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I have a somewhat different intepretation of the value StackOverflow provides. To me, part of what makes SO useful is the somewhat inconsistent, but still fairl

I have a somewhat different intepretation of the value StackOverflow provides. To me, part of what makes SO useful is the somewhat inconsistent, but still fairly obvious, requirement to do significant personal research, before asking a question. If a Here, let me google that for you link to the top result answers a users question, shouldn't there be some sort of negative feedback to cull those types of questions from the platform? My point is, by discouraging behavior that the community is "generally" opposed to, SO helps in ways beyond just answer questions. That said, if they can make it a little nicer to ask a question, without losing the core value they provide (IMO - quality questions & quality answers), then by all means lets give it a try.

olooney 7y ago
Sometimes. I once asked how to find the "successor" of a floating point number. I had Googled this, in several different ways in fact, looking for phrases like "smallest floating point number strictly larger than", "next nearest IEEE 754 float" and so on, but I hadn't hit the magic combination of words that would bring up the correct answer. My question was flagged as a duplicate of this one: > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10160079/how-to-find-nearest-next-previous-double-value-numeric-limitsepsilon-for-give https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10160079/how-to-find-nea... Which is a terrible way of phrasing that question. "next/previous double value?" "like numeric_limits::epsilon but for given number?" "Quite self explanatory?" I didn't - and couldn't have - found this question via Google because it doesn't actually ask the question it purports to - it makes vague allusions to it and hopes the other party will know what they mean. The page would be much improved from a better question with a precise technical description of the exact problem asked because then the page would actually contain the keywords that people would be looking for. But stack overflow, by design, believes that the One True Way to ask a question is the way it was asked first, and that everything subsequent is a duplicate and should be closed.

olooney 7y ago

Sometimes. I once asked how to find the "successor" of a floating point number. I had Googled this, in several different ways in fact, looking for phrases like "smallest floating point number strictly larger than", "next nearest IEEE 754 float" and so on, but I hadn't hit the magic combination of words that would bring up the correct answer. My question was flagged as a duplicate of this one: > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10160079/how-to-find-nearest-next-previous-double-value-numeric-limitsepsilon-for-give https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10160079/how-to-find-nea... Which is a terrible way of phrasing that question. "next/previous double value?" "like numeric_limits::epsilon but for given number?" "Quite self explanatory?" I didn't - and couldn't have - found this question via Google because it doesn't actually ask the question it purports to - it makes vague allusions to it and hopes the other party will know what they mean. The page would be much improved from a better question with a precise technical description of the exact problem asked because then the page would actually contain the keywords that people would be looking for. But stack overflow, by design, believes that the One True Way to ask a question is the way it was asked first, and that everything subsequent is a duplicate and should be closed.