Timeline for answer to Why is "Can someone help me?" not a useful question? by BradleyDotNET
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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52 events
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| May 24, 2024 at 2:10 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | @BradleyDotNET but when there are multiple problems with a single function, the question still Needs More Focus by current practice. | |
| May 24, 2024 at 2:09 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | @amalloy it's dubious advice for a person who is facing a complex problem and wants to get it solved. But Stack Overflow isn't in the business of helping people solve complex problems, which is exactly why "can someone help me?" doesn't make a suitable question. We're in the business of answering the question, regardless of whether such an answer would actually lead the OP down the right path. After all, it's not required that OP needs an answer anyway. It's even explicitly encouraged to write questions you can already answer and answer them. | |
| May 11, 2024 at 16:22 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clarify the "entire code base" point. (For context, see my comment Apr 5 and BradleyDotNET's reply.)
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| May 11, 2024 at 16:08 | history | edited | khelwood | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
clearer English
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| May 11, 2024 at 15:57 | history | rollback | wjandrea |
Rollback to Revision 17 - "Although" is being used as an adverb, not a coordinating conjunction, so requires a comma. You could change the word if it's unclear.
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| May 11, 2024 at 15:52 | history | edited | khelwood | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
fix punctuation
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| May 11, 2024 at 15:42 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clarify why XY problem is applicable
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| Apr 5, 2024 at 22:23 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @wjandrea Think "Can someone help me make an ecommerce site". Basically encapsulating the "too broad" close reason. | |
| Apr 5, 2024 at 20:41 | comment | added | wjandrea | I've never understood the "entire code base" point here. I've seen plenty of "can someone help me"-type questions where the problem is only with a single function, but either there are multiple problems with it or OP hasn't explained what they're stuck on, so an answer to that might be as little as a single line of code to get the function to fit their requirements, but ultimately the question's still not useful. Is there a whole class of problematic questions I'm missing? I'm mostly active on the Python tag, if that makes a difference. | |
| Jan 14, 2024 at 21:59 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Mention context / XY problem.
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| Feb 18, 2023 at 17:40 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Improve clarity/grammar. Add back connecting phrase removed in last edit.
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| Jan 26, 2023 at 15:42 | history | edited | Karl Knechtel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
copyedit prose; expand and reorder advice
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| Jan 26, 2023 at 15:18 | history | edited | Ryan MMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Focus on the scope: the previous phrasing was making a distinction without a difference.
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| Jan 5, 2022 at 19:55 | history | edited | wjandrea | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fix capitalization (might have been for emphasis, so add bold instead). Combine disjointed paragraphs. Fix link - this one has the verbatim quote.
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| Jan 18, 2021 at 12:03 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://blog.stackoverflow.com with https://blog.stackoverflow.com
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| Dec 29, 2020 at 21:27 | history | edited | MattDMo | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
do your own research before asking!
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| Apr 25, 2019 at 15:08 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @Trilarion This is, of course, true. But such questions are nearly universally too broad. | |
| Apr 25, 2019 at 13:11 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @EJoshuaS I always took "is x possible?" as synonym for "Is x possible and if so how to do it?" because if someone asks if something is possible (except in math) he/she usually wants to know right after a yes a way how do achieve it. | |
| Jul 23, 2018 at 8:00 | history | edited | Theresa Garcia | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 19 characters in body
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| Dec 17, 2017 at 3:19 | history | edited | Jive Dadson | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 1 character in body
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| Jun 6, 2017 at 17:41 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Martijn PietersMod | ||
| Feb 21, 2017 at 17:44 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @EJoshuaS I can certainly try. Feel free to do so yourself as well, borrowing from this wherever you feel is appropriate :) | |
| Feb 21, 2017 at 6:01 | comment | added | EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine | Can you write a similar post for "is x possible?" type questions? It seems like that's a similar class of "unanswerable" questions (because it's totally unclear what they're asking beyond "yes" or "no") and it seems like it would be worth having a canonical answer for this type of question. | |
| Aug 26, 2015 at 18:21 | history | edited | gnat | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
mantra += http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/stack-overflow-gives-back-2010/ "quote source"
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| Jul 28, 2015 at 16:28 | vote | accept | BradleyDotNET | ||
| Apr 30, 2015 at 22:27 | history | edited | Deduplicator | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 140 characters in body
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| Jan 24, 2015 at 22:26 | history | edited | hichris123 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Grammar
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| Jan 24, 2015 at 22:16 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @amalloy I agree, you have to include the context. My point is to try and get past "implement this" to "how do I do this specific thing" I'm happy to word it differently if you have a suggestion. | |
