> Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted.
No!
Goodness me, why is this so difficult?
It should not be attempted. That’s an arbitrary expression of your opinion on the poster.
If the question can’t be solved in the way it’s asked let it die gracefully with a “no you can’t do it that why” and suck up the down votes when someone comes along and proves yes you actually can.
I know it’s frustrating for you, but asking a question isn’t about you.
It’s a glib response to suggest that this is just done when Y is a terrible question for new users.
It’s also very common when Y is a very good just very difficult or obscure question.
I think it’s quite clear that a common sense approach isn’t working on this topic.
The solution really is, if you have nothing meaningful on topic to contribute, then don’t.
There really needs to be a way to make this behaviour on SO punitive somehow, giving people points for it results in the current situation.
Well, I disagree despite the condescension (which isn't as disarming as you think, btw).
Qs on a Q&A site become a sort of permanent record that other people stumble across, not just a wham bam thankya ma'am transaction that only the Q-asker sees. By revealing XY problems, a better service is provided for everyone who stumbles upon the Q.
> Goodness me, why is this so difficult?
Because not everyone agrees with you. This faction war has been going on at SE forever.
> Qs on a Q&A site become a sort of permanent record that other people stumble across
The fact that it is a permanent record that lives on is another argument in favor of the "just answer the damn question".
Context changes. Requirements change. Someone in the future might need the exact answer for some reason, but instead they get some useless back-and-forth and low-effort condescending answers that is super-specific to that asker.
Asking for more context, adding disclaimers before answering or linking to alternative solutions in the comments is fine, but it's a pain in the ass when the answers doesn't match the questions.
>I know it’s frustrating for you, but asking a question _isn’t about you_.
Well, if StackOveflow/StackExchange is still following Jeff Atwood's philosophy, asking a question isn't necessarily about the questioner either. The question & the answer is for the community more than questioner.[0]
Understandably, most question askers see Stack Overflow as a "Siri/Alexa" type of resource to ask a question. E.g. If I ask Siri voice AI, "where's the nearest Starbucks?", she doesn't talk back about any X/Y problem such as "Is your actual problem that you're not getting enough sleep and therefore you're really asking how to cure insomnia instead of a caffeine fix?" No, Siri just responds with the address of the closest Starbucks. Why can't Stack Overflow be just like that?!?
The above "Siri" type perspective is a huge misunderstanding because the messaging from founders Atwood/Spolsky about Stack Overflow's editorial purpose is very nuanced and difficult to grasp. It's been 11 years since 2008 and that "wiki" intention is still drowned out by the frustrated by users who simply want any of their questions answered: they don't care if it's a duplicate; they don't want pushback on X/Y; they don't want their question downvoted/closed/deleted.
In contrast, the moderators (a.k.a. the high rep fellow users) of Stack Overflow are definitely not in the mode of mimicking Siri/Alexa. They're humans and they definitely will "talk back" to you and ask, "what exactly are you trying to accomplish?" Heck, the famous blog by Microsoft's Raymond Chen (The Old New Thing) is basically a collection of essays about various "X/Y Problem" submitted by customers.
(To downvoters... I don't mind the downvotes but please help with quality of this discussion: If there's a public statement from Stack Overflow explaining its true intended purpose that contradicts my cite, please reply with a reference to it for the benefit of readers of this thread.)
> The question & the answer is for the community more than questioner.
Part of the confusion might be that they're very unclear about this point. For example, on the front page right now the following is prominently displayed:
> Stack Overflow is an open community for anyone that codes. We help you get answers to your toughest coding questions, share knowledge with your coworkers in private, and find your next dream job.
Emphasis mine. Clearly that is something very different from building a "Q&A wiki" which you allude to.
I guess the impedance mismatch comes from the fact that the route they chose to get to their "Q&A wiki" goal was to curate questions from individuals, rather than to for example extract questions and answers from a more regular help forum.
So individuals go on SO and think the site is about helping them, and then get confused about what happens next.
>, on the front page right now [...] "We help you get answers to your toughest coding questions, " -- Clearly that is something very different from building a "Q&A wiki" which you allude to.
