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I disagree. If you want something from me, for example a piece of information I worked hard to obtain, I expect you to try your best at finding a solution yourself. After that put together all relevant information and summarize it in proper format. It think that's the least you owe people volunteering their time.
At least 50% of all SO posts can be answered within a few hours of research. There's also way too many questions lacking basic context, which shows the poster either has no idea about the website, or he didn't bother to elaborate on the problem -
@Huuugo "within a few hours of research"
and sometimes you just want to focus on your task and need a solution in seconds :) -
@GlabbichRulz I sometimes spend hours helping people on SO. That does not mean my time is less valuable than yours. I could just as well have fun or work during that time. So "I need this right now" doesn't really seem like a good excuse for shitty questions to me.
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@Huuugo it's a ratio of 1 person investing time to help hundreds of visitors :) i totally appreciate your commitment and value the time of those who help on SO. I think what OP wants to say here is that you should keep in mind that you're not in a private conversation or teaching lesson, but on a FaQ Site that aims to provide short and correct answers on commonly asked questions :)
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@Huuugo maybe you are wasting everyone's time by not answering the question directly. Just because you have time to waste teaching dumb OPs doesn't mean others have time to waste reading your Socratic method.
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@Huuugo I know what you mean. Like when I've spent months finding the perfect tracks for a mix, whittling it down to an affordable cart, and I'm really happy with it, and someone notes my favourite track down and downloads it for free with no effort or expense.
I guess it's the same thing really, but it's frustrating searching pages of dead ends. Stumped by an issue when the only documentation lacks any reference for new but important parts of the system. But instead of finding a community working together, you find semi-cynical posters answering questions with more questions where you know the answer from the context of the original post enough to help a lot early on.
Its not the most common type of post, but it's noticeable enough to be pointed out as unhelpful. no one actually has to answer. If you're into sharing knowledge with them do, else leave it from taking the top results in searches.
Related Rants
Linux pople be like
Not just Stack Overflow, but all help forums:
If someone asks a question, and you think you might know the answer based on its subject or context, please spare a thought for others and instead of dragging the post on for pages and pages without an answer in order to show the poster up for being inadequately articulate, please make the first post a link to at least seemingly relevant reference material.
Nothing more frustrating looking for some undocumented api syntax, finding a similar question that you might be able to gleam from, and then only seeing pages of "aaah, but what OS are you on? What colour is your desktop? What is the average velocity of a..."
You can see they are struggling with an api, and you clearly know where to find the answer, so just quit the cocksure jostling of pretending you're any good at support and just be useful. The poster may be a tool, but the thousands of hits from Google will just think you're a twat.
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