This mainly relates to tech communities, but certainly applies elsewhere. I’m just so sick of seeing a constant flood of basic questions being posted that would’ve been better off as a search query.
Instead of communities being a wealth of discussion and a place to learn/exchange knowledge and ideas, it feels like most have about 10-20% solid content at best, and 80-90% useless noise: “How do I X?”, “What Linux Distro should I use?”, “What does Y mean?”
Like, I’m all for asking questions, but I prefer to help those who help themselves. Is this all the result of iPad kid syndrome or something?
If you’re willing to take the time to post a simple question that 50 other people have already asked within the last week instead of taking 5 seconds to search for an answer (that’ll probably be the first result on any search engine), your thought process makes no sense to me and I can’t see you as anything other than a complete nuisance to the community/fediverse.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Search engines of today are neutered from where they used to be and it can be hard to find reliable information. Google sells top spots and Bing heavily encourages Copilot answers at the top. Both engines try to answer questions you have but I’ve often found the answers to be flat out wrong or partially correct with a caveat.
Asking the communities directly usually gets better answers and leads to follow-up questions as well as discussion.
I agree. I love seeing community engagement when there’s an actual question involved.
My issue is with the flood of incredibly, incredibly basic questions being repeated over and over again. Especially when the user isn’t even looking for discussion - just an answer. Essentially treating the community like their own human-powered search engine. Gives off the vibe that they OP’s don’t care enough to put any effort in, they just want someone else to spoon-feed them and/or tell them what to do. Seems so mindless.
And, the sheer volume of posts that fit that description can, and do, inadvertently drown out the less frequent, but more valid questions and requests for help… which just, sucks.
Ah sorry, I agree wholeheartedly then.
I guess I see this take too often and it seems to extend to almost any questions anyone ever has on the forum/board and it gets so obnoxious seeing the negativity towards true noobs trying to learn and educate themselves or just have a discussion. A bit biased because I’ve been there but try to do due diligence.
But no, you’re correct and it does often come off as lazy and utilizing the board’s search usually can resolve these basic questions too since they’re usually not the first to ask these basic questions too.
This. I ask a question in a forum because I respect the people in it and want their take.
If I wanted to wade through pages of irrelevant shitty SEO bait pages I’d google it.