As one of my good friends pointed out back in 2012, most people don't know how to ask questions[0].

I'm feeling a bit sorry for zahlman in the comment section here, they're doing a good job of defending SO to a comment section that seems to want SO to bend to their own whims, no matter what the stated aims and goals of SO really were. There does seem to be a lot of people in the comments here who wanted SO to be a discussion site, rather than the Q&A site that it was set out to be.

I do think it's very unfair of many of you who are claiming SO was hostile or that they unfairly closed questions without bringing the citations required. I'm not saying at all that SO was without it's flaws in leadership, moderators, community or anything else that made the site what it was. But if you're going to complain, at least bring examples, especially when you have someone here you could hold somewhat accountable.

The problem is, you still see a lot of it today, whether it's in IRC channels, Discord chats, StackOverflow or GitHub issues. People still don't know how to ask questions:

* [1] * [2] * [3]

[0]: https://blog.adamcameron.me/2012/12/need-help-know-how-to-as... [1]: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/10670 [2]: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/10649 [3]: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/issues/6515