I asked a question on SO: How to implement an agent?. I got unhelpful comments/answers, I've learned nothing, and I don't have the faintest clue how to improve my question. Some people are more interested in telling others they are wrong than in leaving helpful hints about how they could reformulate a question properly. That is sad and definitely doesn't help improve the quality of content on Stack Overflow.
1 Answer
In general, SO is not a good place to look for advice on how to start something; specific problems fare much better. The FAQ says:
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
There are indeed entire books written about the basics of artifical agents. I don't think the problem is with your writing so much as the actual question. I see you've tried to update it with hypothetical details, but it's still incredibly broad. The best advice for you is probably to read some books on the subject and/or take a course, which wouldn't constitute much of an answer either; self-contained and detailed/complete answers are best for SO. It just doesn't fit.
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Too late. I'm in the midst of destroying any credibility I had here and will probably stop using the site. Kudos for the reply though. Do note that Stack Overflow has morphed over time so rules have progressively changed.– James P.Feb 19, 2012 at 3:22
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5@James Erm. I think you may be overreacting. The edit and delete functions are quite useful for correcting mistakes and nobody cares about a few honest ones. Certainly don't continue to post things like off-topic "experiments", though.– user154510Feb 19, 2012 at 3:25
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No, I'm not overreacting. I'm unhappy and that's the sort of thing that shouldn't be bottled up. If I go online it's to snap away from daily life and it's definitely not to come accross the same sort of people that snap at me without giving any justification. Profile deletion on it's way.– James P.Feb 19, 2012 at 3:31
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Of course the site has changed, it's grown exponentially. If you run a small business that becomes massive, do you not need to add new rules and such as you grow? The changes have been a good thing. It's too bad that we can't let terrible, vague, and poorly thought out questions stick around, but if that is your criteria for wanting to stay then you may not have a place here anyways.– JNKFeb 19, 2012 at 13:13
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@MatthewRead just to add something the chances of a question getting back on track are virtually nil so edit is useless and a new question needs to be posted or the idea simply abandoned.– James P.Oct 12, 2016 at 9:54
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@JNK is the question linked above terrible, vague, and poorly thought out? If it is a tad according to your view then what's stopping someone simply pointing out what's wrong? Why does the process have to be painful and why is it automatically assumed that someone hasn't checked out the help center when they have?– James P.Oct 12, 2016 at 9:56
In other words you'll have to be a lot more specific as the answer depends on what the agent is supposed to do, what environment it works in, who wrote it, what strategy they chose for solving the problem you haven't specified, and so on ad nauseum - dmckee Jan 6 at 23:47