Yeah, I get that as well and sometimes feel the same. The difference is that a beginner tries to do Y, fails, think they can solve it by doing subtask X, so they ask X. But us with more experience know why Y didn't work and probably have a good reason for asking X.

But the answerers cannot know that. So adding a small snippet of what have been tried, or why X specific is what's needed is a good idea to steer the conversation in the correct direction.

In my experience, if you tell people your use case for wanting to do X instead of Y, they'll just attack your use case instead.

I, for one, never use places like SO anymore because everyone just wants to pretend you really want Y, because that's an answer they know.

I use SO all the time for gleaning information from the answers, but never for asking questions, for this very reason. The questions that show up in search results are full of great answers and information, but mine ended up full of people who didn't know the answer to my question but were eager to tell me about something they did know. Then I'd put more and more effort into providing context and justifying the question, until eventually the answers dried up. I decided I was better off seeking help on mailing lists, issue trackers, chat rooms, etc.

Yeah honestly I feel like it has gotten a lot worse since I was using it actively maybe 8-10 years ago. It seems to have moved towards a lot of people playing the karma game, and trying to focus on every flaw rather than trying to answer the question and give help. Nowadays, I usually try to find a community or forum directly related to the specific subject I'm working on.

However, it's hard to tell if the quality has actually changed, or whether it's just more geared towards novice programmers and I'm just not asking the type of questions that get help on the platform anymore.

Then specify the context as part of your question: "I want X. I think alternative solutions like Y won't work because...". As it is with many things in life the more effort you invest in the question, the greater the returns :)

Although tbh I quite often want the opposite, so I add "Alternative solutions/workarounds welcome" or "I don't see how I can avoid doing X but maybe..."

> "I want X. I think alternative solutions like Y won't work because..."

Listing all of the things you don't want to do would not only take up more words and effort than the question about what you do want to do, but is hopeless. Somebody who doesn't know the answer to your question but still wants to comment will find something that you were unaware you didn't want to do.

It's better just to answer questions directly, and then when somebody uses that solution and it doesn't get them closer to the solution to their real problem, they'll ask a better question.

Sorry, but that doesn't make sense and sounds like a rationalization for being lazy with the question. You're worrying about a straw man instead of trying to help out people who do know how to deal with the actual problem you have.

And bad solutions can still "solve" problems with horrible trade-offs, so instead of searching again for a better solution people may just employ the worse one unaware of the better possibilities, consequences be damned.

I think it depends on the quality of the question.

For instance, if it's a semi-vague question just pointing in the direction of a solution, then I think it's fair to question the motivation of the poster.

But if it's a very precise question about how to accomplish something specific, I think the burden should be on the person answering to add the clause: "you can do X, but its generally not considered a good idea because Y".

Honestly if you can't answer the original question, I get the impression you're just trying to be a smarty-pants and show off some domain knowledge you have which is related to the task at hand.

The point is that SO is actually less about the person asking a question. That is only one person.

But people look for already asked questions by searching for them. And I don't think that there are many things that are more frustrating, then finding a questions that describes your problem X perfectly and it has only answers to Y.

Since SO exists for the readers and not just the asker, I think that makes it even more important to highlight all the reasons not to do X if it really is unlikely to be the best solution.

Maybe the asker really would be best suited with X due to some contrived circumstance, but is that true of everyone else who finds the thread too? Probably not.

I just don't see why it's a problem to add a caveat in the answer in that case.

I.e. "you can do X to achieve your goal, but you probably shouldn't because Y".

I just don't see how it's helpful or contributive to participate in the discussion if you don't actually know the answer.