I have tried to ask questions two times in the last few months and the responses were pretty much "if you don't know what you are doing you should hire an expert" or "why would would anyone do such a thing?". I definitely didn't feel very welcome and will stop posting there. It seems most questions that get answers are very simple and straightforward ones. Difficult stuff doesn't get discussed.
I've had mixed results. 75% of the time I get good responses, 25% I get berated. I really, really try to form good, formatted questions though.
But the site has been flooded by newbies and ESL people who just will not or cannot format and state their posts correctly. Or people that really shouldn't be programming in the first place, or at least--should learn how to use other documentation first. So there's a lot of chaff, in their defense.
Perhaps in the first case the question you asked was too broad compared to the standard expected for SO questions? Or too precise to be of use to anyone else?
The question was pretty broad but I think discussing it would have been very valuable for quite a few people. What bothered me were the snide responses. At minimum they should have stayed quiet or explained that SO doesn't deal with this kind of question.
Ironically most of the more helpful SO google results are helpful exactly because of the discussion/updates that took place in the comment chain under an answer from ten years earlier.
> Guys how do I filter an array in JavaScript?!
>> Use XYZ
>>> XYZ works, but it doesn't work in IE5
>>>> If you're on IE10 or above you can use ABC instead of XYZ, it is cleaner!
>>>>> Hey guys, change this {} to this {}, makes it faster on mobile!
Ideally, those 'discussions' would be incorporated into an answer, if only a new answer. Even-more-ideally, a single (most-upvoted) answer would incorporate all of the info from other answers and subsequent comments. That, of course, doesn't happen that often.
Every Wikipedia article has a talk page. But that doesn't mean that the purpose of the site is discussion. I think the same thing applies to SO.
If SO not for discussion is there a forum where you can discuss broad software architecture? Something with a spirit like HN where not everything is on topic but usually discussions are respectful and interesting.
This implies a clearer distinction between answer and opinion than exists in actual reality. There's a second assumption here, which is that there exists one ideal answer for each possible question, which is also wrong.