I wanted to ask a question on Stack Overflow, but users closed my question and the only information provided about the closure was
This question needs debugging details
Clicking on those links doesn't provide any solution/information to my problem.
I'm a new user and I stated in my question that I don't understand code, so I can't provide any "debugging details". So this gatekeeps me from asking a question in the first place. What am I supposed to do?
Clicking on those links doesn't provide any solution/information to my problem.
That's not true; the links explain in rather exhaustive detail what is needed: a minimal, complete, verifiable example (MCVE). If your question is closed as lacking an MCVE/MRE, that means users feel it is missing some or all of the following:
I'm a new user and I stated in my question that I don't understand code, so I can't provide any "debugging details". So this gatekeeps me from asking a question in the first place. What am I supposed to do?
If you don't understand code, then you should not be asking a question about specific code on Stack Overflow. Yes, this may seem like gatekeeping, in the same way that you have to try out for a national Olympic team before you can actually compete in the Olympic Games. Not to say that everyone here is an "Olympic"-level programmer (not even close), but the point is that this site is for programmers... so you need to know how to program, more or less, to participate here.
If you don't know how to do that, you should find some written, video, or interactive tutorials online, buy a good programming book, or sign up for a course/school that teaches you the programming you want to learn.
Welcome, geextah. Unfortunately, Stack Overflow isn't the site you want it to be. That's very deliberate. We have a very particular goal here, and it doesn't align with how you're hoping to use the site. Sorry.
This is extremely common. In fact, in my opinion, almost everyone new who comes here has the same wrong idea - and so do a lot of people who have been here for many years. It seems like they never tried to understand the site properly, and either people didn't bother correcting them or they kept ignoring it.
But it is what it is.
how to get support on this platform?
In order to understand Stack Overflow properly, you should start by checking out the tour and the Help Center, especially the Asking section. If you don't see the information you need, look around here on Meta Stack Overflow, especially questions in the "faq" tag. Finally, consider posting your own question here on Meta Stack Overflow.
Some "greatest hits":
A similar idea, by the way, applies to asking the actual questions: you should start by looking for information in the documentation for the languages or tools you are using; if you don't see what you need, check for existing questions on Stack Overflow first that tell you what you need, even if they had different code or other minor details; and finally consider posting your own question.
I wanted to ask a question on Stack Overflow, but users closed my question
As you can find out from the above links, Stack Overflow doesn't let people ask questions just because they are on topic. They also have to meet certain standards that make them useful as part of a searchable Q&A reference.
The point is: if you have the kind of question we're interested in, then it's the kind of question that other people could ask - at least, close enough that, when they go through the research process, they could find your question, read it, understand how to solve the problem, and not have to ask. (Or if they don't find it, their questions can get marked as duplicates of yours, which makes it easier to find.) When a suitable question is asked well, that makes it possible to write really high quality answers, and lets us accomplish the goal of putting the best answers in one easily found place.
Clicking on those links doesn't provide any solution/information to my problem.
Well, no, of course not. The point of those links isn't to answer your question - unless you had a duplicate. (One user proposed a duplicate for your question, but that didn't close it. Sometimes duplicate suggestions are wrong, but that isn't why your question was closed.) The point of the links is to explain how to fix the question. And they are just generic advice according to the close reason - because they come from the system automatically. They aren't generated by AI or filled in by users or anything else like that.
The goal here is not to "provide a solution or information to your problem" - since, in the first place, that isn't the site's goal. The goal here is to answer questions; using answers to solve the problem is your job. It's not a discussion forum, and not a help desk.
I'm a new user and I stated in my question that I don't understand code
It doesn't matter if you are new to programming, new to Stack Overflow or both. Questions on Stack Overflow are about the question, not about the person asking. Putting information like this in the question makes the question worse, and we will generally remove it.
