Is this question really a real question? [closed]

Question

Recently, I voted to close What does the _ in [a-zA-Z0-9_] mean? as "Not a real question".

My reasoning is simple: Anyone who knows what the - in that expression means cannot possibly be ignorant about the meaning of _ (it stands for itself, just like the a). Therefore, this question cannot be genuine.

If enough people agree with me, the question will be closed. If they don't, so be it.

However, as you may notice, there is quite a discussion going on in the comments of that post. Keeping in mind that MSO was created so that these kinds of meta arguments do not bog down the real content, I decided to post this question here, and replace my comments on that question with a link to this post.

Does my argument make sense?

To expand on that argument:

The only thing that gives me pause is that I agree with "Just because you think a questioner knows the answer already does not make the question any less valid on SO."

I do not "assume that one must know all aspects of REs or none". However, think about the difference between /[a-z]/ and /a-z/. That is a huge difference ... one would have needed to read and grasp a lot to be able to get that. And, by the time one understood that, one would have known that _ stands for itself in /[a-z_]/.

That is why I do not think this question can be helpful to a newbie in the future. A newbie will not know the difference between /[a-z]/ and /a-z/.

Summary:

• pax: Just because you think a questioner knows the answer already does not make the question any less valid on SO.

• Vinko Vrsalovic: The 'reality' of a question is orthogonal to the intention of the questioner. ... But, as long as he posts questions (coherent and answerable) they are valid.

• random: Are you saying it's not a "real" question because it's an "easy" question and one that you yourself already know the answer to?

• Telemachus: you're still taking a kind of all-or-none attitude to learning. ... Maybe you learn in a very linear manner, but I can assure you that many people do not.

I do agree with the statements quoted above. However, I do not think they are applicable in this particular situation. If they were, it would be perfectly OK to post:

• What does the a in /a/ mean?

• What does the b in /b/ mean?

• What does the c in /c/ mean? ...

Hey, maybe I learn in a different way than you do and just because I understand what a means in /a/, that does not mean I can generalize it to other letters in the English alphabet.

Besides, even if I knew the answer to that, it is possible someone, somewhere else might not know and that person would benefit from a clear and concise answer to each and every one of those questions.

And so what if I posted all these questions one after another in an attempt to collect a point here and a point there. After all, by the rest of the criteria, the question is real, and my intent is orthogonal.

Of course, filling up SO with noise is detrimental to both the main purpose of SO and its money making potential. I want SO to make money for Joel and Jeff and all who worked on it and therefore I would never start posting the kind of questions I gave above, but, by your arguments, if someone did post those questions, each and every one of them would be a valid, real question.

Thank you again for all your answers. I have benefited from the points raised on this thread.

Answer 1

The problem is not merely that someone posted an easy question.

Someone posting an occasional easy question is OK, either out of genuine curiosity, or as a social experiment (see LOGO turtle), or as an occasional re-whoring.

Someone genuinely trying to understand stuff and showing they did the work is great, even if they are a newbie - it's not the level of the question that matters, but the level of effort they put in.

However, someone just abusing the "easy Qs are good for SO's overall purpose of being an encyclopedia" is a major problem - they don't ACTUALLY add to the site (heck, if they did, just have some bot written by Jeff Atwood pump easy questions as CW user into the site from some textbook), and they serve to hugely dis-incentivise people who might wish to earn an honest reputation by answering actual technical (and hopefully not-always-trivial) questions who see that a question pumper like the guy mentioned by Sinan can earn enormous rep with no effort b merely pasting one-by-one questions from some Perl etc... textbooks.

Answer 2

My reasoning is simple: Anyone who knows what the - in that expression means cannot possibly be ignorant about the meaning of _ (it stands for itself, just like the a). Therefore, this question cannot be genuine.

Your reasoning may be simple - I decline to comment :-)

However, it is fallacious. You are wrong, in my opinion, on two accounts.

1. To say someone could not understand what _ is for when they know what - is for is wrong. I, for example, still write my REs with [A-Za-z ...] instead of \w partially because I don't know all the PCRE-type extensions (and partially because I still work on systems that don't support them). To assume that one must know all aspects of REs or none of it is plainly incorrect. Both - and _ are clearly in the "punctuation" class of characters and it is reasonable to think they may both have special meaning in REs.

2. Just because you think a questioner knows the answer already does not make the question any less valid on SO. I suggested in the original question that "What is the difference between i++ and ++i?" would be in a similar situation since you could argue that no-one who knew i++ could fail to know ++i. Yet that question would be a genuine one since SO is supposed to be for all levels of programmers, including those who haven't mastered all the intricacies of C (or REs).

And, as to the sadness of the lemming-like voting, that answer was right and simple. Who's to say it didn't deserve the upvotes? @Ether states that the answer wasn't worth more than a minute of anyone's time but I managed to read and upvote it in about 20 seconds.