That text blurb on the landing page is relatively new. It may not accurately reflect Stack Overflow's long-standing strict editorial focus. The new SO landing page appeared less than 4 months ago around June 27, 2019.[1][2]
In contrast, the following "wikipedia" intention is from the SO launch 11 years ago back in September 15, 2008: "Stack Overflow is a _collaboratively edited_ question and answer site for programmers"[0]
So from September 2008 to June of 2019, it has been ~11 years of endless confusion from users because Atwood/Spolsky's intended editorial purpose of Stack Overflow has been poorly explained -- and I would also contend that it's non-intuitive for most users and hard to understand. E.g. The following is too nuanced to explain to drive-by casual SO users: I'm not just asking _my_ particular question to get _my_ particular answer but actually seeding _a_ question that's also also a _helpful_ contribution to the _community_ to build a repository quality answers to questions.
>I guess the impedance mismatch [...] So individuals go on SO and think the site is about helping them, and then get confused about what happens next.
Yes, I totally agree why the confusion happens and why the same complaints about SO have been repeated for over a decade. It's because SO's editorial purpose is basically invisible and only manifested in the powers given to moderators[3] to downvote/close and for the tradition of fellow users pushing back with X/Y dissection instead of simply answering the question.
Does the June 2019 landing page mean that SO has changed and they want to be more of "Siri/Alexa" type of resource? I'm not an employee and I don't know.
[3] footnote about "moderator" powers : a Stack Overflow user only needs 15 points to flag a post as "duplicate". And voting to "close" only requires 250 points.
Those thresholds are so low that SO is basically asking non-hardcore users to also exercise moderation powers. In other words, the "moderators" are not an elite cabal; they're your fellow users voting to flag questions as "duplicate". Why are my peers flagging questions as duplicate?!? I don't know. As the old saying goes, "maybe we've met the enemy and the enemy is us."
List of reputation scores required for various "moderation" privileges:
Fair points. They did indeed bury it before though. Yes "collaboratively edited" is there, but what you saw front and center were the questions and answers. And as you say, the nuances of what "collaboratively edited" means can quickly get lost, especially for non-native speakers.
Maybe a meta-moderation system like Slashdot had could have helped. In the end though I think their implementation was ultimately flawed. They created a great platform for asking questions, but that wasn't what they wanted to create.
Applying the XY transform to the question is often a good way to help the user asking the question. It's very rarely a good way to build up a bank of generally useful questions and answers, because it attaches answers to very specific problems to much more general questions.
Yeah, I know that this is the rationale for the rule ... but it really has become an excuse to close a question as duplicate just because one of the X solutions might "in theory" solve your problem, even if they don't. Even if you've stipulated in your question why, because you've anticipated all those alternative answers yourself, already.
You can actually do both. Indeed, the most popular and heavily upvoted answers on SO tend to do just that, in the form of "here's the answer to the question you asked, and btw, I think this other thing here might be a better way to go about solving your broader problem and maybe avoiding the issue in your question altogether!".
This is what I've tried to do in many cases, because, on one hand, if there are potential ramifications of X (security, etc.) it's good to educate, not just OP, but anyone else who may stumble on the same question. However, I've been on the other side too, and have written knowingly strage, contrived code for the purpose of teaching myself a concept, and it's frustrating when people just say "no".
There's one answer I had to do that with, simply because the title of the question didn't match the body of the question. I kept getting downvotes from people who came to the question via Google and found my answer didn't match their question.
> if it’s a bad question, let it die a natural death
This is... weird, IMO.
I'd much prefer as a new user "I think I know what you're trying to do, your way is gonna cause you a bunch of pain, there's a better way, and here's why" to zero answers and a dead question.
I think it's better than having answers that doesn't match the questions. This makes for a terrible experience for future users.
IMO it ok to suggest alternatives in the comments though. Alternatively, you can open a new question, answer it yourself and link to it on the old answer... I think it's allowed, but who knows.
Seems to make having a body of information that has real answers to edge cases and obscure problems is better than one that's just non answers and thinly veiled insults.
You’re not there to babysit the question asker or convince them to change their approach/hair style/choice of library.
I know it’s frustrating to see people doing something wrong, or that you don’t agree with, but you know what you can do?
Just... don’t get involved if you can’t answer the actual question that was asked, and if it’s a bad question, let it die a natural death.