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If I want to ask a question I got to a page that says:

How to Ask

Welcome to Stack Overflow!

We’d love to help you, but the reality is that not every question gets answered. To improve your chances, here are some tips: Search, and research

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found (on this site or elsewhere) and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

But there is no way to ask the question. There is no ask anyway button or anything. Pressing the

thanks, I will keep these tips in mind when asking

doesn't show any button.

So what should I do?

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  • What browser are you using? Is JS enabled? You seemed to ask a question fine here... Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 3:33
  • I was using Mozzila Firefox as my browser and JavaScript is enabled. I tried to ask using IE and there appear "[object HTMLDivElement] »" but not in Mozzila Firefox Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 3:43

2 Answers 2

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A string got un-stringed there, and unluckily enough matched the id of an HTML element in the page. So rather than concatenating "proceed" into a link, we instead .toString()'d the <div id="proceed">... element that contained the link.

Dumb bug, fix went out a few minutes ago.

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  • 1
    Why are these template bugs popping up everywhere?
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 8:02
  • @ColeJohnson most of the strings in the system aren't in templates at all, these bugs are being introduced in the conversion away from (explicit or implicit) StringBuilder-y code. Looks like we're running at a bug every 800 or 900 strings converted, which I'm not really pleased with. Team beatings will continue until performance improves. Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 16:42
  • Or, if Stack Exchange went open source, the community could fix most of them. Stack Overflow is a community of programmers, no? But obviously, that's not gonna happen with their business model. I'd put money on it never happening, sadly.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 20:20
7

Repro'd in Chrome, in an incognito window.

enter image description here

However, you can click that strange link and it will still take you to the Ask Question page.

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