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Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

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Meta Questions easily answered by studying a beginner-level book

How to ask says: Do some research Before asking a new question, first take a look around. Has your question been asked before here on Software Development Codidact? You can do a search for keyw...

posted 2y ago by meriton‭  ·  edited 2y ago by meriton‭

Answer
#2: Post edited by user avatar meriton‭ · 2021-11-26T20:22:23Z (over 2 years ago)
  • [How to ask](https://software.codidact.com/help/how-to-ask) says:
  • > **Do some research**
  • >
  • > Before asking a new question, first take a look around. Has your question been asked before here on Software Development Codidact? You can do a search for keywords related to your question, or take to your favorite search engine to see if your answer is already there on Codidact.
  • >
  • > In addition to just making sure your question hasn't been asked already here on Codidact, take a few moments to search beyond the site. If you put your question title into a search engine, can you find the answer to your question in the first three results? If so, perhaps consider alternative ways of sharing that information here on Codidact, or writing a self-answered question to share that knowledge.
  • I think that is the correct location to communicate this.
  • In particular, I think calling such a question off-topic is misleading, because it is not the topic, in general, that is off, but the question itself.
  • As for actions, the most helpful response I can think of is to point OP to a resource answering their question. That could be done in a comment, or even an answer. That should deter help vampires, but give honestly confused rookies (who accidentally got their hands on a very poor resource and don't know that much better resources exist) a chance.
  • [How to ask](https://software.codidact.com/help/how-to-ask) says:
  • > **Do some research**
  • >
  • > Before asking a new question, first take a look around. Has your question been asked before here on Software Development Codidact? You can do a search for keywords related to your question, or take to your favorite search engine to see if your answer is already there on Codidact.
  • >
  • > In addition to just making sure your question hasn't been asked already here on Codidact, take a few moments to search beyond the site. If you put your question title into a search engine, can you find the answer to your question in the first three results? If so, perhaps consider alternative ways of sharing that information here on Codidact, or writing a self-answered question to share that knowledge.
  • I think that is the correct location to communicate this.
  • In particular, I think calling such a question off-topic is misleading, because it is not the topic, in general, that is off, but the question itself. For instance, one can ask really deep questions about arrays, even though most questions about arrays are easily answered by every tutorial.
  • As for actions, the most helpful response I can think of is to point OP to a resource answering their question. That could be done in a comment, or even an answer. That should deter help vampires, but give honestly confused rookies (who accidentally got their hands on a very poor resource and don't know that much better resources exist) a chance.
#1: Initial revision by user avatar meriton‭ · 2021-11-26T20:17:43Z (over 2 years ago)
[How to ask](https://software.codidact.com/help/how-to-ask) says:

> **Do some research**
> 
> Before asking a new question, first take a look around. Has your question been asked before here on Software Development Codidact? You can do a search for keywords related to your question, or take to your favorite search engine to see if your answer is already there on Codidact.
>
> In addition to just making sure your question hasn't been asked already here on Codidact, take a few moments to search beyond the site. If you put your question title into a search engine, can you find the answer to your question in the first three results? If so, perhaps consider alternative ways of sharing that information here on Codidact, or writing a self-answered question to share that knowledge.

I think that is the correct location to communicate this.

In particular, I think calling such a question off-topic is misleading, because it is not the topic, in general, that is off, but the question itself.

As for actions, the most helpful response I can think of is to point OP to a resource answering their question. That could be done in a comment, or even an answer. That should deter help vampires, but give honestly confused rookies (who accidentally got their hands on a very poor resource and don't know that much better resources exist) a chance.