3 ms·

> answer X first and then say "did you want Y?". That's a surefire way to cause your suggestion of Y to get ignored and proliferate the bad practice of X. It'

by shawnz 3y ago

> answer X first and then say "did you want Y?". That's a surefire way to cause your suggestion of Y to get ignored and proliferate the bad practice of X. It's not anyone's responsibility to explain how to do things in a way that they believe is wrong.

IshKebab 3y ago
It's not anyone's responsibility to answer at all.
- shawnz 3y ago
  Agreed! Which is why I think it's especially disrespectful to criticize people making honest efforts to help as being "know-it-alls trying to show off" in cases where their idea of the ideal kind of help is different than what the original poster had in mind.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    It's frequently NOT an honest effort to help. It's just "well that's a stupid question, let me show you how I know more..." When you really are trying to help and you think it's an XY you can answer politely by actually answering their question and then saying "but you may want to do this instead". Try it.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      Indeed, a good answer to X will make clear why Y is the better option in most cases. But its a thin line to tread between subtly implying that X is bad, and saying "only idiots do X, anyway here's how an idiot would do X".
    - shawnz 3y ago
      You suggested that in your previous comment, and I explained already why I don't think that's a good idea: it's liable to cause your alternative suggestion to get ignored and proliferate bad practices. If someone has a genuine desire to help, then they also inherently have an interest in making sure people don't continue down paths which are likely to lead to more problems in the end. Otherwise, you might end up spending more time supporting the follow-on issues created due to the misapplications of your own advice than you spent providing the support in the first place, which would not be an efficient way of helping.
      - IshKebab 3y ago
        > it's liable to cause your alternative suggestion to get ignored and proliferate bad practices. I just don't think that is the case. On the rare occasion that somebody has answered like this to me I've just read their answer and thought "oh right that makes more sense I'll do that".
jldugger 3y ago
Okay, but I've been in plenty of conversations where I ask "I read in a book that we should be doing X, how are people doing X?"[1], and the answers I got, _from a community that included the book author_, were "first, make sure you're doing A, B and C."[2] When in fact I am doing that already. Do I have to really preface every question with "i promise i'm not the idiot you assume I am?" 1: "This book says to monitor ML systems for distribution shifts; what tools are people using to store that data and monitor for changes?" 2: "Make sure you're monitoring normal SRE statistics like request failure rate"
- shawnz 3y ago
  > Do I have to really preface every question with "i promise i'm not the idiot you assume I am?" Yes, first of all I do think it's up to the person looking for help to fully elaborate their situation in such a way that makes it clear why the X/Y problem doesn't apply to them, since other people with similar issues who stumble upon your thread might not realize that you have that additional context, and the answer is just as much for them as it is for you (if not moreso, since you're just one person). Secondly, even if you did fully elaborate your situation, it may be that there are people interested in trying to help who don't know the answer to X but do know the answer to Y, and by answering Y they are still providing more value than not answering at all. There's nothing about answering Y that prevents X from being answered by someone else.
  - jldugger 3y ago
    > other people with similar issues who stumble upon your thread might not realize that you have that additional context, and the answer is just as much for them as it is for you IMO, this is what books are for: advice for some form of large common denominators. And if I cite a book, I think it's fair game to assume I am familiar with its contents. And if you encounter my question and haven't read the book, I would hope you benefit just by knowing it exists and maybe even read it. > Secondly, even if you did fully elaborate your situation, it may be that there are people interested in trying to help who don't know the answer to X but do know the answer to Y, and by answering Y they are still providing more value than not answering at all. I mean, the longer a thread on slack is, the fewer people bother reading it all. And I have to read it as well before I know it's not actually helping me.
lolinder 3y ago
If they don't want to explain how to do things in a way they disagree with, then the appropriate response is to not say anything at all. The current culture on SO is to flood questions with "don't do X, do Y", then upvote those answers. The result is that questions look answered but actually aren't, so the questions stay unanswered. When I come along months or years later having already considered all options, I don't want to have my time wasted by a question that perfectly matches my goal but was never answered because it got drowned in alternative approaches that I already ruled out.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The current culture on SO is to flood questions with "don't do X, do Y", then upvote those answers. The result is that questions look answered but actually aren't, so the questions stay unanswered. I think this is the #1 reason why SO isn't a great resource for me.
- shawnz 3y ago
  Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO? If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one. What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    > Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO? This would be a fine policy if SO didn't also make a huge stink about duplicate questions. As is, there's one canonical copy of each similarly-phrased question, and a re-ask that says "but for real, I actually want to do it this way" is going to get shut down as a duplicate. > If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one. The system rewards being one of the first responders, not the one who actually answers the question. This is especially true now that they've updated the system to place the highest-voted answer first rather than the accepted answer. > What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good. I don't know that there's anything the company can do, since it's pretty clear that they've lost control of most aspects of the culture.

