Is Ask Ubuntu about solving actual problems?

Question

I am pretty sure I am stating a risky question here, and maybe it is the hot weather that makes me see things in a different way, but what is the main goal of what we are doing on AU?

The reason for asking is that -I imagine increasingly- AU is flooded with programming- related questions with a seemingly realistic value, but actually can be solved in one or two lines in any language. Nevertheless they generate a huge voting activity and a lot of answers, as if they were life saving issues.

Although I, as well as many others, benefit of it every now and then, I have the feeling these questions, even if it is bash, grep, awk or whatever language, should be asked elsewhere, unless they have at least some real practical value and are related to an existing problem of OP. It is a bit weird that maybe (just a guess) 50% of my reputation I earned in less than 5% of my spent time here, and mostly on answering questions, that, if we are honest, are about completely nothing.

Answer 1

I'm afraid your question is too vague for me to understand what class of questions you are referring to. I will therefore base this answer on the information you gave in your comment where you pointed out this Q&A as the one that prompted this discussion. You considered it:

[...] a made up problem, not to solve an existing issue, but just with the intention to create a broad collection of answers. That makes it a purely programmatic question [...]

Well, anything involving computers could be considered a programming question since computers are useless with no software running on them. However, basic system administration tasks like file renaming or other manipulation are right at the core of this site's topic. How could they not be?

I think you are seeing this as programming simply because you tend to use python for everything so, of course, you end up writing programs. There's nothing wrong with that but because you're so good at python, I get the feeling you're not really aware of the general purpose POSIX tools that all Linux flavors have by default.

Tools like grep (which is not a language, by the way) and rename do not require programming knowledge to run them. The fact that you would approach an issue with a python script does not mean that the question was about programming.

The question you highlight is a case in point. It is a broad question asking about way of removing an extra character from many file names. That is a problem that i) could indeed be shared by future users; ii) can be used to highlight the abilities of the various tools making the answers easily adaptable to other problems.

I think that's where your pythonista view is clouding the issue. A python (or Perl, for that matter) script written to solve a particular problem is almost always "giving a man a fish". A solution using the core utilities available on any *nix system, one that highlights what these utilities can do, is usually "teaching a man to fish".

In other words, an answer showing a python or perl script that can rename files can be fun but it is unlikely to help someone who doesn't know how to hack in those languages already. An answer using grep and regular expressions opens a whole world of possibilities that require no programming knowledge whatsoever except, perhaps, a working knowledge of regex.

More to the point, where would we be without these questions? Personally, I have no interest participating in a site whose questions are 90% "no wirlesses helps plase" and "black screen no X server". I find them uninteresting, repetitive and boring. They don't challenge me to find an answer. if I can give one, I either know it already or just need to spend the 5 minutes googling that the OP was too lazy to dedicate.

As for actual problems, yes, that's part of the site's mandate but not its entirety. The SE sites also aim to become a "repository of knowledge". For example, my post on U&L about replacing strings has received 168930 views at the time of writing and more than a hundred votes. There was no problem to solve there, however it serves to highlight certain commonly available tools and the things you can do with them, it serves as an answer to many similar questions. It's a reference. That is a Good Thing©.

So, in conclusion, no, the site is not only for "real" problems. It is also for imagined ones which, however, bear a close resemblance to everyday problems users might face. If you don't like these questions, just ignore them. As you can see, many of us like them and welcome them. Work on others if you don't. There's room for all of us! :)

Answer 2

What's your objection to them? That they get too much attention or that they seem too abstract? Who decides what "practical value" means to a user?

They generate so much activity because of the type of problem they are. You can't debug a kernel module or resize partitions nineteen different ways, but I don't see that as a fault of the problem, it's just programmers showing off as they are wont to do.

And that's a reason why having this sort of question around is probably a good thing. It brings people in. I've seen people learn things in one question and apply them to help another user. The site's value and ability to attract users is based on our wide range of topics and fervour to answer them.

