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That’s so condescending though. How do you know if someone is making a beginner question? You just can’t, you can only assume it. And that’s very often wrong.

• theamk 4y ago
  Sure you can, beginners never research their questions and they don't give the right context. Beginner question: "How to make a webserver using bash?". Non-beginner question: "How to make a webserver using bash? I have this weird embedded system and it is missing SDK, http daemons or programming languages, but somehow comes with coreutils and fully-featured bash 5.0.17. And I really need to serve a single static webpage off it" The first question will get X-Y answers like "here is how to install apache" and "you probably want to make CGI script instead, here is how you do it". The second one will get the interesting answers.
• hombre_fatal 4y ago
  Have you ever scrolled through Stack Overflow's new-question queue? It's quite easy to separate not just beginners from advanced users but also beginners who have done their research from beginners who have put less effort into their question than you put into reading it. Maybe it seems rude or condescending to address a poorly formed question, but I'm not sure what else you can do since you have to realize that low effort questions also have a cost. For example, have you ever tried helping someone where you have to ask a 20 questions just to glean enough info just to help them? You can see this on SO all the time.