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Q&A Dealing with questions "settled on" Stack Overflow

Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described. About question selection We could just focus on the obscure questions to attr...

posted 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭ · edited 7mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

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#3: Post edited by

Karl Knechtel‭ · 2023-10-21T12:32:04Z (7 months ago)
Add headers and some other formatting; fix typo

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Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described.
> We could just focus on the obscure questions to attract mainly expert users. Once the site is a healthy community for questions by experts for experts, it would presumably begin to attract newbies who ask the basic questions as well.
~~In my view, this is absolutely wrong-headed. We should focus on basic questions, for two reasons:~~
1. Accessibility. There are way more newbies than experts out there. Newbies are the ones who are actually served by the Q&A existing, in large party. By definition, an question about an obscure problem is one that is useful to fewer people. (There's also a confusion here between difficulty level and obscurity.)
1. Quality. In many cases, questions about basic, fundamental tasks are simply too important to leave up to the newbies that need them answered. Because they lack the perspective of someone who already knows how to solve the problem, their attempt to explain the problem will often be clumsy to the point of being nigh unusable for Q&A. Newbies constantly misuse terminology, focus on irrelevant details, and fail to construct precise, clear specifications for how-to questions or properly reproducible and isolated examples (what is called an "MCVE" or "MRE" in programming circles) for why-do-I-get-this-result questions.
"Healthy communities by experts for experts" are the result of experts contacting each other more or less privately, through work channels, Discord etc. They rarely if ever expand beyond an easily predictable scope (e.g. the company whose employees co-founded it), and even the earliest attempts to do so usually run into major friction.
A healthy, *public-facing* community is - almost necessarily - *for* beginners. It just doesn't allow beginners to dictate or ignore policy.
> Some people deliberately re-ask questions here, knowing that they already have an answer on SO. This is a good way to "catch up" but it's a lot of effort and currently there is not enough energy put into it by the community to handle this with sufficient coverage.
This is the approach I endorse, and this is the point where I say "be the change you want to see in the world".
People who try to do this learn the hard way that writing good questions can be as hard or harder than answering them (and sometimes they learn that a *really* thorough answer [requires a surprising amount of detail](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289251), which might be organized hierarchically - which [might motivate re-thinking the question](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597)). But think about that for a second - if asking a really good question is that difficult for experts, *why on Earth* would we want to wait and let beginners attempt it, and then deal with the consequences? It's practically guaranteed that the organic approach will either cause harm in the long run (by breaking up the "problem space" awkwardly) or produce questions that need so much editing that they might as well have been written from scratch. (Some of the most important Stack Overflow canonicals I've seen have some *truly embarrassing* first revisions.)

Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described.
## About question selection
> We could just focus on the obscure questions to attract mainly expert users. Once the site is a healthy community for questions by experts for experts, it would presumably begin to attract newbies who ask the basic questions as well.
In my view, this is absolutely wrong-headed. We **should focus on basic questions**, for two reasons:
1. Accessibility. There are way more newbies than experts out there. Newbies are the ones who are actually served by the Q&A existing, in large part. By definition, an question about an obscure problem is one that is useful to fewer people. (It's also important to note that difficulty level and obscurity are not the same thing.)
1. Quality. In many cases, questions about basic, fundamental tasks are simply too important to leave up to the newbies that need them answered. Because they lack the perspective of someone who already knows how to solve the problem, their attempt to explain the problem will often be clumsy to the point of being nigh unusable for Q&A. Newbies constantly misuse terminology, focus on irrelevant details, and fail to construct precise, clear specifications for how-to questions or properly reproducible and isolated examples (what is called an "MCVE" or "MRE" in programming circles) for why-do-I-get-this-result questions.
"Healthy communities by experts for experts" are the result of experts contacting each other more or less privately, through work channels, Discord etc. They rarely if ever expand beyond an easily predictable scope (e.g. the company whose employees co-founded it), and even the earliest attempts to do so usually run into major friction.
A healthy, *public-facing* community is - almost necessarily - *for* beginners. It just doesn't allow beginners to dictate or ignore policy.
## Feel free to repeat Stack Overflow content
> Some people deliberately re-ask questions here, knowing that they already have an answer on SO. This is a good way to "catch up" but it's a lot of effort and currently there is not enough energy put into it by the community to handle this with sufficient coverage.
This is the approach I endorse, and this is the point where I say "be the change you want to see in the world".
People who try to do this learn the hard way that writing good questions can be as hard or harder than answering them (and sometimes they learn that a *really* thorough answer [requires a surprising amount of detail](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289251), which might be organized hierarchically - which [might motivate re-thinking the question](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597)). But think about that for a second - if asking a really good question is that difficult for experts, *why on Earth* would we want to wait and let beginners attempt it, and then deal with the consequences? It's practically guaranteed that the organic approach will either cause harm in the long run (by breaking up the "problem space" awkwardly) or produce questions that need so much editing that they might as well have been written from scratch. (Some of the most important Stack Overflow canonicals I've seen have some *truly embarrassing* first revisions.)