by shawnz 3y ago

IshKebab 3y ago

It's not anyone's responsibility to answer at all.

shawnz 3y ago
Agreed! Which is why I think it's especially disrespectful to criticize people making honest efforts to help as being "know-it-alls trying to show off" in cases where their idea of the ideal kind of help is different than what the original poster had in mind.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  It's frequently NOT an honest effort to help. It's just "well that's a stupid question, let me show you how I know more..." When you really are trying to help and you think it's an XY you can answer politely by actually answering their question and then saying "but you may want to do this instead". Try it.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    Indeed, a good answer to X will make clear why Y is the better option in most cases. But its a thin line to tread between subtly implying that X is bad, and saying "only idiots do X, anyway here's how an idiot would do X".
  - shawnz 3y ago
    You suggested that in your previous comment, and I explained already why I don't think that's a good idea: it's liable to cause your alternative suggestion to get ignored and proliferate bad practices. If someone has a genuine desire to help, then they also inherently have an interest in making sure people don't continue down paths which are likely to lead to more problems in the end. Otherwise, you might end up spending more time supporting the follow-on issues created due to the misapplications of your own advice than you spent providing the support in the first place, which would not be an efficient way of helping.
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      > it's liable to cause your alternative suggestion to get ignored and proliferate bad practices. I just don't think that is the case. On the rare occasion that somebody has answered like this to me I've just read their answer and thought "oh right that makes more sense I'll do that".

jldugger 3y ago

Okay, but I've been in plenty of conversations where I ask "I read in a book that we should be doing X, how are people doing X?"[1], and the answers I got, _from a community that included the book author_, were "first, make sure you're doing A, B and C."[2] When in fact I am doing that already. Do I have to really preface every question with "i promise i'm not the idiot you assume I am?" 1: "This book says to monitor ML systems for distribution shifts; what tools are people using to store that data and monitor for changes?" 2: "Make sure you're monitoring normal SRE statistics like request failure rate"

shawnz 3y ago
> Do I have to really preface every question with "i promise i'm not the idiot you assume I am?" Yes, first of all I do think it's up to the person looking for help to fully elaborate their situation in such a way that makes it clear why the X/Y problem doesn't apply to them, since other people with similar issues who stumble upon your thread might not realize that you have that additional context, and the answer is just as much for them as it is for you (if not moreso, since you're just one person). Secondly, even if you did fully elaborate your situation, it may be that there are people interested in trying to help who don't know the answer to X but do know the answer to Y, and by answering Y they are still providing more value than not answering at all. There's nothing about answering Y that prevents X from being answered by someone else.
- jldugger 3y ago
  > other people with similar issues who stumble upon your thread might not realize that you have that additional context, and the answer is just as much for them as it is for you IMO, this is what books are for: advice for some form of large common denominators. And if I cite a book, I think it's fair game to assume I am familiar with its contents. And if you encounter my question and haven't read the book, I would hope you benefit just by knowing it exists and maybe even read it. > Secondly, even if you did fully elaborate your situation, it may be that there are people interested in trying to help who don't know the answer to X but do know the answer to Y, and by answering Y they are still providing more value than not answering at all. I mean, the longer a thread on slack is, the fewer people bother reading it all. And I have to read it as well before I know it's not actually helping me.

lolinder 3y ago

If they don't want to explain how to do things in a way they disagree with, then the appropriate response is to not say anything at all. The current culture on SO is to flood questions with "don't do X, do Y", then upvote those answers. The result is that questions look answered but actually aren't, so the questions stay unanswered. When I come along months or years later having already considered all options, I don't want to have my time wasted by a question that perfectly matches my goal but was never answered because it got drowned in alternative approaches that I already ruled out.

JohnFen 3y ago
> The current culture on SO is to flood questions with "don't do X, do Y", then upvote those answers. The result is that questions look answered but actually aren't, so the questions stay unanswered. I think this is the #1 reason why SO isn't a great resource for me.
shawnz 3y ago
Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO? If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one. What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO? This would be a fine policy if SO didn't also make a huge stink about duplicate questions. As is, there's one canonical copy of each similarly-phrased question, and a re-ask that says "but for real, I actually want to do it this way" is going to get shut down as a duplicate. > If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one. The system rewards being one of the first responders, not the one who actually answers the question. This is especially true now that they've updated the system to place the highest-voted answer first rather than the accepted answer. > What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good. I don't know that there's anything the company can do, since it's pretty clear that they've lost control of most aspects of the culture.