| Jan 24, 2015 at 21:17 | comment | added | amalloy | "Ask as small a question as possible" is dubious advice: it often leads to an XY problem, where the asker dutifully breaks the problem down into smaller problems very badly, and then asks about one of the sub-problems that doesn't make any sense. | |
| Jan 24, 2015 at 20:53 | comment | added | user20416 | @Damien_The_Unbeliever Although some context is essential, it should only be described broadly (I am trying to implement a media player using the Windows Media Player object model) without all the important details of the "impossible step" (The Play method isn't doing anything. Here is the code I am using to call the method). | |
| Jan 24, 2015 at 5:58 | comment | added | Computer says 'no'--SOooooo | It reminds me of a question (still not closed) where someone asked for what's a 1,000+ LOC solution by specifically saying he does not want the generic (existing) open source solution. Some people think this site is elance4free. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 19:08 | comment | added | Ajedi32 | @gnat I'm very much aware of both of those posts. If you read my comment again, you'll notice that I said "those kinds of questions", not "those kinds of discussions", and pointed out that if you want to "have a discussion" then the chat is the place for that. If you want to ask a question though about "different technical approaches to meeting requirements", that sounds spot-on for Software Engineering, does it not? The second highest voted question on Programmers actually fits that description. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 17:31 | comment | added | gnat | @Ajedi32 you are very wrong, see On discussions and why they don't make good questions at Programmers meta. Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 16:02 | history | edited | BradleyDotNET | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 23 characters in body
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| Jan 23, 2015 at 15:39 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @ShellFish True. To a certain extent, I'm assuming that a new user was sent here because it was a poor one | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 15:31 | comment | added | ShellFish | @BradleyDotNET Yes I agree but everything has to be placed into context. My point is that this type of question doesn't automatically imply it to be a poor one. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 15:24 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @ShellFish "How do I implement a media player" is still going to be an overly-large amount of pseudo code, assuming such a thing is possible. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 15:23 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @KRyan That is entirely possible, if you have any suggestions on how to make it clearer, I'm certainly open to them. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 15:02 | comment | added | ShellFish | "Ask a programming question, not how to implement something". Asking how to implement isn't a bad thing in my opinion, but the result should be pseudo code. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 14:55 | comment | added | chancea | "Answerable questions don't ask how to implement a feature, they ask how to accomplish a programming task" - Very well said | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 14:33 | comment | added | KRyan | While I understand (and agree) with what you say, I feel like this is unlikely to be either enlightening or convincing to the sort of user who asks the above meta question. I feel like I only get it because I already understood what you were going to say before you said it. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 14:14 | comment | added | Ajedi32 | @TimothyVogel Unless I'm mistaken about your meaning, Software Engineering sounds like the perfect place for those kinds of questions. (Though if you want to have a discussion, not ask a question, the chat is definitely the place for that.) | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 6:27 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @TimothyVogel chat.stackoverflow.com I'll think about adding it to my answer, but I think it distracts from the main point at the moment. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 6:13 | comment | added | Timothy Vogel | OMG ... SO has chat rooms!!!! I will definitely check them out! You might want to add that to your answer as I have been using SO for a couple of years and didn't know about them. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 6:08 | comment | added | BradleyDotNET | @TimothyVogel Most SO chat rooms are open to these kinds of discussions. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 5:16 | comment | added | Timothy Vogel | As a "solo" developer that used to work in a large company, one of the parts I truly miss is the opportunity to discuss different technical approaches to meeting requirements. It would be great to me if SE provided a place to have these kinds of discussions. | |
| Jan 22, 2015 at 22:34 | comment | added | Ňɏssa Pøngjǣrdenlarp | as well, Can you help and is this even possible do not make clear what "you" want help with. Often there can be several things wrong, questionable or ill conceived. The answerer is left to guess which part vexxes "you" the most or post an unduly long answer to address all the issues in your question. | |
| Jan 22, 2015 at 17:01 | history | edited | BradleyDotNET | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 65 characters in body
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| Jan 22, 2015 at 9:20 | comment | added | Matthieu M. | @Damien_The_Unbeliever: Yes, context is often lacking; however from the point of view of the asker I am afraid the "impossible step" brings up another challenge: they might not even see how to break it down further even if it is big. In this case, there is nothing we can do for them. | |
| Jan 22, 2015 at 9:14 | comment | added | Damien_The_Unbeliever | The problem with "breaking down the problem/feature into as many small steps as you can, and ask about the ones you don't understand" is when they've broken the problem down into the "easy step" and the "impossible step" and are asking for help with the impossible step without letting us know what the overall problem is. | |
| Jan 22, 2015 at 9:14 | history | edited | hobbs | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Increase the apostrophe level by two.
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| Jan 22, 2015 at 4:07 | history | answered | BradleyDotNET | CC BY-SA 3.0 |