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Stack Overflow's semi-hostile approach to asking questions you can look up yourself was one of the most useful lessons I ever learned. It forced me to explore a

Stack Overflow's semi-hostile approach to asking questions you can look up yourself was one of the most useful lessons I ever learned. It forced me to explore all my options before asking a question, because getting called out for not doing basic research was pretty embarrassing. Maybe I'm an outlier here, and maybe some people don't appreciate that barrier to entry, but it seems to work. I don't think I've ever run into any really hostile or offensive comments while using Stack Overflow.

nmstoker 9y ago
It's a matter of perspective about who's starting hostilities when a questioner asks with no obvious investment of effort! But that way leads to endless squabbles fairly soon. Clearly it's good to deter such people, but where I think SO could improve a little is if it had some more up front deterrence, and thus avoided more of the naive (some would say lazy) questioners from proceeding, only to get embarrassed/called out. They do try to identify similar questions but perhaps a specific step right before a new user submits asking them to highlight which part of their question covers what they've already tried/researched (with a friendly option to add such a part if they've merely overlooked it) Like you, I've never seen it particularly unfair or harsh, but smoothing things along helps everyone.
jakear 9y ago
Definitely. The best thing StackOverflow taught me is that I don't need StackOverflow. Sure there are some exceptional cases, such as when things just Will. Not. Work. when getting started with a new language/framework/whatever, but I learned to make use of documentation, Google, and StackOverflow's search in place of asking the internet to be my personal debugger. I only ask a question as a last resort, and sure sometimes it gets flagged (oh no, the horror!), or people in the comments assume I don't know anything about anything (maybe, but I tend to know at least slightly more than they take me for). But as a whole, it's a very healthy community and I tend to learn something new with each visit I make.

nmstoker 9y ago

It's a matter of perspective about who's starting hostilities when a questioner asks with no obvious investment of effort! But that way leads to endless squabbles fairly soon. Clearly it's good to deter such people, but where I think SO could improve a little is if it had some more up front deterrence, and thus avoided more of the naive (some would say lazy) questioners from proceeding, only to get embarrassed/called out. They do try to identify similar questions but perhaps a specific step right before a new user submits asking them to highlight which part of their question covers what they've already tried/researched (with a friendly option to add such a part if they've merely overlooked it) Like you, I've never seen it particularly unfair or harsh, but smoothing things along helps everyone.

jakear 9y ago

Definitely. The best thing StackOverflow taught me is that I don't need StackOverflow. Sure there are some exceptional cases, such as when things just Will. Not. Work. when getting started with a new language/framework/whatever, but I learned to make use of documentation, Google, and StackOverflow's search in place of asking the internet to be my personal debugger. I only ask a question as a last resort, and sure sometimes it gets flagged (oh no, the horror!), or people in the comments assume I don't know anything about anything (maybe, but I tend to know at least slightly more than they take me for). But as a whole, it's a very healthy community and I tend to learn something new with each visit I make.