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Comment by sgillen | Hacker News Reader

I think it is worth telling (politely) the questioner that they really should start by telling people what they really want to do, in order to get better feedback in the future.

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I think the most polite way to tell them is not to tell them what to do, but rather ask: "Could you give us more background on what you're trying to do? It might turn out we know of an alternative solution that avoids this specific problem."

This doesn't suggest that the questioner did something wrong, but still helps them learn to provide background details when asking questions.

But people don't learn or change behavior if they don't understand the issue. In this case, providing polite and constructive feedback would help them ask better questions going forward.

I will say something like "can we back up a minute? Why are you trying to do this?" And yes, my second question should be worded differently or spoken carefully to avoid being interpreted as "WTF are you doing?"

Very often, it's useful to frame a question in a way that someone with specific expertise can quickly help you - 'YY' situations come up all the time.

yes, surely the questioner is trying to balance “doing as much of the work as possible”, and “breaking the problem down into small steps”, versus “give me the answer to my entire problem”

If you ask too broad a question you’re likely to be ignored, imo.

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