Why? Holding people who are beginners asking questions based on wrong assumptions to the standards of experts who are trying to push the boundaries with complete domain knowledge seems like a wrong thing to optimize for.
Apologies, wasn't sure who you were talking about.
The point is they're not bad assumptions, they're a pretty good prior. If you swing the other way and assume people "know what they're doing" and take their word for it, you're going to give them and yourself a lot of grief in a majority of cases ("but how do I put the gasoline in the chainsaw to cut the chicken?").
I used to think the way you do, but as I spent more time on forums like Stack Overflow, I started to see the damage that this kind of behavior does to the community. I now see this behavior as an opportunity for a teachable moment to explain to people how to answer questions.
It’s one thing if you are on the DIY Stack Exchange and ask how to knock out a wall, and the best answer is, “That’s a load-bearing wall. You don’t knock it out.”
It’s another thing entirely when you ask innocuous questions like, “How do I tell what web browser and version my code is running in?” and some smartass answers, “You should be using feature detection.”
It’s really frustrating to ask a straightforward question and to get a response from five different people making invalid assumptions about what problem you’re trying to solve. It makes the community seem downright hostile! You may think that you’re addressing the underlying problems—but what you’re doing is telling people, “I don’t take your questions seriously; I know better than you.”
That might not be the message you want to send, but if you rely on assumptions then it will be the message that you do send.
Comments
It’s well-intentioned but I would like to hold people to higher standards.
Why? Holding people who are beginners asking questions based on wrong assumptions to the standards of experts who are trying to push the boundaries with complete domain knowledge seems like a wrong thing to optimize for.
These aren’t people asking questions.
These are people who make bad assumptions when they answer questions.
Apologies, wasn't sure who you were talking about.
The point is they're not bad assumptions, they're a pretty good prior. If you swing the other way and assume people "know what they're doing" and take their word for it, you're going to give them and yourself a lot of grief in a majority of cases ("but how do I put the gasoline in the chainsaw to cut the chicken?").
I used to think the way you do, but as I spent more time on forums like Stack Overflow, I started to see the damage that this kind of behavior does to the community. I now see this behavior as an opportunity for a teachable moment to explain to people how to answer questions.
It’s one thing if you are on the DIY Stack Exchange and ask how to knock out a wall, and the best answer is, “That’s a load-bearing wall. You don’t knock it out.”
It’s another thing entirely when you ask innocuous questions like, “How do I tell what web browser and version my code is running in?” and some smartass answers, “You should be using feature detection.”
It’s really frustrating to ask a straightforward question and to get a response from five different people making invalid assumptions about what problem you’re trying to solve. It makes the community seem downright hostile! You may think that you’re addressing the underlying problems—but what you’re doing is telling people, “I don’t take your questions seriously; I know better than you.”
That might not be the message you want to send, but if you rely on assumptions then it will be the message that you do send.