind you - questions whose answer could simply be "RTFM", these days I just avoid them. The problem with these kinds of questions are that more and more they offer nothing to the person answering them. A lot of them are asked by people who created an account on SO just to ask that question and then throws away the key (to that account). So don't expect to get any feedback, whether karma, comments or to be marked accepted. Don't expect there to be an interesting discussion with other devs with different experiences. I mean, I was answering questions on forums long before there was any karma involved just because I like to help/teach, but for that to be interesting to me who answers questions, there must be some sort of feedback. Karma is one way but I always preferred the good ol' discussion. It means I get to learn something as well. Questions answerable with "RTFM" offer very little of that. I guess what I'm saying is that people who answers question on SO (or similar sites) are not getting paid to answers those questions. They do it for fun, learning experience, karma, status or whatever. So there has to be something in it for them as well.
maxlybbert 10y ago
The original question (not the blog post, but the question) was "I've been looking for the list Python format characters for a good 30 minutes. I can't find any. ... I need a list with them along with a description if possible please." What better answer is there than a link to the documentation that has that list? In this case, I don't really care if the person posting the question put any research on their own. They specifically asked for a dump of everything, and got what they asked for. If that wasn't helpful, perhaps they need to ask a different question.

brudgers 10y ago

The big idea of StackOverflow was to move information out of silos. The first targets were message boards and expertsexchange and mailing lists. But part of its success has been making information more accessible than official documentation -- all of the vagaries of Javascript's scoping is right there in the spec.

ddebernardy 10y ago

> It's always particularly frustrating to Google for some weird error message and find a Stack Overflow discussion which has been killed off because the question was inappropriate :) I'm a bit torn on those, tbh. The answer to those types of questions (and many other low quality questions) are typically in a blog post or in the docs a couple of positions further down in Google search results. At the very least the latter will provide a few interesting leads and hints on what's wrong. A user who asks such a question on SO directly, without as much as a reference to the latter, is basically sending the message that they can't be bothered to do their own research or thinking, and are de facto abusing the time of those who do. But they'll never learn the problem-solving skills that are so critical to being a good engineer. Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub. (One could of course argue that some engineers lack the curiosity and the basic problem-solving abilities that are necessary to be a good engineer. But that is another problem altogether.)