> In my view, the very limited potential upside (successful Socratic rubber ducking) It depends on the situation - if you're not familiar with the person askin

> In my view, the very limited potential upside (successful Socratic rubber ducking) It depends on the situation - if you're not familiar with the person asking, and you're talking with them one-on-one, it can be a chance for them to establish their dignity so you can triage their request properly. If I'm looking after a shopping website and someone tells me they can't put things in their basket, I might usually start by asking with some pretty basic questions. By giving them a chance to tell me they can't put things in their basket on pages X and Y but can on Z, and it only happens when using Firefox, and that they've tested with multiple accounts, these browser versions and OSes, with and without plugins/ad blockers, and they've got confirmation from several other people - probably I'm going to skip asking them to clear their cookies and I'll launch straight into reproducing it myself. On the other hand, if I'm looking after a shopping website with clumsy warehouse staff and a customer tells me they ordered two widgets and only received one, probably I don't need any more info from the customer - and resolving the problem rather than batting it back to the customer would be good customer service.