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> This reminds me of the “XY Problem” framing [0], a concept that has been very helpful over the years when communicating with customers about feature requests.

> This reminds me of the “XY Problem” framing [0], a concept that has been very helpful over the years when communicating with customers about feature requests. It also ruined stackoverflow, since replies which ignore the question and assume that the OP really meant something else end up being so much easier to write/vote on than an actual answer.

haswell 3y ago
Like anything, it needs to be applied appropriately, and I agree that blindly redirecting every request to this framing is not helpful. But the number of times that it is helpful has been pretty high for me over the years. This probably depends a lot on the customer’s own ability to comprehend the true nature of the problem. I worked in the enterprise/B2B space, where a significant number of requests came from people not technical enough to fully know what to ask without some deeper exploration.
- hooverd 3y ago
  Agreed. But sometimes, especially if you know about your problem domain, it feels like asking "how do a I keep water out of my basement" and all the answers are "simply rebuild your house at the top of the hill."
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    It's a matter of vastly different costs, in that case: the solution to the modified problem costs much more to solve than the originally stated problem. The trick is avoiding such a large gap, hopefully with a breakeven that comes in the foreseeable future, if not immediately. For example: how do I repair water damage on my ceiling in a way that's quick enough to do it after every storm? You mean how do I repair my roof so I only have to repair the ceiling one more time? It's more upfront cost to do both now, but the breakeven is only a small handful of storms away, which is palatable enough to get serious consideration. If the breakeven was (for some reason, hypothetically) 20 years away, actually figuring out how to make quick work of repeated ceiling repairs might be more desirable.
jameshart 3y ago
Also when, for example, someone suggests a strategy that is useful in scenario X, but because it can be problematic in scenario Y, they get a bunch of replies warning them about that - even though they had no intention of advocating applying it in scenario Y. That’s also a kind of XYing - “oh don’t do that, it’s bad if you re trying to Y…” when we’re not, we are trying to X. For example, when someone says they think the XY problem model is a useful framing when evaluating customer feature requests in product design, they are talking about using it in scenario X. But inevitably they will attract a bunch of replies telling them how bad it is to apply the XY problem approach when answering questions in a technical Q&A forum. That would be scenario Y.
- pierat 3y ago
  "You keep mentioning XY problem, but you really meant the AB problem, and that answer is ......" That's it in a nutshell. And concur with this de-framing non-answer as one of the leading causes of bad StackOverflow solutions.
  - asveikau 3y ago
    Stack overflow started out with a lot of Microsoft ecosystem people, eg. Joel Spolsky. I worked at Microsoft in 2008 and this kind of de-framing was a bit of a corporate cultural obsession there at that time. You'd report a bug internally and PMs would ask you what you were really trying to do ... It was frustrating when you wanted people to just fix their shit. Instead people would universally treat you like you didn't know what you were doing and really meant to ask something else. I saw this trait a lot on SO around the same time.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jameshart 3y ago
    Apparently I was too subtle so let me put a lampshade on it. The replies to the post which said that the XY problem approach is useful in product development, which are talking about XY reframing being a problem on stackoverflow are XY reframing the parent post. They are doing exactly what they decry. The smell of irony is apparently not as thick in the air as I thought it was.
bombolo 3y ago
Most people ask how to make some absurd hack when there is an easy and proper way to solve their problem.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Sometimes what you think is an absurd hack is still what I want to do after having thoroughly considered all other options. It's infuriating in those cases to end up on a Stack Overflow question where someone wanted to do exactly what I want to do, and the only answers are redirecting them to other solutions that I've already considered and ruled out.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    The huge majority of people asking questions on SO are noobs and most likely haven't thoroughly considered all other options. If they did, they should say so in the question. The majority of people answering questions are also noobs, and this should be taken into account. Experts in their domain don't need SO, and so don't go there at all. When I was writing my thesis, years ago, SO was already basically useless to me because nobody could solve any of the problems that I was encountering then. I just use it when I can't be bothered to look up stuff in the documentation, but I see it mostly as a resource for people who are learning or are very early in their career.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      This feels like you're saying "SO is and should remain useless". SO is populated mostly by inexperienced developers because the community is hostile towards experienced developers, and part of that hostility is this XY-ing. I also don't find SO to be useful, but I wish it were. > If they did, they should say so in the question. You're operating on the assumption that the purpose of SO is for an asker to get an answer. The extremely strict duplicates policy suggests the opposite: the goals and motives of the original asker are essentially irrelevant, because only one similarly-phrased question is allowed ever. If their question doesn't get answered this time, it will never be allowed an answer.
adamc 3y ago
Many, many things are wrong with stackoverflow. Insisting that every discussion be factual and opinion-free pushes you deep into the McNamara fallacy of believing that things that cannot easily be quantified don't matter. It's a site I sometimes use but dislike intensely.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I think the absolute hardest thing to get information on is "I have XYZ problem, I am aware of solutions A, B, and C. What is the best solution among these, what are the trade-offs between them, and what solutions am I not aware of?". Now, this is just a truly difficult question, but Stack Overflow solves that problem by forbidding such questions, which is understandable, but I think also a shame. At one point in time, I thought maybe Quora would try to fill this gap, but they went off in some other direction that I never understood. Most other "social" things (reddit, etc.) are discussion rather than Q&A. Or they are blog posts, where the focus is usually on solution A, with solutions B and C presented only for contrast, because solution A is what motivated the author to write the post. I kind of want Wirecutter, but for technologies.
  - adamc 3y ago
    Yes, that would actually be much more useful to me than what stackoverflow is. A vast number of the questions found that can be easily answered by RTFM and/or doing some direct experimentation. The harder ones would be more useful.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Yeah. I think it's also why chatgpt (and copilot, etc.) actually did turn out to be a strong SO competitor, because it actually can do a pretty good job on these factual questions. But unfortunately it's pretty bad at this other kind of judgment-based compare-and-contrast question. It's especially bad at the "what other solutions am I not aware of?" part, because it isn't kept up to date.
      - 3y ago

