No Stupid Questions

My personal theory:

The internet has changed quite a lot in the last 20 years. At the beginning it was almost only nerds on the internet who were running their communities on their free time. Back then there were no algorithms which decided what you see. Everything was sorted by date and recent posts and as such every user saw the same content. So a netiquette developed around that time: Don't post duplicate stuff. Don't double post, edit your post. Read the site rules. Search for information first. No low effort threads. Don't necro a thread without substantial new information. And so on.

That was basic internet netiquette and at least my feeling is that it was universally understood and followed quite strictly. On all the forums, not just a specific one.

I also violated some of these netiquette rules and got reprimanded for it - not by mods, but even by other users. The point is, those were universal internet rules and the whole community was enforcing it.

Then social media happened and changed the way the internet worked. Algorithms were now deciding what you can see. There was no need to actively mod content. On social media the netiquette that ruled the internet had no purpose. And as such people never really encountered that.

Now Stack Overflow is one of the last of its kind where that ancient netiquette still plays a major role. An internet forum which tries to categorize and keep a "clean" library of knowledge. Against a flood of new users who do not know the netiquette. In such an environment mods are the only ones left to remind user of the netiquette. Slowly but surely they lose patience and start power tripping.

It's a case of Eternal September

If I was a mod I'd lock this post with "duplicate" as a parody.

SO was good 10-15 years ago, but it has gotten bogged down in a combination of user elitism, mod incentives to do anything, and outdated answers remaining canonical.

• User elitism: You see this anywhere else too. Older users hold power on the site, and this tends to result in walling out those with actual refreshing ideas.

• Mod incentives: The system rewards mod actions, even if those actions aren't the correct one. For example, closing a question as duplicate, even if it's not, rewards the closer.

• Due to the above, the "correct" answer to a question never gets updated, and it doesn't take later versions into account. As such the site becomes a collection of outdated answers to questions that may or may not still be relevant.

Source: Formerly prolific user of multiple stackexchange sites

The folks who say “just google it” are often unaware of how their own experience allows them to determine good instructions from bad.

For instance, if I told you to flummox the bumdarten by fluxing the foogartner, how would you begin learning what any of those words mean? How will you know if the bumdarten docs you’ve found are even the current version?

But at some point we have all encountered someone who simply asks for help instead of figuring out how to do it. And those people are usually in management.

Never understood the issue with "closed as duplicate", it always links to the original question so you get your answer there. And for most things even the duplicate has a solid accepted answer too. Maybe I visit a different part of the site through my questions?

Then you’re going to hate “just LLM it”.