Granted, that's 20 seconds I'll never get back, but I waste more time than that each day with booting my work PC :-)

Answer 3

I think you are misunderstanding "not a real question"

Examples of "not a real question":

• Do my homework for me. Now!: That's clearly not a real question, but an order
• I hate Microsoft's stack: That's clearly not a real question, but a rant
• You all suck balls here, time wasters: That's clearly not a real question, but a troll
• You green SQL apple blue cloud?: Incoherent, unanswerable

Examples of a "real question":

• How does one move the turtle in logo?: Basic, probably useless nowadays, but a question
• What does the _ mean in [a-zA-Z0-9_]?: Basic, but a question

The 'reality' of a question is orthogonal to the intention of the questioner. We cannot know the intention of the questioner, nor what he really knows or how stupid he is. But, as long as he posts questions (coherent and answerable) they are valid.

I understand the feeling of "this is so basic it must be a joke". But even if it is a joke it will probably help some newbie, sometime, as long as it can be answered. So it just doesn't matter.

Answer 4

Is the dash/hyphen (-) used as a range delimiter or as a character on its own? What is the underscore (_) used for in that expression? Is it a look behind trigger or just a plain old underscore character to match against?

How can you say that it's obvious that the underscore is a character on its own when the dash is used in a different way?

Are you saying it's not a "real" question because it's an "easy" question and one that you yourself already know the answer to?

If they're a rep-whore constantly posting soft/easy questions like this, then that itself would be a problem. One that you could flag for moderator attention.

But the question would still be valid and a real question at that. Stack Overflow aims to be the place to brain up for programmers and even the fresh have to start somewhere. Even if it's not patently obvious how regular expressions work.

It's clear you know so much more than the person asking the question and by that, their question must not be real. Because, seriously? Someone doesn't already know what you know about programming?

By your reckoning, anyone and everyone who wants to learn, has already learnt and can't possibly be confused or need guidance on the intracacies or quirks of a programming language or function.

Answer 5

It's depressing as hell to me that the question is currently closed. (And now it's open again, so never mind that...)

To respond to Sinan, my reasoning is also simple: the question was perfectly clear and nobody is born knowing the answer. Yes, a textbook or perldoc or would answer the question, but the purpose of SO is to answer questions, and it says right in the FAQ that all levels of questions are welcome.

What part of any of that is hard to understand?

My other concern was that the Perl section of SO seems way too quick to vote to close lately. I understand if people prefer to answer and read more challenging or unusual questions, but they can always simply ignore the questions they find trivial or boring.

Edit: Further response to Sinan:

I do not "assume that one must know all aspects of REs or none". However, think about the difference between /[a-z]/ and /a-z/. That is a huge difference ... one would have needed to read and grasp a lot to be able to get that. And, by the time one understood that, one would have known that _ stands for itself in /[a-z_]/.

That is why I do not think this question can be helpful to a newbie in the future. A newbie will not know the difference between /[a-z]/ and /a-z/.

I think you're still taking a kind of all-or-none attitude to learning. In my experience of programming (and learning more generally), it just ain't so. A person might easily understand /[a-z]/ because the idea of a range of letters is fairly natural, but at the same time freeze when seeing /[a-z_]/ because - oh, crap, _ is punctuation, and punctuation is all kinds of weird in regular expressions. Maybe you learn in a very linear manner, but I can assure you that many people do not (note: I'm a teacher, so I have buckets of anecdotal evidence to back that up).

As to your second point (that it won't help a newbie), that depends on the kinds of answers it gets. If you think that a key point to grasp is the difference between /[a-z]/ and /a-z/ (I agree with that, by the way), why not post a detailed, clear answer explaining that?

For what it's worth, you might take a look at the posts of John W. Krahn and Chas. Owens to the Perl Beginners mail list. Each of them has posted hundreds of patient, clear, detailed answers to a never-ending slew of questions, ranging from the very, very simple to the very complex. I've probably learned 1/4 of what I know about Perl just from making sure to read their answers. It's nobody's duty to answer simple questions, but it is definitely useful when knowledgeable people take the time to do so.

Answer 6

I think it's a real question, although a dreadfully elementary one. What I found sad was the lemming-like upvoting of the response, which I thought deserved one or two votes at most. Both the question and the answer were worth less than a minute of anyone's time.

Answer 7

There's a sheep-like reaction that sets in; if there's one vote to close, others jump on the bandwagon. That's why Perlmonks has countering "keep" and "edit" votes.

Answer 8

I like to think that this is one of the many cases of “not the real question”, rather than “not a real question”. The real question was probably something like “I've been using [a-zA-Z0-9] to match an alphanumerical character, but recently I've came across [a-zA-Z0-9_] in a similar context. What's the difference, and why this additional underscore character?”