haswell 3y ago

Like anything, it needs to be applied appropriately, and I agree that blindly redirecting every request to this framing is not helpful. But the number of times that it is helpful has been pretty high for me over the years. This probably depends a lot on the customer’s own ability to comprehend the true nature of the problem. I worked in the enterprise/B2B space, where a significant number of requests came from people not technical enough to fully know what to ask without some deeper exploration.

hooverd 3y ago
Agreed. But sometimes, especially if you know about your problem domain, it feels like asking "how do a I keep water out of my basement" and all the answers are "simply rebuild your house at the top of the hill."
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  It's a matter of vastly different costs, in that case: the solution to the modified problem costs much more to solve than the originally stated problem. The trick is avoiding such a large gap, hopefully with a breakeven that comes in the foreseeable future, if not immediately. For example: how do I repair water damage on my ceiling in a way that's quick enough to do it after every storm? You mean how do I repair my roof so I only have to repair the ceiling one more time? It's more upfront cost to do both now, but the breakeven is only a small handful of storms away, which is palatable enough to get serious consideration. If the breakeven was (for some reason, hypothetically) 20 years away, actually figuring out how to make quick work of repeated ceiling repairs might be more desirable.

jameshart 3y ago

Also when, for example, someone suggests a strategy that is useful in scenario X, but because it can be problematic in scenario Y, they get a bunch of replies warning them about that - even though they had no intention of advocating applying it in scenario Y. That’s also a kind of XYing - “oh don’t do that, it’s bad if you re trying to Y…” when we’re not, we are trying to X. For example, when someone says they think the XY problem model is a useful framing when evaluating customer feature requests in product design, they are talking about using it in scenario X. But inevitably they will attract a bunch of replies telling them how bad it is to apply the XY problem approach when answering questions in a technical Q&A forum. That would be scenario Y.

