What kinds of bad question askers exist? [closed]

Question

Based on these proposals, it seems that the developers of Stack Exchange are trying to prevent "bad questions" from getting into the system:

• Should we cap reputation gained from questions at +2000?
• Should we require minimum reputation to continue asking questions?

The first stops those users who try to game the rep system by asking lots of mediocre questions, while the second attempts to prevent those users who consistently ask poor questions from continuing to ask (note that these are different).

These are two classes of bad askers, but there are bound to be more examples. What kinds of question askers are parasitic on the Stack Exchange network?

(The main reason I ask this is that in order to have successful changes to the question or rep system, we need to know just what kinds of users we wish to discourage)

EDIT: Most of the answers so far are great for Stack Overflow, but not so much for other sites on the SE network (why do those on Cooking need to have debugging skills? :P). Anything that is more network-general would be a much better answer to this question....

Answer 1

Ones who ask-and-forget.

Usually it's unregistered users with 1 whole question in their entire history. Sometimes they have multiple unregistered accounts. They never post comments and never accepts answers. It's especially the lack of feedback which strikes me. I personally try to avoid posting answers on this kind of users because it would be a waste of effort (unless it's an interesting question which is not been asked before yet, of course).

---

Update: since september 2011 it's no longer possible to ask a question without registering the account first. This has dramatically changed the statistics in a positive way. I'm experiencing this myself as well.

Answer 2

Users who don't know what debugging is.

They paste a huge block of code, point out that it doesn't do what they want, and they believe that, by the sheer magic power of their skill, an "expert" is able to spot the problem, even if the problem is not in the code at all.

These users usually really don't know better; they often didn't have any training in programming.

They don't deserve to be treated badly, but their questions are a problem. They take up a lot of the community's time - you essentially have to show them how to debug their code step by step. There will be long comment threads like:

• Does text.txt exist?
• Ah, okay. When you read it, how many lines do you get when you do a count() on it?
• Does the call to xyz work out?
• Does xyz return errors?
• Does abc actually return a or b? What does def contain?

apart from taking up a lot of time, their questions are usually way too localized to be of any value for future generations.

Answer 3

Copy-and-paste, "Give me a tutorial or complete example"

These users don't seem to understand simple coding tasks like conditionals, loops, and, well, plain old logic. They don't seem to understand what they are doing, and why the code they're "writing" works (or breaks). As a result, they come off as either new coders, lazy coders, or coders that are entirely over their head and lost. These are not students, and their tasks are not homework.

They seem to operate via copy-and-paste. They need hand-holding tutorials with plenty of example code in order to perform their tasks, because everything they do is based entirely off of that example code. "Tutorial or complete example" is effectively a code word for "give me the codes."

The questions are usually complex, multi-step odysseys that are hard to actually accomplish. They usually arrive in the form of "How do I write this complete application? Please send me a tutorial or complete example." When asked to show their progress so far, they are frequently unable to do so, usually again insisting that they need an example/tutorial.

While there is nothing wrong with asking for or providing example code, the frequently broad nature of the user's questions makes them extremely difficult to answer. Pointing the user to the documentation, even when the documentation contains examples is ineffective for various reasons.

While I'm not sure that I'd classify this type of user as a "parasite," the low-quality nature of their questions causes many of them to be closed or downvoted, though this rarely serves as an effective deterrent. (Further, it seems that the worse the spelling and grammar, the faster the close. I'm not going there.)

The "require minimum reputation" proposal would impact these users directly, as they rarely earn upvotes and almost never answer other questions.

The "cap rep from questions" proposal would not impact these users as frequently, as most of them don't seem to be in it for the rep, and would take a very, very long time to reach a sane cap given their low-quality, downvote-ridden questions.

Further, outside of more aggressive closing and downvoting of this type of question, I'm not sure that there can be any deterrent. These users either do not want to learn, or are unable to learn. Manuals are useless. Links to reference material are futile efforts.

Answer 4

Broken Design Traps

Often I read questions, even simple ones, that when accompanied with code shows that the user needs more than just how to do concatenation or whatever else they're asking. They need an architecture review. They don't understand how to combine 2 strings, and you could show them, but they want to combine those strings in order to create a dictionary of integers to use in some obscure math function in order to access a delegate method in some class that makes absolutely no sense. And they can't even fully articulate their goal anyway.

You can either answer their question and then face 14 more questions in the comments for all the edge cases they just created, or you can try and correct their design just to have them reject it because they don't understand inheritance, code blocks or something else.

Either way, I really want to help these guys, but I'm just answering individual questions not providing consulting/design services.

The worst is when this isn't obvious from the beginning. You answer their question and then they slowly expose more of what they are doing and why your solution doesn't fully work in their bizzaro code and you just want to run away. But now you're trapped! So you constantly reply and edit your answer trying to guide them to the light. Then they post/accept their own answer which is still incredibly wrong but is along the lines of "I decided not to do that awful thing but instead misuse this other library and it kinda works!"

^{And you shed a tear for their users.}

Answer 5

I'll start with the easy one: homework copy-pasters.

Neither of these measures are likely to stop them, as they're unlikely to hang around for long and there are only so many assignments they can be given in a semester.

Update: I really thought this was the most obvious one, so obvious that I forgot to give a reason. Well, here we go then.

