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Comment by codexon | Hacker News Reader

That is certainly one of my pet peeves about that site. It is also a behavior frequently seen on IRC as well.

I got a good amount of points by answering the actual questions.

Since hitting moderator status based on the number of points many years ago I've stopped using it though. It gets tiring fighting against people like this who often have >50-100k points.

Occasionally I'll land on the website again after googling a question, but it seems like Quora is starting to weaken Stack Overflow's google rankings.

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Ever since someone posted an article on “The XY Problem” nerds on all mediums have been assuming it’s always an XY problem

It might even be the XY problem, but even if it is. Answer their question, and explain why maybe they should be considering something else after you answered the question.

At that point, one is being extra helpful by adding context. Which is in stark contrast to 'that is probably the wrong question, and here is why'. Which is hard to distinguish from being willfully obtuse.

After this came up elsewhere here within 5 days of this comment thread I’m giving it the name “The XYZ Problem”

https://cohan.io/the-xyz-problem/

I don’t answer questions on SO, but I occasionally answer questions on r/aws. Half the time after further digging, it is an XYProblem.

That means the other half the time, with the same further digging, it is not.

That's the problem.

As a question answerer, that’s why I prefer Reddit. It’s much less formal, more conversational and you can actually have a discussion.

I’ve never had the need to ask a question on SO, I have found a few answers on it of course.

Luckily, I’ve had plenty of complicated questions about AWS, but for those, our AWS Business support plan where we can talk to live support who can look at your environment has been invaluable.

Maybe after working some time and helping juniors people tend to develop this reflex: if you're trying to do something really crazy with your tool you may have fucked up 2 or 3 steps before that. It's like if someone asks how to use their screwdriver to nail something: you'll ask some questions back.

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