[skohan]

Did you reflect on the case that actually you might be the smug one in this scenario, assuming that every person who asks a question doesn’t know what they are talking about, and you know better than them?

I have experienced this many times, and it’s extremely frustrating, when people ask for the context, and I answer something to the effect of:

> the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know

And people will still insist that you don’t know what you are talking about and this must be an XY problem.

Even in the case that someone might be wondering down the wrong path, it’s more valuable for the community to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. That’s how we become experts, not from blindly trusting the “authority” of people who spend a lot of time earning karma on Stack Overflow.

I think it’s good to answer a question in the form: “this seems like a strange question because X, but here is the answer”. It’s also fine to ask for context.

But it’s quite arrogant to harass someone into providing context until you are satisfied they are solving a problem in a way you deem worthy. If you don’t like the question you’re free to not engage with it.

[pickledish]

> > the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know

I dunno, I mean, to me this just sounds like the "senior developer" phrasing of the same logic that the noob was using in the linked page. The core problem is that you don't know what you don't know, right, and no one is immune to that, regardless of age or experience.

IMO that we should all try to avoid believing things that sound like "I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know", since -- while we may be right pretty often (maybe even more often than not!), there will be times we're wrong, and in those times, our attitude about it will make us even harder to help than the "noob".

[skohan]

In some cases the context is hard to explain because it's complex, or it relates to something about the domain of the use-cases which is very particular to this implementation. If all you need is some small detail, like how to accomplish something with X library, it would be a waste of everyones time to write several paragraphs to explain some context which will be irrelevant to everyone else.

[albedoa]

> the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know

Oh man, I field questions on a technical subreddit, and you wouldn't believe the sheer number of non-expert askers who confidently believe this. It doesn't take much follow-up to realize that not only is the context easy to explain for anyone who truly understands it, but the asker is actually asking about X.

You are one in a million, congrats. The vast majority of people who say what you said are bringing their own arrogance, simultaneously accepting that they need help while preparing to reject the help of the actual experts they are appealing to.

> “this seems like a strange question because X, but here is the answer”

This is a good first response and how I answer suspected XY Problems. It often leads to the asker reevaluating their assumptions, which is a valuable teaching moment and the goal if my true motivation is to help people.

[uoaei]

The simplest way I can put it is, be careful that you're not rationalizing when you ought to be reasoning.

The former is the main source of the XY problem, and comes up very often in cases where people are stuck and asking for help. The main issue they would be having is that they're framing the problem incorrectly in their heads and working through the logic of the ideal solution based on faulty grounds.

I would like to point out the subtle irony in responding to these comments with a meta-scale XY problem: you think your problem is other people don't see the Y for what it is (people don't understand my questions are really about Y and not about X), while you are yourself blind to the X (I may not be framing my problem correctly in my mind which is leading to my overconfidence that it is Y and not X).

[matsemann]

If you know what you're talking about so well, why is it so hard to explain the context? You know the old saying about if you can't explain something, you don't really understand it.

If you know what you're talking about so well, why are you unable to solve your problem? Perhaps the context would help someone help you.

If you can't be bothered, don't bother asking for others to use their own time to help you.