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Why Won't You Answer My Question?

rion.io

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Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#11

Post by DanBC »

CM30 wrote: post #3

Makes me wonder if there's an opportunity here. Some service where you can actually pay money up front to guarantee an answer to your question, regardless of how it's worded and expect it done within a short time frame. Kind of like the Stack Exchange sites, except for people with more money than patience. Practically speaking though, my advice for people stuck on something like this is (in addition to doing some act…

> Makes me wonder if there's an opportunity here. Some service where you can actually pay money up front to guarantee an answer to your question, regardless of how it's worded and expect it done within a short time frame. Kind of like the Stack Exchange sites, except for people with more money than patience.

Bountify sort of fits this. https://bountify.co/

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#12

Post by franciscop »

CM30 wrote: post #3

Makes me wonder if there's an opportunity here. Some service where you can actually pay money up front to guarantee an answer to your question, regardless of how it's worded and expect it done within a short time frame. Kind of like the Stack Exchange sites, except for people with more money than patience. Practically speaking though, my advice for people stuck on something like this is (in addition to doing some act…

There is one platform where I am in but as many freelancer marketplaces with free entry it's a sh*tshow and a race to the bottom, so I won't even bother recommending it.

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#13

Post by CM30 »

planteen wrote: post #7
CM30 wrote: post #3

Makes me wonder if there's an opportunity here. Some service where you can actually pay money up front to guarantee an answer to your question, regardless of how it's worded and expect it done within a short time frame. Kind of like the Stack Exchange sites, except for people with more money than patience. Practically speaking though, my advice for people stuck on something like this is (in addition to doing some act…

You are going to get in situations where the "answer" brings up a topic like the "halting problem". The asker might not be satisfied with that. Or what if the asker has a misunderstanding of computer architecture? "Help, my multithreaded program is crashing!"

That's a good point, and there will definitely be issues with question askers not knowing how a system works or how the person answering is explaining the solution to their problem.

However, it's also the kind of thing tech support has to deal with every day to begin with. I mean, your web host likely gets tons of ridiculous questions through their support ticket system. They just have to go back and forth a ton of times until either both sides can reach an understanding or the person asking just gives up.

Honestly, I don't have an answer here. Not sure there even is a good one, given how it's the same problem every company struggles with when customer support is involved.

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#14

Post by ngokevin »

In one rare case of my project, there is a person that bombards every single one of the project's social channels daily (Facebook, multiple Slack channels, DMs) with the same question: "how do i do this? ". Asking questions is fine, but there's a point where they can be taking hundreds of people's time (even for a second).

I try to shepherd to StackOverflow asking for at least a code sample and some attempt at implementation where I am happy to answer. I've also done interventions with the offending person. But at least, no avail, it continues. They go to the local communities of other countries on Facebook and ask the same question, often in all caps.

I am trying to write a full guide and example on "how to do X", but these cases are very testing.

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#15

Post by TeMPOraL »

sverige wrote: post #6
ColinWright wrote: post #2

This problem of people asking bad questions has been around a long time. A really long time. Here's a resource to deal with it: https://www.mikeash.com/getting_answers.html Here's another, somewhat harsher version that preceded that: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html These were discussed on the C2 wiki a long time ago: http://wiki.c2.com/?HowToAskQuestionsTheSmartWay But the issues remain - people are…

I admire anyone who has the patience to answer questions on places like Stack Overflow or mailing lists. I don't have that particular helping gene. I'll help you move, though.

I had when I was a teenager; I'd spend endless hours explaining C++ to people on Internet forums. It was a kind of pastime for me.

Somehow, I've lost most of that "helping gene" over the years. I'll still happily explain things to people, but I don't look for occasions to explain stuff on purpose anymore.

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#16

Post by badsock »

ngokevin wrote: post #14

In one rare case of my project, there is a person that bombards every single one of the project's social channels daily (Facebook, multiple Slack channels, DMs) with the same question: "how do i do this? ". Asking questions is fine, but there's a point where they can be taking hundreds of people's time (even for a second). I try to shepherd to StackOverflow asking for at least a code sample and some attempt at implem…

Are you sure that's not spam?

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#17

Post by squidfood »

A variant of rubber-duck debugging: Ask the question and hit Send. Invariably, no matter how long I've thought about it, the obvious answer will occur to me minutes (or seconds) after I've embarrassed myself my asking. (is there a term for this?)

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#18

Post by tambourine_man »

drblast wrote: post #9

Haha, yeah go ahead and try to fight this battle. You'll lose. I'm constantly baffled by bug reports I receive. From other people who work at my company. A tech company. A large one. You've heard of it. We log every operation in our API. I cache errors, and the API returns a JSON formatted error with a GUID that correlates to the operation that failed, so if I have a GUID I can look at exactly what happened every ste…

Oh god yes. I don't understand why it's so hard for people to report a bug.

I don't think other fields suffer from this as much.

No one goes to the doctor and says:

  - I don't feel good 
  - What are your symptoms?
  - I don't know, I just feel bad.
It's usually in the form of: "I have a sore throats and running a fever, it began x days ago", etc

What is it about computers that makes people throw their hands in air and say, I don't know, I just doesn't work.

They are smart people, and yet it's beyond them to think that, in order to fix it, the other person must at least know what's wrong in the first place.

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#19

Post by mirimir »

crispyambulance wrote: post #10

... and if you do heed the advice of the OP, and post a well-considered question on stackoverflow, researched to the best of your ability, you will often get back a withering dismissal from some asshole who has taken it upon himself to police against "bad questions".

Yep, and worse, closed as a duplicate to a question that's only vaguely related, with no relevant answer ;)

Re: Why Won't You Answer My Question?

#20

Post by logicallee »

drblast wrote: post #9

Haha, yeah go ahead and try to fight this battle. You'll lose. I'm constantly baffled by bug reports I receive. From other people who work at my company. A tech company. A large one. You've heard of it. We log every operation in our API. I cache errors, and the API returns a JSON formatted error with a GUID that correlates to the operation that failed, so if I have a GUID I can look at exactly what happened every ste…

Change the first line of your error message to, "Important: Please mention the following error number when contacting support." you told us that is what you need - but did you tell the user?
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