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.
We had a similar conversation back in the forum days.
A lot of people screaming RTFM.
But someone enlightened me a little.
Often when people ask questions like that, what they are really doing is trying to become part of your community. An easy to answer question, a way for people to assume the mantle of the expert.
Really, how hard is it to answer those questions… And maybe stipulate that the person asking the question can answer it for the next one?
Obviously, some people are just treating you like Google, but if you act hostile, you’ll never know.
My thoughts exactly