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But that last reason makes the behaviours described in the question even worse. If I land on a page with the question "What does the blue button on the back of

But that last reason makes the behaviours described in the question even worse. If I land on a page with the question "What does the blue button on the back of a Mark 3 defrobulator do?" at the top in large friendly letters, I am likely to be interested in that question, and I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?".

shagie 4y ago
That's why comments and discussions are second class citizens and comments get collapsed. A well written answer doesn't have any of "the conversation that follows" in it. One of the challenges with users unfamiliar to the Q&A format is that they treat SO like a forum and try to force in doing replies and back and forth into questions and answers (collectively posts) when the site's design is actively and intentionally hostile to such.
ceejayoz 4y ago
> I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?". Sometimes that conversation nets out as "you will kill someone if you press the blue button in certain circumstances", and that's an important clarifier to have access to.
- mjw1007 4y ago
  Surely in cases like that you don't want to be having the "why?" conversation: the answerer should put that information in big bold letters at the top of their answer, whether or not it turns out that the person who happened to ask the question is in those certain circumstances.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Sure, but what about when it's a little less clear, and the stakes lower? "How do I increase the PHP memory limit? I'm getting a memory error when I foreach through lots of rows." is likely best answerable not by increasing the memory limit (and running into the same problem with a few more rows), but by chunking the rows to avoid the memory leak. I don't see a downside to "there's probably a better way of doing this you should at least consider, here's why" as an answer to a question. SO permits multiple answers; someone'll likely be along shortly and give the php.ini answer, but it's not the best approach.
    - mjw1007 4y ago
      I think adding helpful information like that is great. But it's much better if it comes after answering the actual question, not instead of it, because (as you say), SO was intended to be a big reference of answered questions.

shagie 4y ago

That's why comments and discussions are second class citizens and comments get collapsed. A well written answer doesn't have any of "the conversation that follows" in it. One of the challenges with users unfamiliar to the Q&A format is that they treat SO like a forum and try to force in doing replies and back and forth into questions and answers (collectively posts) when the site's design is actively and intentionally hostile to such.

ceejayoz 4y ago

> I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?". Sometimes that conversation nets out as "you will kill someone if you press the blue button in certain circumstances", and that's an important clarifier to have access to.

mjw1007 4y ago
Surely in cases like that you don't want to be having the "why?" conversation: the answerer should put that information in big bold letters at the top of their answer, whether or not it turns out that the person who happened to ask the question is in those certain circumstances.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Sure, but what about when it's a little less clear, and the stakes lower? "How do I increase the PHP memory limit? I'm getting a memory error when I foreach through lots of rows." is likely best answerable not by increasing the memory limit (and running into the same problem with a few more rows), but by chunking the rows to avoid the memory leak. I don't see a downside to "there's probably a better way of doing this you should at least consider, here's why" as an answer to a question. SO permits multiple answers; someone'll likely be along shortly and give the php.ini answer, but it's not the best approach.
  - mjw1007 4y ago
    I think adding helpful information like that is great. But it's much better if it comes after answering the actual question, not instead of it, because (as you say), SO was intended to be a big reference of answered questions.