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Comment by 2-3-7-43-1807 | Hacker News Reader

just yesterday i wanted to ask a question about average data usage of macbooks on askdifferent (SO sibling in the stackexchange family for mac topics) ... of course the question was removed within half an hour for being too fuzzy. tried it on the macos subreddit ... couldn't even post it there for too low karma ... posted it on r/apple ... still waiting for moderator approval. it's not the first time that it feels like it's becoming more and more difficult to ask a simple question on the internet. and i have 20k points on SO - was using it a lot many years ago - i know the drill.

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> becoming more and more difficult to ask a simple question on the internet

i know people here like to hate on discord servers, but this is one thing they shine at, it's easy to drop in and just ask a damn simple question to people that are online, in real time

The same can be said about Discourse, and at least then the information is also publicly searchable.

Not realtime, sure, but for me most of that time that's perfectly alright.

Yes my algorithm is, for basic & general question: Stack Overflow.

For specific questions related to a particular technology: look for the specific Discourse (or forum equivalent) site.

Otherwise, discord as last resort.

Well one thing to hate about discord is you should use "chat server" instead. Discord is trying to become a monopoly on that (bar the corporate oriented offerings) but it's not the only option.

And yes, the usual thing: since it's not a forum it's impossible to search the history (yes they have a search button which is useless for howto type questions). It's also impossible to browse it like a forum to see what problems people have encountered before you have them and possibly avoid them, or get better insight in the stuff you're using.

The drawback is that it generally only helps the one question asker, and that answers only reflect who happened to be present synchronously and what they thought at that moment. Discord content is ephemeral and not discoverable, and tends to consist of reflexive rather than well-considered and thought-through answers.

The value of public forums is that their content appears in public searches, can be publicly linked to, and that they facilitate asynchronous, longer-form and longer-term discourse.

> average data usage of macbooks

With all sincerity, I honestly don’t know what this is supposed to mean.

well, i didn't post the full question - right? b/c i'm not expecting an answer here ... but to be a little more clear: data usage refers to up- and download.

> but to be a little more clear: data usage refers to up- and download.

Right, that was one possibility… my initial thought was that you meant HDD capacity.

But even with that clarification, how is an answerable question? Are you asking people to guess (Feynman Approximation?) how much internet traffic up+down that the average MacBook user has per-day compared to Windows or Linux users? Or did you mean something else?

My left eyebrow raised itself uncontrollably as I typed that out, in fact.

alrighty ^

> well, i didn't post the full question - right?

Exactly, you did not. How I see it:

The problem with reading such complaints is that we always only hear one side. That's why posting what you actually asked is valuable information to be able to say whether your complaint is justified or not.

By default, a lot of people immediately side with and upvote the person writing the complaint, but that's actually bad - as I said, we only hear one side of the story that way, and in cases such as this one what was actually said/asked matters and without that piece of information any opinion one forms and comment votes one gives do not have a good basis to stand on.

Furthermore, when people write such complaints but don't see how from the reader's PoV is only biased half-information I wonder if their question showed a similar lack of how it looks like from the PoV of its readers.

You want me to side with you, but you withhold information that would let me evaluate if you are actually in the right.

i'm just stating an observation and connect it to a recent experience - that's all - i'm not asking you to be the judge in a court case. if you can't relate to the issue i describe, then just down vote and move on with your life.

> if you can't relate to the issue i describe, then just down vote and move on with your life.

I don’t do that (downvoting, that is).

No-one I know does that.

It sounds like you had a bad day.

that was a reply to someone else ...

Any reply here, and on similar forums, is essentially a reply to the whole thread so far. DaiPlusPlus was part of that sequence, and may have been about to post the same sort of response that nosianu did (no point in posting entirely duplicate comments) and you replied to, in which case it was essentially a reply to him by proxy.

Comment chains on HN and elsewhere are not private one-on-one conversations.

well, i beg to differ

And I beg to not :)

Not accepting that things work the way they do, does not stop things working the way they do.

The asymmetry between questioners and answerers might be increasing.

I get quality answers on IRC. Most other places seem flooded.

Only old farts are on irc :)

I know of one channel with at least two people below the age of 20!

(Admittedly, 20! is a big number.)

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