> I wish there was a guide for "proper" SO questions; my impression is, the only ones are super-detailed questions about some super-particular APIs.
And those questions can in most cases be answered by the docs anyway. The times I've used SO is when the problem can't be answered by the docs, my own experience or that of the team, but then I've received either no answer or a series of non-answers (that should have been comments instead, but a lot of people can't comment).
I also see quite a bit of overt reputation farming there. Like vague questions that receive an improbably precise answer that immediately gets selected. Like "how do u process payments?" (the orthography is usually bad) immediately followed by very specific instructions from a very specific payment processor not mentioned in the question, probably taken straight from its documentation. And I rarely see "closed as too broad" on those, probably because of the quick turn-around.
And those questions can in most cases be answered by the docs anyway. The times I've used SO is when the problem can't be answered by the docs, my own experience or that of the team, but then I've received either no answer or a series of non-answers (that should have been comments instead, but a lot of people can't comment).
I also see quite a bit of overt reputation farming there. Like vague questions that receive an improbably precise answer that immediately gets selected. Like "how do u process payments?" (the orthography is usually bad) immediately followed by very specific instructions from a very specific payment processor not mentioned in the question, probably taken straight from its documentation. And I rarely see "closed as too broad" on those, probably because of the quick turn-around.