

Ask HN: Do you ask questions on Stack Overflow and never answer? - Apocryphon

Does anyone use SO and ask questions, but rarely answer there? I find myself in this category due to my lack of knowledge.
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nolite
yes, but I feel under no moral obligation to answer questions either. That
said, most of the questions have answers way more thought out and developed
than I would be motivated enough to give

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hdragomir
I'm the other kind. I rarely ask questions, and when I do, I end up giving the
best answer anyway.

But you should not be afraid to answer questions.

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rhizome
There are always people learning new things, so there's really no excuse not
to find questions that you can answer.

However, SO has the same freeloader problem that IRC and mailing lists do,
which is that once people get an answer to whatever their problem is, they bug
out and don't hang around. I'm not talking about paying it forward or anything
pithy like that, just participating in the community that has already helped
you.

I think it's ironic that people who would otherwise describe themselves as
beginners are so sure of their level of knowledge such that they are confident
they don't have anything to offer. I chalk this up to laziness.

My approach is always to strive to be "a better beginner" and one of the best
ways I've found to do this is to patiently help other beginners with whatever
I've learned so far, because beginner questions _always_ come up.

