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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

I believe it. And that's not even counting looking up answers or getting your questions answered.

When I am truly stumped, I immediately start drafting a comprehensive SO question. Nine times out of ten, clearly enunciating the problem leads me directly to the answer and I never even post it.

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If you're feeling generous, go ahead and post the question anyway, along with the answer you found. That's very much encouraged, and very helpful to people searching for answers later.

Half my SO answers are of this type. And the number of views I get on them usually indicates that the problem is very common. (I have done SharePoint development in the past).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

In my case, nine times out of ten my questions are closed down by overzealous mods. I still find SO very useful but not for asking questions.

The bright side is that in such cases you'll likely have received an answer or two before the question has been closed. Or maybe someone points you to a duplicate question which got more attention.

SO is very useful for a asking a certain type of question.

>> "nine times out of ten my questions are closed down by overzealous mods"

What types of questions are you asking (any examples)? In the time I've been using SO (just over 3 years) I think I've only ever had one question closed (and it was a bad question so they were right in closing it).

Its been a while, I don't remember specifics. But I think most of my questions where related to server admin stuff. I don't remember which email I used, I might have to open a new account and see if things are better now.

> In my case, nine times out of ten my questions are closed down by overzealous mods.

You may not be following the guidelines.

It is possible that I wasn't following the guidelines at least in some cases. But I vaguely remember is some of the cases where a simple paraphrase of a sentence would have been enough. Questions were simply closed wasn't allowed to edit and a link to TOS violation without any specific reasons what I did wrong.

Its been a while since I asked questions over there. Haven't logged in for a long time but I do find useful answer through google search quite often. I just don't ask questions. I think its a major annoyance when you spend decent amount of time writing questions only to get your question closed with vague reasons. Maybe I had some bad luck and things might have gotten better? Who knows.

On multiple occasions I've searched for an answer, found it on S.O., thought "this seems vaguely familiar," and then realized that it was my own answer from a couple years prior.

Saved me time the second time around I guess.

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