[Pimpus]

It took two seconds to find an example in my stackoverflow browser history: [0]

> Question: Hide Show content-list with only CSS, no javascript used

> Comment: Behavior is supposed to only exist in the realm of JavaScript.

But my favorite example is the following, which I sacrificed a couple of minutes looking for because the exchange was so instructive: [1]

> Question: How can I replace text with CSS?

> Comment 1: To be honest it might be best to use javascript for this.

> Comment 2: The question is how to do it with CSS. I am using a CMS that only allows me to change the CSS, which is why I arrived at this page while googling for the answer, and not a different one. That is why we answer the question that was asked instead of asking why the asker's situation isn't different.

The thing people forget is that the question is not just about the person asking it, but about people coming across the question e.g. through Google who have to waste their time sifting through idiotic non-answers. For better or worse, SO tends to be ranked highly on Google for development-related queries and I've come to subconsciously ignore it because of its uselessness, in general.

[0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17731457/hide-show-conte...

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7896402/how-can-i-replac...

[olavk]

For the first question, there are 12 answers providing pure CSS solutions. One of them is marked as accepted by the OP, which indicates it solved their problem.

Then there is a single comment (not an answer) which says "you are not supposed to do that", which have received a single upvote.

You say "people won't bother", but in reality, 12 people have bothered and provided detailed solutions with code. What more could you want?

I don't really see the major problem here.

The second question has 23 answers, the top one having 186 upvotes. And then there is a single comment (not an answer), saying JS is more appropriate for this, and a reply from the OP explaining why it needs to be pure CSS.

Comments are for asking questions, request clarifications and providing information which does not constitute a regular answer. This seems to work exactly as intended. Several answers make it clear that the CSS solution is more fragile and worse supported than a JS solution, so I think it is pretty relevant to ask the OP (absent any information either way) if they couldn't use JS instead.

I really have a hard time seeing the problem here?

[Pimpus]

> Then there is a single comment (not an answer) which says "you are not supposed to do that", which have received a single upvote.

This comment should be deleted as it's blatantly off-topic and a waste of time. OK, let's forget about question one, since I found it in two seconds.

> Comments are for asking questions, request clarifications and providing information which does not constitute a regular answer.

> Several answers make it clear that the CSS solution is more fragile and worse supported than a JS solution

As you say here, the questioning ("clarification") of the question isn't limited to comments. It's easy to mentally ignore comments, but when you have to read through half an answer just to get past the BS... and besides, the CSS solutions in that thread certainly are fragile and bad, but that has nothing to do with CSS being appropriate or not and more because the answers are, well, terrible. CSS is perfectly capable of doing what the question asked for in a robust manner, and it avoids changing the page on-load which is a bad user experience (not that any web developers actually care...) and certainly no less fragile (assuming JS is even turned on in the user's browser).

The problem is people telling others what they should do, and I don't want random people trying to dictate what I should be doing -- especially not people giving answers like those. Actually, a couple of the answers are OK, and somewhat explanatory, but the rest are just BS that throw code at you, which is useless and a waste of everyone's time. To be fair, web development answers on SO are the lowest-quality generally speaking. I'm pretty satisfied with using SO for answers about e.g. Emacs.

> I really have a hard time seeing the problem here?

Uh, seriously?

[olavk]

I don't follow - are you saying you know of a better solution than the ones proposed in the thread? And you are angry that this better solution is not already posted?

[bmm6o]

It's worth emphasizing that for the first example, the answer was provided free of charge within an hour. I don't think I agree with any assessment in which this is not an unqualified success.

[Pimpus]

> It's worth emphasizing that for the first example, the answer was provided free of charge within an hour.

It shows -- the quality of the answer is quite poor.

> I don't think I agree with any assessment in which this is not an unqualified success.

This made me laugh. I guess the only assessment you considered is your own, which simplistically assumed time to answer is the most important factor.

And yet, not a single soul finding this question on Google cares if the answer took an hour or two days. Apart from you, I guess.

[bmm6o]

> It shows -- the quality of the answer is quite poor.

Are we talking about the same question? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17731457/hide-show-conte... I'll admit that it's not always easy to judge if an answer is useful to someone else, but it looks to me like it answers the question, the user "accepted" it, and it has 23 points. What makes you say it's "poor"?

> I guess the only assessment you considered is your own

The only strike against it you cite is some push-back in a comment... What else do you have against it?

> which simplistically assumed time to answer is the most important factor.

On top of the user accepting it, it having 23 points, it answering the question, etc.

I mean, I think I would be pleased with the outcome if I were the OP. I think I would be pleased to find that answer if I came from a Google search. If you honestly think that this is an example of "people continuously questioning the poster's motive" and exemplifies what you don't like about SO, then yeah, I don't agree with your assessment. It's not an attack on you, chill out.

[dspillett]

> I am using a CMS that only allows me to change the CSS

The problem there is not the person commenting/answering being self-righteous, but the original poster not providing sufficient context for the question. People on the other side of the Internet are no more clairvoyant than anyone else, so aren't likely to guess that such a restriction is in play and currently unavoidable.

> That is why we answer the question that was asked instead of asking why the asker's situation isn't different.

Speaking of self-righteousness: when I see that sort of tone from someone asking for help I tend to walk away and go find someone else to assist (or something else to do entirely).

[BeetleB]

After reading the exchange on SO, I agree: Questioning motives is the right thing to do. The problem isn't that people are questioning the motives. The problem is that we have to. The question is very reasonable within a certain context, and it is the responsibility of the person posing the question to point out that context.

For me personally, it has happened a bunch of times that I Googled something, which led me to SO, where the answer was "Don't try to do it the way you're asking - the better way is X". I'm really glad I got those answers because I was educated about why what I was trying to do was bad and how to do it properly. The times where I really needed to do it the poor way are a small minority.