> 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 questio

> 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.)