Since when is http://whathaveyoutried.com/ banned? And, who took the decision? Edit: to be clear, this is was banned whether on its own, or with other content.
It's an incredibly popular summary of how to ask a good question.
Update 2: Apparently it's working again, even on its own, over at SO.
Since about 8 hours ago.
One of our ever-vigilant devs came across it, and interpreted it as a lmgtfy-like bit of nonsense. I can understand why - the use of it has always been a mix of honestly helpful folks offering a good resource to those struggling to ask a good question, and lazy wags slapping in bare URLs on posts whose authors aren't suitably penitent in their tone.
It's hard to find fault in the blog post itself - it's a well-written resource, and for someone who repeatedly flounders when trying to ask on Stack Overflow I expect it could prove very valuable.
But it ain't no magic fairy dust that you can sprinkle on any post to quickly and painlessly enlighten the author. If you've neither the time nor inclination to read the post you're responding to and explain what's lacking, perhaps with a link to Matt Gemmell's site as the cherry on top...
...Then you're best off finding a new hobby. The blacklist will be refined a bit tomorrow to exclude comments that don't at least try to communicate directly with the author they're addressed to. [Edit: tomorrow / six months later... Anyway, it got done eventually. You can post the link if you put something else in with it. Hopefully something useful. ]
[what have you tried?](http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/) will yield "what have you tried?".
Commented
Sep 15, 2012 at 3:35
Based on usage here are the last 12 attempts to use the link whathaveyoutried.com as a comment while the blacklist was enabled:
Most usages include only a link to whyt.com and do not elaborate on what might be helpful to help understand a question. As a side note - the first of the 12 results included a link to both lmgtfy and whyt. We have seen helpful usages of a link to whyt, however, without context it's not helpful - especially to new users.
I cannot upvote Shog's answer as I disagree with the way this has been done, especially after the previous question asking for this got downvoted to oblivion. However, I agree with the point that the only use for the following comment is to link a questioner to a valuable resource:
I've also seen this before, which I find even more objectionable.
I went looking for the last time I actually posted a comment that linked to this site, and found it on page 7 from the 26th of August, almost 3 weeks ago:
Welcome to Stack Overflow! Generally, you'll get more help if you also post what you have tried when attempting to solve your problem. It's also important to tag the question with the appropriate RDBMS, (Oracle, SQL Server etc), as each has individual methods that may be of use when solving your problem.
Here's another one of my comments:
Hi, and welcome to Stack Overflow. With questions like this it's often a lot better if you also post the result-set you want. This means that people have something to work to. It's polite if you post the methods you attempted when trying to solve your problem. This provides an indication of your thinking and helps others to help you. It also proves that you have attempted something for yourself and are not just asking for other people to do your work for you.
The grammar may not be top notch, it's a comment, and people may disagree with the way I worded them, but the point is that there is no need to just comment "What have you tried?" and leave it at that. You can at the same time explain why you are leaving this comment. In both cases I didn't even use whathaveyoutried.com; I linked directly to the article.
In some ways a comment is exactly the same as an answer; if it's just a link without context then it's pretty useless.
Just to doubly highlight this; context is everything. A link does not necessarily provide context. A tiny effort on your part to craft a small explanation of the link is far more helpful.
As long as the site isn't black-listed completely and I can still link to the post in the context of a wider comment I don't see a problem with this. To sum up:
P.S.
I came to this question with the intention of upvoting. Having read your comments, which are aggressive and rude, I'm about to downvote this question. You've actually done the community a disservice by acting in this way. What should have been a straightforward "Why has this thing that has widespread support been banned?" question is now in danger of being downvoted to oblivion and the central point about the banning may be missed.
Think back to a time when you walked into an empty department store you've never been to before, one that you're not familiar with. The only customer in the store is you, and the only clerk in the store looks exactly like the stereotypical loser who sits behind the counter, chewing gum and doing her nails, or talking on the phone to his friend about how the boss is a jerk for making them have to work and deal with all the stupid customers that come in the building and ask dumb questions. "What are they, blind! Can't they just look up and read the damn signs!"
You stand there in front of the clerk, who ignores you, until you clear your throat. "Ahem!". "Do you happen to sell shoehorns?", you ask. The clerk, without missing a beat in his/her conversation, extends his/her arm and points vaguely in the direction of the back of the store, without even making eye contact with you or looking in the direction he/she is pointing.
Flabbergasted, you walk to the back corner of the store, looking through aisles of housewares, pots/pans, books, birthday cards, socks, until finally you see some shoes. "Shoehorns must be near here", so you continue scouring the aisles until you finally discover that the shoehorns they sell won't work for your particular brand of footwear.
The picture that I'm hoping I've painted here is that our community is better than that person behind the counter. Pasting just a link in as a comment is no better than just silently pointing in a broad direction, leaving the other party to search through mountains of material.
It doesn't take much for the clerk to say "How may I help you" and then explain where the shoehorns are, or maybe even ask what kind of shoehorn the person is looking for; similarly, it doesn't take much time to write a brief, polite comment that teaches, guides the new user, and encourages him/her to learn more about how our community works.
People learn better when they're in the right mindset. People who are angry, upset, shocked, disappointed, or frustrated are less likely to learn from their experience with you. On the other hand, people who feel welcomed and respected, even if they didn't immediately see our signs, are more likely to learn more about how to be a good contributor; they're more likely to change their behavior.
Removing the "Whathaveyoutried" link-only comments is the right thing to do. Of course, you can still use the link, just add some context as Ben suggests so that your comment encourages someone to learn something, rather than just serves to belittle them. Hope this helps!
Not an answer to the question, but I think it's important: what if the domain expires?
It's been around for almost 4 years; next expiry is in December. Do we need to cross our fingers and hope the registrant (actually the blog owner; same day the article was posted) renews the domain? Otherwise it might no longer be a nice redirect to a helpful blogpost at all, but might become some ad page as soon as it's dropped.
Of course, all links can go bad. But using the redirect domain makes posting it much easier, hence its usage much higher?
I'd say: if we want to link to something like this, then there should be some Stack Exchange page to link to instead.
