@Extra_Special_Carbon

I remember having an argument on the backend of the math stack exchange about the policy of basically demoting and rejecting "basic math" questions. The people against such questions said they didn't like being asked for "homework help" we were supposed to be having a higher level of mathematics conversation.

This meant that only graduate students with too much free time could find any use in the site.

Also if a question "had already been answered" that was that.

@Extra_Special_Carbon

But, if a person is still asking a question even though the answer is right there... maybe it's not a very helpful or good answer.

Maybe it could be possible to answer a "basic" question in a new or better way.

Obviously, as a teacher this interests me more than it might interest other people. And it is possible for a question to be "low effort" but this wasn't the issue.

I really wondered what they wanted from the site at all.

@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon Oh, I remember figuring out stack exchange was just snarky snobs and yes, I'd search for somebody answering what I asked already but no, I wouldn't ask things: even if it *hadn't* been asked, they'd pretend it was a simpler question and give the same snarky answards to a different question.

@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon
There are still (or always will be) people confused why a number divided by zero isn't zero.

@futurebird
I had a professor who would routinely say "read the FINE manual" (note emphasis).

There was a rumor that he didn't know "fine" was not the customary f-word used in that acronym, but he was always careful to emphasize "fine".

@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon I deleted my highest ranked post ("Is there a Windows PowerShell language reference manual?") because users kept editing my question and changing the meaning because they got points for doing so. I got tired of reverting edits to my question and figured that since the post was like 6 years old it wasn't really relevant - at the time I asked it there was very little documentation on PowerShell, online or otherwise. 6 years later there was plenty of basic info on the language. I felt a little bad because the comments were full of useful pointers to PowerShell resources; I just had no patience for people who materially changed the meaning of the question while "clarifying" it. The ongoing unpaid maintenance burden for a commercial firm helped tip the scales too.

One thing about SO, when someone sees a question asked the "wrong" way or is very basic, what's the motivation to chastise the OP instead of just ignoring it and moving on? For a site that prides itself on being a useful resource, there's a staggering amount of unhelpful dross in the comments. The gamification really honed the awfulness of professional computer touchers who were already a pretty awful community to start with.

@futurebird I know someone who just says "I'll ask Chat". The first time I didn't know what she meant but then she pulled out her phone and started typing.

I think the thing that really bugs me is it seems like (some) people are so much quicker to reach for it, even in social situations. With search engines, at least in my experience, people tend to talk about something they don't know a bit before they "give up" and do a search. But with LLMs I've known people who will ask a question, barely wait for an answer, then type it into the LLM. Someone I knew used to ask me something, wait for me to give my answer, then not respond and immediately type into an LLM

Then again maybe it's just that the people that used to use search engines this way are just more likely to use LLMs now, so that's why I notice this

@futurebird wasn't there a movie in which darth vader built a robot whose entire job was being polite?

@geonz @Extra_Special_Carbon

* Only interested in "hard" questions.
* But, if it's a hard question they can't answer, well then you must have meant something else or asked it wrong.

Kind of makes the range of acceptable topics ludicrously narrow.

I thought maybe we could just, you know, talk about math.

@Okanogen @Extra_Special_Carbon

It's a question worth answering in multiple ways.