Putting all my ethical concerns aside, it doesn't help in building a useful database of programming knowledge. As problems, they are highly artificial, and they often come with artificial constraints, which means that the chance of their later usefulness is practically nil. They're usually so basic anyway that even if they were applicable to other situations, the value of information gained from the answer would be very little.

I'm quite keen on helping people who are stuck with their homework, but I have very little time for those who literally just paste the assignment without even a single word of "please help me", or "I'm stuck" and expect an answer. And unfortunately the latter outnumber the former by 10 to 1 at least.

Answer 6

People who ask overly broad and non-detailed questions about basic topics.
Example

Good questions should be at least a little bit more specific than a Google search for csharp sqlserver.

A better beginner-lever question might ask how to do some non-trivial task in SQL Server with C# (eg, updating 100s of records per second) or add some obscure limitations (eg, .Net Micro Framework, or no non-HTTP network access).

By contrast, here is an example of a poorly-asked, but useful question.

Answer 7

NEED HELP! URGENT!

I DONT KNOW HOW TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION!!!!! PLEASE POST A COMPLETE ANSWER ASAP

Above all, these are the ones that get on my nerves. They ask something usually broad, ask for complete working code, don't give a clue of what they did until now (probably nothing) and, above all, think that their time is much more valuable than the time of the rest of the users.

Answer 8

• those that belong to the Emperor,
• embalmed ones,
• those that are trained,
• suckling pigs,
• mermaids,
• fabulous ones,
• stray dogs,
• those included in the present classification,
• those that tremble as if they were mad,
• innumerable ones,
• those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
• others,
• those that have just broken a flower vase,
• those that from a long way off look like flies.

_source

Answer 9

The one how think they know English, but don't.

Somewhen, the do it by Google translator, Somewhen the do even worst and translating it themselves and It nut problem as it-self, but it kinda cross some line where a question was so not much poorly as phrased that it is harder to understand it as ti was, or maybe even worst, it is much easier to miss-understand it as it should be.

Answer 10

People who don't say (or, worse, don't know) what language, server, UI framework, or other system they're using.

Example (now deleted)

This is especially common in C#, where people frequently don't say what UI framework they're using. (Although it's usually WinForms in such cases)

Worse example

Answer 11

Similar to the broken design trap mentioned already -- which I call the chameleon questioner because the question keeps changing -- is the pipeline questioner whose most recent answer feeds his next question.

When you look through the pipeline questioner's question history, you will see each step of their project. We all need help on things, but this user isn't taking the time to research their own project and asking the community to do it for them essentially start to finish. What makes these users dangerous is that since their code example are based on other people's work, they really don't fully understand the code they give you nor the surrounding code you don't see: it appears as if they understand more than they do.

Each of their questions individually look legitimate, but when taken as a whole and seen as a pattern, I wish something could be done to discourage people from essentially tricking the community to write their project for them.

Answer 12

Sooner or later we will receive something like this:

Good Day,

My name is Dr Adam Linx, a staff in the Research Section of a well-known software vendor, here in San Francisco, U.S.A. One of our machines, contains 2700 MLOCS of extremely valuable software codez. But the original developer, named Frank Mills, died of a stroke on the 9th of March 2009 without providing us with the passwords.

Since then, nobody could have done anything with these codez because we are unable to retrieve the passwords and as such the machines keep their secrets from us.

Because we don't have the right equipment to decode the password, I have decided to find a reliable foreign partner to deal with. I therefore propose to do business with you. You give us access to your fastest machines, so we can use your sophisticated equipment to decode the password and give us the codez. In return you get 1% of the codez, which is 27 MLOC filled with highly usable and valuable codez.

Because of the confidential nature of this transaction, we ask you to delete all logging (especially those of the mail server) and leave the machines on 24 hours a day.

This transaction is totally free of risk and troubles as the transfer is legitimate and does not originate from hacking, illegal downloads, terrorism or any other illegal act.

On your interest, let me hear from you URGENTLY.

Best Regards, Dr Adam Linx Program Manager [Phone Number Removed]

Answer 13

The ones who don't give enough context.

Type 1: "Is it true that (random factoid)?" Why do you think it might be? Where did you hear this? What similar facts/factoids have you compared it to already? (This isn't likely to come up on SO, but we get it from time to time on Mi Yodeya where, for example, someone will describe a practice we've never heard of and ask a question about it.)

Type 2: Omits important details. We see this on The Workplace sometimes -- "what should I do in such-and-such circumstance?" and the answer depends on your role, how long you've been there, what your manager actually asked you to do, etc, and none of that is mentioned.

Answer 14

We're never going to totally rid SO of nuisance questions. Capping reps one way or another is not an answer. Karma is an amazing thing; next time we go to slap someone on the wrist for seeking a quick fix for their homework, it might be worth remembering that they could one day be the programmer who sinks the project we're attempting to manage!

SO is give and take like everything else in this life. So, instead of hitting out, bear in mind that we could be talking to a one-day great programmer (best of whom are the laziest creatures on planet Earth anyway).

I propose we all read the following two SO Question and Answer guides by Jon Skeet:

Writing the perfect question

Answering technical questions helpfully

Answer 15

Here's a simple one

Askers who tell you that there's a problem or error in their code, but they don't tell you what the problem or error is.

They don't tell you whether it's a compilation error or a runtime error, or whether they're just not getting the output they want.