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IME, I indeed sometimes reach step5 (other times SO answers are okish) but if I do reach step5, I add a step6 for good measure that consists of adding my own an

IME, I indeed sometimes reach step5 (other times SO answers are okish) but if I do reach step5, I add a step6 for good measure that consists of adding my own answer. It's how I gained a lot of reputation in SO, not by marking questions as duplicate.

metabagel 4y ago
I never considered asking and answering my own question. I didn't even realize it was allowed.
- shagie 4y ago
  It is. Note that it takes some skill at writing to do a self answered question well. Often these falls into either: 1. Lots of material in question. Very simple unexplained answer. 2. Sparse material in question. Want to be multi part blog in the answer. Neither of those are received well. The key is to have a question that is good, helpful, and reproducible by others too (so they can try it out or find it if they have similar problems) and enough, but not too much detail in the answer. The answer is the tricky part because people get caught with not explaining anything because they already understand the domain in the question or explaining every nuance of the solution even though it is unnecessary for the solution itself.
  - metabagel 4y ago
    This makes a lot more sense to me than how SO presents itself. It's a forum to post your own questions to which you already found the answers. I do see value in that. But, there's almost no value in posting questions and hoping for an answer back. If that's what you want, then the right place is wherever the folks hang out who work on that technology - IRC, Discord, email list, etc.
    - shagie 4y ago
      The issue of "hoping for an answer back" is because too many people have questions and it has scaled poorly over the years. https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday - look at "questions per day" and the "answered%" (which is down from its peek of over 7000 questions per day). The fourth most visited site on the network gets under 100 questions per day. The site that I used to be active on (back when I was active) got about 50 per day (which was completely manageable for a dozen people to read every question every day, fix the ones that had problems and close the unanswerable ones) and is now down to under 5 per day. But Stack Overflow is still getting thousands of questions per day. Each question, unless its really good to start with and shows that it can be answerable and isn't just someone trying to get someone else to do their work is only a tiny blip in the overall firehose of questions. At the start, when there were fewer questions per day and more people were interested in answering the questions and moderating the content - that is when the site thrived. But as it got more popular and the quality of the questions has gone down, people don't care about answering questions as much and those who worked to try to keep what is there interesting have left. If you look at https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/422885/2022-a-year-in-moderation https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/422885/2022-a-year-... and pull up the google doc for the "community moderation in time" ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1upnX9UX8ab8rde8DrGnOkZNnMqK0Qce0MgpLVTFUTUE/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1upnX9UX8ab8rde8DrGnO... ) you'll see that most of the moderation tasks that were done by the community have dropped year over year over year. That makes it harder for the good questions to get noticed and get answers since the poorly written ones remain on the site longer. And yes, I do believe that other sources with people more familiar with that technology are better places to ask. If there's a discord for it - working with the devs there is likely helpful. If its hosted on GitHub and the team uses Discussions there - that's a much better and more focused Q&A format for that technology.
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        Its really nice to see the community numbers declining, I think that another site that encourages engagement rather than whatever stackoverflow is now can flourish.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Depending on your reputation, the rules keep changing and you may or may not be allowed today.
- Too 4y ago
  It’s not just allowed, it’s encouraged. You are contributing to the common pool of knowledge. As long as the question and answer themselves are good.

metabagel 4y ago

I never considered asking and answering my own question. I didn't even realize it was allowed.

shagie 4y ago
It is. Note that it takes some skill at writing to do a self answered question well. Often these falls into either: 1. Lots of material in question. Very simple unexplained answer. 2. Sparse material in question. Want to be multi part blog in the answer. Neither of those are received well. The key is to have a question that is good, helpful, and reproducible by others too (so they can try it out or find it if they have similar problems) and enough, but not too much detail in the answer. The answer is the tricky part because people get caught with not explaining anything because they already understand the domain in the question or explaining every nuance of the solution even though it is unnecessary for the solution itself.
- metabagel 4y ago
  This makes a lot more sense to me than how SO presents itself. It's a forum to post your own questions to which you already found the answers. I do see value in that. But, there's almost no value in posting questions and hoping for an answer back. If that's what you want, then the right place is wherever the folks hang out who work on that technology - IRC, Discord, email list, etc.
  - shagie 4y ago
    The issue of "hoping for an answer back" is because too many people have questions and it has scaled poorly over the years. https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday - look at "questions per day" and the "answered%" (which is down from its peek of over 7000 questions per day). The fourth most visited site on the network gets under 100 questions per day. The site that I used to be active on (back when I was active) got about 50 per day (which was completely manageable for a dozen people to read every question every day, fix the ones that had problems and close the unanswerable ones) and is now down to under 5 per day. But Stack Overflow is still getting thousands of questions per day. Each question, unless its really good to start with and shows that it can be answerable and isn't just someone trying to get someone else to do their work is only a tiny blip in the overall firehose of questions. At the start, when there were fewer questions per day and more people were interested in answering the questions and moderating the content - that is when the site thrived. But as it got more popular and the quality of the questions has gone down, people don't care about answering questions as much and those who worked to try to keep what is there interesting have left. If you look at https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/422885/2022-a-year-in-moderation https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/422885/2022-a-year-... and pull up the google doc for the "community moderation in time" ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1upnX9UX8ab8rde8DrGnOkZNnMqK0Qce0MgpLVTFUTUE/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1upnX9UX8ab8rde8DrGnO... ) you'll see that most of the moderation tasks that were done by the community have dropped year over year over year. That makes it harder for the good questions to get noticed and get answers since the poorly written ones remain on the site longer. And yes, I do believe that other sources with people more familiar with that technology are better places to ask. If there's a discord for it - working with the devs there is likely helpful. If its hosted on GitHub and the team uses Discussions there - that's a much better and more focused Q&A format for that technology.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      Its really nice to see the community numbers declining, I think that another site that encourages engagement rather than whatever stackoverflow is now can flourish.
marcosdumay 4y ago
Depending on your reputation, the rules keep changing and you may or may not be allowed today.
Too 4y ago
It’s not just allowed, it’s encouraged. You are contributing to the common pool of knowledge. As long as the question and answer themselves are good.