A user's guide for the people API

Posted Apr 27, 2023 8:08 UTC (Thu) by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966)
Parent article: A user's guide for the people API

>For example, "I need help with X" should not be met with "why are you using X?" because it sort of implies that they should not be using X

I see this more as a way to obtain more information about the actual problem the person is trying to solve and avoiding the XY trap than trying to say off the bat that X shouldn't be used (or worse that the OP is an idiot for wanting to use X).

Often people only give partial information (usually not deliberately and maybe even trying to be helpful) and replying (correctly) to their actual question will result in subobtimal or even plain wrong answers. It's frequent that you have to dig to uncover the real problem. Of course you can and should be nice about doing that certainly and shouldn't say "what? only idiots use X!" but nicely asking why a person wants to use X in order to better understand their problem and help them seems reasonable to me.

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A user's guide for the people API

Posted Apr 27, 2023 8:53 UTC (Thu) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]

The challenge with “why are you using X” is that it can be interpreted in multiple ways, one of which is quite negative (on the “what idiot would use X” scale).

I tend to ask “what are you trying to achieve by using X” when I feel I need more backstory to offer assistance, as it’s less prone to negative misinterpretations and more likely to be heard as “I’m listening, tell me more”.

Sometimes wording to avoid misinterpretation is more important than words that *could have* the meaning you intended. I suspect that’s especially true when addressing someone already feeling nervous about asking (eg most newbies to an area).

Ewen

A user's guide for the people API

Posted Apr 27, 2023 8:57 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> I see this more as a way to obtain more information about the actual problem the person is trying to solve and avoiding the XY trap than trying to say off the bat that X shouldn't be used (or worse that the OP is an idiot for wanting to use X).

That's kind of the point, the question could be interpreted negatively. Tone is everything here and easy to mix up (especially when dealing with speakers in multiple languages).

My go-to answer is a variation of "what is the problem you're trying to solve?" or "What are you trying to achieve?". It's very hard to get that interpreted wrong. What you're trying to do is establish to chain of thought that caused them to choose X, but you don't need to mention X to get there. Even yesterday, it started with "how can I stop API X from complaining about too many parallel calls", to working out that it was a completely different part of the program that needed to be parallelised.

A user's guide for the people API

Posted Apr 27, 2023 23:51 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

This is one of two reasons that people complain about Stack Overflow. When they close your question, the information they want to convey is, in most cases, some variation of "We're not a debugging service. If the answer to your question is not going to be useful to anyone else, then we don't want to host it on our website or give you free advice about it." Unfortunately, this is not the answer that most people want to hear, and until fairly recently, the SO user interface was rather blunt and unapologetic about it. The new interface is kinder but perhaps a touch less direct.[1]

The other reason is that, when you moderate a website for long enough, you start seeing new users break the same rules[2] over and over again. Some folks just aren't very good at managing the resulting emotions, so they sometimes lash out at newbies in ways that aren't very productive or helpful (it's entirely possible to close a question without insulting the person who wrote it). This is IMHO something the community needs to work on.

[1]: If you go looking for examples, note that a different version of the UI is shown to the post author than to the general public. Here's their blog post with screenshots: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/12/05/new-post-notices-im...
[2]: Not just the "we're not a debugging service" rule. You also have e.g. "My code doesn't work" questions that do not include code, questions asking someone to implement an entire chunk of functionality from scratch, questions about the "best" programming language, people who think the site is a forum and you can just have a freeform conversation, etc.