> Sometimes people ask questions like "how do I shoot myself in the foot and still have a working foot", though. Questions are not always reasonable. A question is not always "pure" either, but can embed incorrect assumption

But those are correctly diagnosed XY problems. No one is complaining about those.

My parent was told the issue is too many incorrectly identified XY problems, and responded with an explanation of what the XY problem is.

That is the example of a misdiagnosed XY problem, which was kinda my point. This sort of behaviour makes the actual experts leave the site in droves.

If, when answering a question, one where to discard the answer the minute they write "Why would you want to do this?", you'd get much fewer incorrectly diagnosed XY problems.

As I said in a different thread, ChatGPT sometimes does this as well, but at least with ChatGPT, when it is answering a question that was never asked, it doesn't also act like a condescending jackass. There are no "Why would you want to do this?" type of questions.

Asking why does not have to be condescending. I agree that some responses can read that way, or seem in some other way hostile. In text, or with any reasonable spoken tone, I would not assume that a person asking me why is condescending.

But on second consideration, I suppose you would not, either, and I suppose you are specific'ly talking about responses which, each taken as a whole, are easily interpreted as some form of hostile.

I do see both of your points of view. There are some good answers on SO that capture both. They first explain why it’s infeasible, talk about a better approach, then lastly give pointers on how to achieve what is asked regardless using their best reasoning. Think it just depends on the quality