You must be kidding. The worst thing about stackoverflow is not the naive questions but the obnoxious answers. Ask a question on SO, and the first priority of t

You must be kidding. The worst thing about stackoverflow is not the naive questions but the obnoxious answers. Ask a question on SO, and the first priority of the Red Guards isn't to find an answer for you but to find a reason why your question doesn't even deserve an answer. I've made good money over the decades as a programmer, but the technologies come and go like presidential administrations. I'm always a newbie at something. That's part of the fun. I'm always the guy who "doesn't know the difference between a variable and a browser" in something despite simultaneously serving on an "experts committee" in something else. I've lost count of the number of times I've spotted a "related question" on the SO sidebar while grazing for useful info, thought, Oh, yeah, what IS the answer to that one?, clicked it, and been informed by SO that they won't allow it to be answered because the question is "not constructive". Hunh?? The answer would have been constructive. Stopping people from answering a question that others are wondering about: THAT's what's not constructive. Oh, but what if people are allowed to ask dumb questions, where dumb means questions that you already know the answer to? Well, then, it might be hard for you to find answers to your "smart" questions, right? It sounds to me as though the solution is to worry less about dumb questions and more about the dumb search technology they have for matching incoming questions to their answers. With better technology than a bunch of tags and a 1980s-quality search engine, they wouldn't have to put so much effort into blocking questions and could put that effort into providing more answers.