The fact that you "don't understand" the technology you're working with (in this case, GLSL shaders) doesn't help us understand the question, which is the important part. Of course we will try to write an answer that's understandable. But first we need to understand what you need to know. We can't take you from "I don't understand GLSL shaders" to "I udnerstand GLSL shaders" in the space of a single post; and even if we could, that's still not the goal here.
Please don't say things like that in questions here. It comes across as begging, and it misses the point completely. We aren't ignoring, downvoting or closing your question because of anything to do with you; and we aren't ignoring, downvoting or closing (?) you, but the question. You don't have to prove yourself worthy to receive an answer. But you do have to ask a question that meets standards.
so I can't provide any "debugging details"
Of course you can. Anyone can. The system gave you links with some ideas about it, and some of the links above also talk about it. Here's even more information:
But more importantly in my opinion, your question lacks clarity. It isn't a question in the first place - ideally, there should be a sentence somewhere that begins with a question word like "why" or "how", and ends with a question mark (?). But it should also be rephrased so that it proceeds in order and explains the situation properly:
So this gatekeeps me from asking a question in the first place.
That's intentional. Again, it's nothing personal - your question needs to meet standards. All the information about the standards, their purpose, and how to satisfy them, is laid out for you there. If you don't have questions that are suitable for the site, that isn't our problem. There are many other places on the Internet to get help. We're not trying to compete with them. We're trying to pursue our own goal.
What am I supposed to do?
You have two options:
Follow the advice above in order to understand how to ask questions that are suitable for the site - and try to edit your existing question so that it meets those standards.
Find and use a different site that works the way you want it to.
Up to you, honestly. But the site won't change to accommodate the way you're currently trying to use it.
To answer your actual question:
How to get support on this platform?
Post here on Meta! Ordinarily, you need 5 rep to do so, but if you're asking in relation to a specific question or answer, you don't need any rep at all. So if your question gets closed, and you don't understand why, come here to Meta and we can explain it to you.
To address some of your more specific points:
I want to ask a question on "stackoverflow" [sic] which seems to be te [sic] purpose of the platform
Well... yes and no. The purpose of Stack Overflow (and the Stack Exchange network as a whole) is to build a high-quality repository of questions and answers, that anyone seeking those answers can consult. This obviously requires people to ask those questions in the first place, but in an ideal world, nobody would need to ask questions anymore, because all the answers would already be here.
From the looks of your question, and from your explanation here, you're very new to programming and need detailed 1:1 guidance. That, unfortunately, is not what Stack Overflow is geared towards. This isn't a help desk. You would be better off seeking a personal tutor, if you can afford one, or perhaps taking online courses in GLSL to improve your own understanding.
Clicking on those links doesn't provide any solution/information to my problem. I'm a new user and I stated in my question that I don't understand code, so I can't provide any "debugging details".
As I noted in a comment, what we're looking for is more information on what exactly you're stuck on, so we can provide more specific guidance. I will admit that the close reason isn't very specific about this, and nor is the article it links to, but I think this comes under the "Describe the problem" bullet point listed in that article:
- "It doesn't work" isn't descriptive enough to help people understand your problem.
By the same token, "I don't understand GLSL shaders" and "I don't understand code" aren't descriptive enough. What is it exactly that you don't understand? What exactly is it that's preventing you from implementing (or even trying to implement) the saturation condition? If you can't articulate a response beyond just "I don't know how to" then, again, Stack Overflow is probably not the place for you to be asking this - at least, not quite yet.
I have never experienced a more user unfriendly first experience on any platform.
Yeah, we know. We've been asking management for years to do something about that. There is a solution in the works - the Staging Ground, where users can receive more detailed feedback on their questions before they're published to the main site - but it's still in Beta with no specific release date yet.
(It's worth noting that, on the other side of the coin, there is a long and documented history of constructive feedback being met with harassment and abuse, which has significantly reduced the amount of constructive feedback that actually gets provided, which in turn leads to a lot of angry posts like this one about poorly-explained downvotes and close-votes... it's a bit of a catch-22, and unlike the onboarding problem, there's no easy solution to it.)
colorSatorsat?