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No. User asks I want to do Y. The responding party should in my opinion: - Provide a solution to Y first. This is OP's point. - Then as a corollary, provide
by systemvoltage 6y ago
No.
User asks I want to do Y.
The responding party should in my opinion:
- Provide a solution to Y first. This is OP's point.
- Then as a corollary, provide some of their guesswork of what X might be and if it is true, then this is how to solve X without having to do Y.
So, it is still beneficial to n00bs and the uninformed, just puts the direct answer to Y first. That's all OP is asking and I agree with that.
Most of the time, smartass responses go into the guesswork regime by assuming the User wanted to do X. More than often User actually wanted to do Z, it's not always true and it is polluting SO against the spirit of "Direct question ---> Direct answer" because discovery and searching of answers happen through Y, not X. Most people came to SO because of Y, that's how they landed there in the first place.
- chowells 6y agoThis is not a good approach. For the typical person asking a question, you waste their time at best. At worst, they actually use your solution to Y and ignore why it's bad. Both of those are significantly worse than clarifying the problem in the first place.
- systemvoltage 6y agoNo one is saying we shouldn't provide why Y is bad. I said, it should be a corollary. The bad approach is when the entire thread is full of guesses of what X might be without knowing the full context. Y is nowhere to be found. It breaks the UX of SO.