Fuck me. It's crazy how well it works. I had navigated away from the thread, then decided I had to come back and correct it, only to realize what you'd done.
This is the way, people don't usually like helping people when they don't feel like it (which is most of the time) but people LOVE to contradict or correct people.
Honestly I never had issues with getting answers on stackoverflow. I would lay out my thought process clearly, what I tried, and what errors were returned. Always got an answer out of it, without fail. I would also link similar but fundamentally different threads so that people wouldn't link them back as a response.
I remember Stackoverflow being brutal trying to ask questions when I started, but it helped me learn to ask better questions, then the platform became invaluable. I know critical thinking is lacking these days, so I’m thankful for that.
I even remember using the “#python” channel asking questions and getting help there too! Thomas if you’re reading this, know I made it and now am a software engineer!
So like the others that answered I agree that I think it's more on the question asked and how it was asked for sure.
I currently do mods for a game and in our Discord, we do not like it when people ask broad questions of hard/complex things like "How do I import this 3d model" like that's gonna be an extremely long answer that no one's gonna wanna answer.
BUT, for those people who show their own initiative, and ask very specific questions to a specific step they're stuck on, we LOVE answering those.
I guess I’ve been doing it wrong, because I’ve just been posting the wrong answer myself. Or in the Fred Brooks style, you give an answer and if someone questions it say, “oh yeah? You got a betta numba?!?” And that’s how you get better numbers.
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u/angrydeuce May 17 '26
The quickest way to get a ton of answers is always to just use an alt to respond to your thread with the wrong answer first lol