pierat 3y ago
"You keep mentioning XY problem, but you really meant the AB problem, and that answer is ......" That's it in a nutshell. And concur with this de-framing non-answer as one of the leading causes of bad StackOverflow solutions.
- asveikau 3y ago
  Stack overflow started out with a lot of Microsoft ecosystem people, eg. Joel Spolsky. I worked at Microsoft in 2008 and this kind of de-framing was a bit of a corporate cultural obsession there at that time. You'd report a bug internally and PMs would ask you what you were really trying to do ... It was frustrating when you wanted people to just fix their shit. Instead people would universally treat you like you didn't know what you were doing and really meant to ask something else. I saw this trait a lot on SO around the same time.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jameshart 3y ago
  Apparently I was too subtle so let me put a lampshade on it. The replies to the post which said that the XY problem approach is useful in product development, which are talking about XY reframing being a problem on stackoverflow are XY reframing the parent post. They are doing exactly what they decry. The smell of irony is apparently not as thick in the air as I thought it was.

bombolo 3y ago

Most people ask how to make some absurd hack when there is an easy and proper way to solve their problem.

lolinder 3y ago
Sometimes what you think is an absurd hack is still what I want to do after having thoroughly considered all other options. It's infuriating in those cases to end up on a Stack Overflow question where someone wanted to do exactly what I want to do, and the only answers are redirecting them to other solutions that I've already considered and ruled out.
- bombolo 3y ago
  The huge majority of people asking questions on SO are noobs and most likely haven't thoroughly considered all other options. If they did, they should say so in the question. The majority of people answering questions are also noobs, and this should be taken into account. Experts in their domain don't need SO, and so don't go there at all. When I was writing my thesis, years ago, SO was already basically useless to me because nobody could solve any of the problems that I was encountering then. I just use it when I can't be bothered to look up stuff in the documentation, but I see it mostly as a resource for people who are learning or are very early in their career.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    This feels like you're saying "SO is and should remain useless". SO is populated mostly by inexperienced developers because the community is hostile towards experienced developers, and part of that hostility is this XY-ing. I also don't find SO to be useful, but I wish it were. > If they did, they should say so in the question. You're operating on the assumption that the purpose of SO is for an asker to get an answer. The extremely strict duplicates policy suggests the opposite: the goals and motives of the original asker are essentially irrelevant, because only one similarly-phrased question is allowed ever. If their question doesn't get answered this time, it will never be allowed an answer.

adamc 3y ago

Many, many things are wrong with stackoverflow. Insisting that every discussion be factual and opinion-free pushes you deep into the McNamara fallacy of believing that things that cannot easily be quantified don't matter. It's a site I sometimes use but dislike intensely.

sanderjd 3y ago
I think the absolute hardest thing to get information on is "I have XYZ problem, I am aware of solutions A, B, and C. What is the best solution among these, what are the trade-offs between them, and what solutions am I not aware of?". Now, this is just a truly difficult question, but Stack Overflow solves that problem by forbidding such questions, which is understandable, but I think also a shame. At one point in time, I thought maybe Quora would try to fill this gap, but they went off in some other direction that I never understood. Most other "social" things (reddit, etc.) are discussion rather than Q&A. Or they are blog posts, where the focus is usually on solution A, with solutions B and C presented only for contrast, because solution A is what motivated the author to write the post. I kind of want Wirecutter, but for technologies.
- adamc 3y ago
  Yes, that would actually be much more useful to me than what stackoverflow is. A vast number of the questions found that can be easily answered by RTFM and/or doing some direct experimentation. The harder ones would be more useful.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yeah. I think it's also why chatgpt (and copilot, etc.) actually did turn out to be a strong SO competitor, because it actually can do a pretty good job on these factual questions. But unfortunately it's pretty bad at this other kind of judgment-based compare-and-contrast question. It's especially bad at the "what other solutions am I not aware of?" part, because it isn't kept up to date.
    - 3y ago