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Ask HN: Anyone else not read the questions on SO, only the answers when stuck?

41 points by fanpuns ↗ HN
I don't know if I could pinpoint exactly when this started for me, but I realized the other day that I never read the questions when I'm trying to debug something and SO pops up as part of my Google results. I just read the title, then scroll down to the answers to see if any of the proposed code will work for me. Maybe 1 in 50 I'll flip back up to the question to see if a specific variable or setup is mentioned and therefore used in the answer.

I have been wondering with the discussion around SO culture and community if maybe this is important. For all the discussion about "good" questions and wanting to archive generally applicable programming advice, would it change the assumptions about the value of either if it turns out that people aren't reading the questions anyway?

13 comments

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hackerfake
Indeed. I check out the question only if I understood the answer, but need to verify if it solves my problem.
amirathi
Ditto. I almost never read the question. A well written answer restates the question in some form.
dvdcxn
With experience you realise you're looking for an answer that matches your question, as opposed to a question that matches your question.
muzani
Same. I noticed after a while that I stopped upvoting questions when there was a prompt that reminded me.

Also noticed that my gold badge questions (the ones with really high views) weren't getting a lot of upvotes too. Once a question is prominent enough on Google, people just read the answer.

Noumenon72
I don't do this at all. More than half of the questions that seem relevant from Google actually aren't my situation -- no point reading the answers. Also, there are lots of good questions that list things I should have tried.

I also read the comments on the question and most of the answers to the bottom, so I just read more than most people. I have the gold badge for voting on 600 questions, which only 0.4% of users have. I'm just too curious for my own good.

amirathi
That's nice & all. But you are not being very efficient :)
xtiansimon
Read the question first or the answer. A programming problem is not a narrative, it’s a structure. Totally non-linear, man!
O_H_E
I also noticed this in myself, but sometimes Google/the question title misleads me to an answer for another situation. I find that this habit sometimes waste my time
farnsworthy
I think you pointed this out yourself: everybody is in fact reading the questions, but in the SERPs, not on SO.

(And I'm sure people are scanning the body of the question there, too, if only subconsciously--I know I do.)

hodl
Why bother reading the question if the answers are lame. It the answers you want after all. Bravo.
CosmicShadow
I usually open like 8 tabs of possibly relevant answers from a google result, look for something that looks right, and if I get frustrated why something doesn't make sense or seem to work, I scroll up and read the question to find it was super specific or stupid and doesn't really match the title.