Timeline for answer to Why is "Can someone help me?" not a useful question? by Andrew G
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 1, 2025 at 3:36 | comment | added | Stephen C | And to the folks who still think in 2025 that StackOverflow should be a help service ... how many people have >you< helped in the past 12 months? (Note: that was a rhetorical question. No answer is required. And some people can honestly say that they do help a non-trivial number of users of this site. But not enough for it to be a viable model of operation for the StackOverflow community.) | |
| May 1, 2025 at 3:28 | comment | added | Stephen C | "Just being a repository is not a sustainable model" - And being a "help service" is even less sustainable! If we'd be totally swamped if we tried to provide individual help to everyone who wanted it. There aren't enough people prepared to do the helping. Failure to understand that will lead to a site where >nobody< gets answers. | |
| Jul 6, 2018 at 1:42 | comment | added | user64742 | To elaborate further cause I re-stumbled onto this thread I would say that the goal of stack exchange is to help people solve problems. Just being a repository is not a sustainable model for a site unless people actually use that repository. So it is still a place to get help from other people even if it is people from 5 years ago who were helping someone else. Failure to understand that completely defeats the purpose of even making the repository this site functions as. | |
| Aug 13, 2017 at 3:28 | comment | added | Jim Garrison | True. However, helping the OP is a secondary goal. The best questions are ones that other people will also encounter. | |
| Aug 12, 2017 at 20:24 | comment | added | user64742 | @JimGarrison at the root of any post that isn't made for the pure sake of curiosity there is the implied question of whether or not what I want can be fixed, accomplished, optimized, etc. Hence, posts inherently ask for help in some form or fashion. Otherwise... why even make a post? (I'm not counting Q & A posts by one person to introduce new info) | |
| Jul 7, 2017 at 5:32 | comment | added | Jim Garrison | I think the subject here is bad questions, not bad answers. | |
| Jul 7, 2017 at 5:26 | comment | added | EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine | @JimGarrison Incorrect answers may be useful, too, as long as they a) have a negative score to clearly indicate that they're incorrect answers and b) have comments explaining why the answer's incorrect. This is especially the case if the bad answer describes a wrong approach that other people are likely to try themselves. | |
| Jun 27, 2017 at 16:12 | comment | added | Jim Garrison | "The premise of SO is to get help from other people" -- incorrect. It is to serve as a long term repository of good questions and answers for future searchers. Failure to understand this is at the root of all of SO's problems. | |
| Jun 6, 2017 at 17:41 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Martijn PietersMod | ||
| Oct 5, 2016 at 4:01 | comment | added | Nic | Actually, with the advent of Jobs, Stack Overflow now might be a place to look for programmers for hire. Not the main site, sure, but a branch of it. | |
| Jan 25, 2015 at 11:02 | history | answered | Andrew G | CC BY-SA 3.0 |