This mainly relates to tech communities, but certainly applies elsewhere. I’m just so sick of seeing a constant flood of basic questions being posted that would’ve been better off as a search query.
Instead of communities being a wealth of discussion and a place to learn/exchange knowledge and ideas, it feels like most have about 10-20% solid content at best, and 80-90% useless noise: “How do I X?”, “What Linux Distro should I use?”, “What does Y mean?”
Like, I’m all for asking questions, but I prefer to help those who help themselves. Is this all the result of iPad kid syndrome or something?
If you’re willing to take the time to post a simple question that 50 other people have already asked within the last week instead of taking 5 seconds to search for an answer (that’ll probably be the first result on any search engine), your thought process makes no sense to me and I can’t see you as anything other than a complete nuisance to the community/fediverse.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Counterpoint: Having those questions posited here does mean we can start getting fediverse traction in Google. Even if it’s a tiny amount.
I see where you’re coming from. “Any publicity is good publicity”, as they say. So, sure… traction is good for overall visibility. I agree. We do need more of that.
To counter your counter, for the sake of discussion:
If the traction is built on semi-incoherent noise, doesn’t that feel precarious? Artificial, even? Kinda reminds me of bot-boosting, where you’d see a big initial uptick in views and maybe drum up some actual buzz. But in the long term, it’s either a fart in the wind, or it backfires altogether and ends up fueling a negative public opinion.
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