#2: Post edited by

Karl Knechtel‭ · 2023-10-15T01:18:02Z (7 months ago)

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Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described.
> We could just focus on the obscure questions to attract mainly expert users. Once the site is a healthy community for questions by experts for experts, it would presumably begin to attract newbies who ask the basic questions as well.
In my view, this is absolutely wrong-headed. We should focus on basic questions, for two reasons:
1. Accessibility. There are way more newbies than experts out there. Newbies are the ones who are actually served by the Q&A existing, in large party. By definition, an question about an obscure problem is one that is useful to fewer people. (There's also a confusion here between difficulty level and obscurity.)
1. Quality. In many cases, questions about basic, fundamental tasks are simply too important to leave up to the newbies that need them answered. Because they lack the perspective of someone who already knows how to solve the problem, their attempt to explain the problem will often be clumsy to the point of being nigh unusable for Q&A. Newbies constantly misuse terminology, focus on irrelevant details, and fail to construct precise, clear specifications for how-to questions or properly reproducible and isolated examples (what is called an "MCVE" or "MRE" in programming circles) for why-do-I-get-this-result questions.
"Healthy communities by experts for experts" are the result of experts contacting each other more or less privately, through work channels, Discord etc. They rarely if ever expand beyond an easily predictable scope (e.g. the company whose employees co-founded it), and even the earliest attempts to do so usually run into major friction.
~~A healthy community is *for* beginners - it just doesn't allow beginners to dictate or ignore policy.~~
> Some people deliberately re-ask questions here, knowing that they already have an answer on SO. This is a good way to "catch up" but it's a lot of effort and currently there is not enough energy put into it by the community to handle this with sufficient coverage.
This is the approach I endorse, and this is the point where I say "be the change you want to see in the world".
People who try to do this learn the hard way that writing good questions can be as hard or harder than answering them (and sometimes they learn that a *really* thorough answer [requires a surprising amount of detail](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289251), which might be organized hierarchically - which [might motivate re-thinking the question](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597)). But think about that for a second - if asking a really good question is that difficult for experts, *why on Earth* would we want to wait and let beginners attempt it, and then deal with the consequences? It's practically guaranteed that the organic approach will either cause harm in the long run (by breaking up the "problem space" awkwardly) or produce questions that need so much editing that they might as well have been written from scratch. (Some of the most important Stack Overflow canonicals I've seen have some *truly embarrassing* first revisions.)

Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described.
> We could just focus on the obscure questions to attract mainly expert users. Once the site is a healthy community for questions by experts for experts, it would presumably begin to attract newbies who ask the basic questions as well.
In my view, this is absolutely wrong-headed. We should focus on basic questions, for two reasons:
1. Accessibility. There are way more newbies than experts out there. Newbies are the ones who are actually served by the Q&A existing, in large party. By definition, an question about an obscure problem is one that is useful to fewer people. (There's also a confusion here between difficulty level and obscurity.)
1. Quality. In many cases, questions about basic, fundamental tasks are simply too important to leave up to the newbies that need them answered. Because they lack the perspective of someone who already knows how to solve the problem, their attempt to explain the problem will often be clumsy to the point of being nigh unusable for Q&A. Newbies constantly misuse terminology, focus on irrelevant details, and fail to construct precise, clear specifications for how-to questions or properly reproducible and isolated examples (what is called an "MCVE" or "MRE" in programming circles) for why-do-I-get-this-result questions.
"Healthy communities by experts for experts" are the result of experts contacting each other more or less privately, through work channels, Discord etc. They rarely if ever expand beyond an easily predictable scope (e.g. the company whose employees co-founded it), and even the earliest attempts to do so usually run into major friction.
A healthy, *public-facing* community is - almost necessarily - *for* beginners. It just doesn't allow beginners to dictate or ignore policy.
> Some people deliberately re-ask questions here, knowing that they already have an answer on SO. This is a good way to "catch up" but it's a lot of effort and currently there is not enough energy put into it by the community to handle this with sufficient coverage.
This is the approach I endorse, and this is the point where I say "be the change you want to see in the world".
People who try to do this learn the hard way that writing good questions can be as hard or harder than answering them (and sometimes they learn that a *really* thorough answer [requires a surprising amount of detail](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289251), which might be organized hierarchically - which [might motivate re-thinking the question](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597)). But think about that for a second - if asking a really good question is that difficult for experts, *why on Earth* would we want to wait and let beginners attempt it, and then deal with the consequences? It's practically guaranteed that the organic approach will either cause harm in the long run (by breaking up the "problem space" awkwardly) or produce questions that need so much editing that they might as well have been written from scratch. (Some of the most important Stack Overflow canonicals I've seen have some *truly embarrassing* first revisions.)

#1: Initial revision by

Karl Knechtel‭ · 2023-10-15T01:16:43Z (7 months ago)

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Monica already gave a good explanation of the issues with imports, so I'll focus on the other approaches described.

> We could just focus on the obscure questions to attract mainly expert users. Once the site is a healthy community for questions by experts for experts, it would presumably begin to attract newbies who ask the basic questions as well.

In my view, this is absolutely wrong-headed. We should focus on basic questions, for two reasons:

1. Accessibility. There are way more newbies than experts out there. Newbies are the ones who are actually served by the Q&A existing, in large party. By definition, an question about an obscure problem is one that is useful to fewer people. (There's also a confusion here between difficulty level and obscurity.)

1. Quality. In many cases, questions about basic, fundamental tasks are simply too important to leave up to the newbies that need them answered. Because they lack the perspective of someone who already knows how to solve the problem, their attempt to explain the problem will often be clumsy to the point of being nigh unusable for Q&A. Newbies constantly misuse terminology, focus on irrelevant details, and fail to construct precise, clear specifications for how-to questions or properly reproducible and isolated examples (what is called an "MCVE" or "MRE" in programming circles) for why-do-I-get-this-result questions.

"Healthy communities by experts for experts" are the result of experts contacting each other more or less privately, through work channels, Discord etc. They rarely if ever expand beyond an easily predictable scope (e.g. the company whose employees co-founded it), and even the earliest attempts to do so usually run into major friction.

A healthy community is *for* beginners - it just doesn't allow beginners to dictate or ignore policy.

> Some people deliberately re-ask questions here, knowing that they already have an answer on SO. This is a good way to "catch up" but it's a lot of effort and currently there is not enough energy put into it by the community to handle this with sufficient coverage.

This is the approach I endorse, and this is the point where I say "be the change you want to see in the world".

People who try to do this learn the hard way that writing good questions can be as hard or harder than answering them (and sometimes they learn that a *really* thorough answer [requires a surprising amount of detail](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289251), which might be organized hierarchically - which [might motivate re-thinking the question](https://software.codidact.com/posts/289597)). But think about that for a second - if asking a really good question is that difficult for experts, *why on Earth* would we want to wait and let beginners attempt it, and then deal with the consequences? It's practically guaranteed that the organic approach will either cause harm in the long run (by breaking up the "problem space" awkwardly) or produce questions that need so much editing that they might as well have been written from scratch. (Some of the most important Stack Overflow canonicals I've seen have some *truly embarrassing* first revisions.)

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