I've lately been frustrated by Stack Overflow and similar because of how they handle XY problems. For those not familiar with the term, an XY problem is where s

I've lately been frustrated by Stack Overflow and similar because of how they handle XY problems. For those not familiar with the term, an XY problem is where someone wants to accomplish X, they think that to do this they need to do Y, and they ask for help with Y. It often turns out that Y is not actually what they need in order to accomplish X. They should have been asking about Z. XY problems are common enough that people on SO often won't answer a question asking how to do Y until the submitter explains their X. If it turns out some Z is what the person really needs the answerers explain that and show how to do Z. Great for the person who asked the question. They learn how to accomplish what they actually wanted. But it sucks when I actually need to know how to do Y, and all searching SO turns up is those XY problems. Even more annoying I'm pretty sure I've run into ones where someone who really needed to do Y asked, noting that previous questions about Y all failed to actually tell how to do Y, and their question was quickly closed as a duplicate of one of the earlier XY problems that doesn't actually tell how to do Y.