Personally, I love sites like SO and Quora. When I'm digging into something outside of my experience/expertise (which is almost daily in my current job), I'm consistently landing on pages that have answers written to my questions. That's great.
What's NOT great, is having some esoteric need, landing on a bunch of pages, and finding that most of them have an "are you sure you want to do this?" response with no effort made to answer the question, ahm, in question.
The author is right in this respect. You are NOT just answering the person who asked the question. Stuff on the internet STAYS. For YEARS. That means that you're answering EVERYONE who EVER asks that question, and chances are that a lot of them DO know what they are doing. All they lack are the mechanical steps to take, which you have denied them by your second guessing of intentions. And that is MASSIVELY frustrating. Sites like Quora understand this, thus the "not helpful" button.
If you must question the judgment of the person asking, do so AFTER answering the question. Otherwise your answer is, in fact, NOT useful. Oh, it may be useful if you've successfully guessed the intentions of the asker, but for a great number of other people who will land on that page in the years to come it is nothing more than condescension.
I participate because I find it a godsend whenever I get stuck on some esoteric API or poorly documented technology, or I just want to use something in a way that it's not actually meant to be used BECAUSE I HAVE A DAMN GOOD REASON TO DO IT. And I want to extend the same courtesy of answering without prejudice so that some other soul can be similarly helped by my answer.
What's NOT great, is having some esoteric need, landing on a bunch of pages, and finding that most of them have an "are you sure you want to do this?" response with no effort made to answer the question, ahm, in question.
The author is right in this respect. You are NOT just answering the person who asked the question. Stuff on the internet STAYS. For YEARS. That means that you're answering EVERYONE who EVER asks that question, and chances are that a lot of them DO know what they are doing. All they lack are the mechanical steps to take, which you have denied them by your second guessing of intentions. And that is MASSIVELY frustrating. Sites like Quora understand this, thus the "not helpful" button.
If you must question the judgment of the person asking, do so AFTER answering the question. Otherwise your answer is, in fact, NOT useful. Oh, it may be useful if you've successfully guessed the intentions of the asker, but for a great number of other people who will land on that page in the years to come it is nothing more than condescension.
I participate because I find it a godsend whenever I get stuck on some esoteric API or poorly documented technology, or I just want to use something in a way that it's not actually meant to be used BECAUSE I HAVE A DAMN GOOD REASON TO DO IT. And I want to extend the same courtesy of answering without prejudice so that some other soul can be similarly helped by my answer.