I'll agree that the lasting value of some of the text-processing questions "convert this format to that format" can seem pretty small but again, who are we to say whether or not it's a real problem or that it won't help anybody in the future? Every problem was original once.

Ultimately I don't think these questions are a problem. I know this changes, but only one of the current newest fifty posts are one of "these" questions. If that becomes one-in-ten or higher, we might have a scope issue.

Answer 3

I think I can answer this one, because I'm an extensive user of the questions you're talking about. Point by point:

[...] AU is flooded with programming- related questions with a seemingly realistic value, but actually can be solved in one or two lines in any language.

I.e.:

What's the value of such questions?

• For the asker: the most an answer can give him, since it solves its problem;
• For the answerer: the most the answerer can learn from answering it; personally, I've learned a lot just in trying to answer those kind of questions;
• For the others: usually nothing, aside from what they are willing (if they are willing) to learn from a given answer, unless they have the exact same problem, unless they somehow manage to adapt an existing answer to their specific problem or unless the problem is wide-spread enough. So, overall, I totally agree with the fact that such questions are usually so narrowed and specific they won't help the majority of the users experiencing a similiar problem;

Nevertheless they generate a huge voting activity and a lot of answers, as if it were live saving issues.

I agree with this. Being honest I have to say I've earned the most of my reputation from those, and some were really excessively upvoted, while I gave a couple of way more interesting answers, one here and one on Unix & Linux which, at least IMO, would have deserved it way more. But shrug, people upvote the answers to questions they are interested in that they can deem as helpful, not the one they are not sure or have no idea about (this as a general rule). In any case, going to the point, questions should be upvoted only when well written and useful. Answers should be upvoted regardless, because this is necessary to identify the best answers and that's how the system works. Personally I agree with the fact that being their scope so limited, unless really covering frequent problems of text-processing such as, say, removing duplicate lines from a file, such questions should not be upvoted.

TL;DR

• In 99% of the cases, such questions are useful to the posters, to the answerers and to a very low number of other users;
• They indeed generate lots of reputation to their askers and to the answerers; the problem is that these kind of questions shouldn't be upvoted if not really of interest; good answers, on the other hand, should be upvoted regardless, because this is necessary to identify the best answers; I agree that the amount of reputation generated is excessive, however this is due to how the system works and due to the high number of users partecipating in such questions.

So, in a nutshell: I think those questions should be kept, mainly because they are useful to the askers; I won't deny they somehow introduce a reputation problem. However I also think that this is not solvable. People are interested in them and vote on them (me included), what are we going to do? Setting those questions as off-topic would indeed solve the reputation problem but mainly would decrease, in my opinion inacceptably, the value of the community for the askers.

Answer 4

The main goal of Free/Libre Open Source Software is to advance the human race without any intellectual encumbrants. AU is to allow you to contribute to the advancement of FLOSS, therefore you're just helping to advance the human race... :-)

Whether it's getting a server back on-line, finally convincing someone to actually take back-ups or convert a text file meaningless to you but used to sort data on retro-viruses finding the ultimate cure to cancer, doesn't really matter, does it?

Tip: When you hit 20K and you're an established user, take a small break from answering questions, go lie on a beach somewhere, read a good book and stay away from the site for a week or so. Even top-level guys like you need a break every now and then and it seems you need a break! ;-) :P

Answer 5

Well, this forum is for asking questions and getting them solved. As long as they are related to Ubuntu, then asking those questions is ok. because AU is about learning and getting to know Ubuntu much better with the help of other people from around the world.

Answer 6

Ask Ubuntu is about solving any and all Ubuntu-related problems, rather, Ask Ubuntu is about generating documentation for Ubuntu in Q&A format collaboratively.

What's the purpose of documentation? Obviously, it's only there to help users solve their problems, but there are some problems that documentation is simply not the solution to.

(Programming can benefit from documentation, for example, but something like vim vs emacs battle can't be resolved through documentation.)