Ask HN: Where can you safely ask beginner-level questions online in 2023?

[whitfieldsdad]

What are some of your favourite websites for asking beginner-level questions where you won't be laughed out of the room for being a beginner say, 30-50% of the time?

Facebook seems hit or miss - some Facebook groups are okay with beginners, others hate them.

Twitter is prone to the no-network effect where you can only really ask questions if you have a strong follower base that's open to answering your questions - nobody really uses hashtags, so, you have to be a "reply guy" if you want to ask questions.

Reddit is nice, but I was banned from Reddit for life for saying that the new Harry Potter game looks good and probably isn't a call to arms for Nazis - trying to be a voice of reason, rather than a Nazi, or, whatever I got banned from the platform for life for - and haven't bothered setting up Tor yet.

Quora seems interesting, but, I don't like it.

Hacker News seems great, but, it's more for intermediate to advanced audiences.

Stack Exchange seems great, but, it's not a great place for beginners - like Hacker News, it seems more well-suited to intermediate to advanced audiences, or, people who can articulate beginner level questions in a way that's non-offensive to more experienced users.

Slack and Discord are probably the most beginner-friendly in my opinion, but only if you either ask very, very, very short questions in the right channels.

Are there any other websites these days that I should be looking at?

I'm looking to learn more about different things as a beginner, since, shamefully, I don't know everything about everything that has ever existed, or will ever exist, but, find that if you want to learn more about something, you need to be an intermediate to advanced-level practitioner first.

I've found that on entertainment-focused websites like Facebook and Twitter I'll get insults and zingers back rather than helpful information if there's any way that my question can be deliberately misinterpreted to make the asker of a given question look bad (i.e. for the lulz).

For example, yesterday I asked if the clothes you wear while riding a bicycle at 20-30kph matter in terms of aerodynamic resistance and most people "laughed" at me for not knowing that air exists, that drag exists, for not being able to solve my question with pen and paper and basic high school math, etc.

Is there any website on the Internet in 2023 where you can ask questions as a beginner, or as someone who doesn't have hundreds to thousands of hours of experience in a given field without getting "owned" and made a mockery of?

Or, is there a more pragmatic, righteous path?

If so, what is the righteous path to asking questions as a beginner - a non-expert in a given area - in 2023?

[dazamarquez]

Step 1: Ask ChatGPT. You can throw at it literally whatever poorly framed question you have and it will come up with a reply right away. The more basic and well udnerstood the subject matter is, the more accurate its responses will be.

ChatGPT is invaluable at this stage because it will correctly guess what you are talking about even if you don't know how to formulate your questions. The typical problem beginners face is that they don't know how to describe things with the correct technical terminology. This makes it hard to find results by just Googling stuff, because that stuff is (hopefully) written by people who are experts and experts use the right terminology. You don't.

Step 2: once you are familiar with the basic terminology, verify ChatGPT responses against wikipedia or any other expert resources. Mind you that at this stage you are still doing your own research.

Step 3: once you are able to productively frame your questions, refine your knowledge by asking in expert forums.

Step 4: repeat

In step 1 you obviously can replace ChatGPT with actual human tutors. My point is, don't go to expert forums unless you know how to frame your questions.

[wruza]

Besides chatgpt, you’re expected to do your own research before asking. Stable communities may be unwelcoming to this because newbie questions are repetitive and tedious to answer thoroughly, even assuming no diligence issues. For example, if you google your cycling question as is, there’s a whole results page on that matter. There’s a lot of detailed youtube videos for the same query. It’s hard to even imagine a question today that could be low-informed and at the same time unanswered. And personally I always hated waiting and also the mockery you described. The latter is a bad manner, but the ones who respond first also tend to be the “less busy”, so adjust your expectations here.

Basically before chatgpt the answer was “web search”.

[nojs]

Honestly ChatGPT is really good for this. You can ask stupid questions all day and the more basic they are, the more likely it is to know the answers. I use it all the time to get a basic understanding of topics that I know nothing about.

[whitfieldsdad]

Honestly, I probably ask ChatGPT 3-10 "stupid questions" a day.

Yesterday, I asked ChatGPT which file formats are most popular for storing knowledge graphs in flatfiles, and loved that I didn't have to spend the remainder of the afternoon apologizing for being as dumb as an apple or an egg.

I wonder if my main problem is that I don't know the level at which most people are at, or aim to be at before asking questions, since everyone experiences some level of hostility on the Internet, and surely people have a strategy for reducing how much hatemail they get on a given day.

Browsing Wikipedia works, and so does searching through GitHub for anchoring points of reference, but, I wish that there was an easier way - it'd be incredible if I could just, ask someone what my starting point should be, and where I should go from there - but, alas, this is the mark of a failed man.

[narag]

... and loved that I didn't have to spend the remainder of the afternoon apologizing for being as dumb as an apple or an egg.

The unfriendly people out there is just bad people. Real experts don't get angry at newbies, don't tell you that your question is wrong. Answers are wrong, questions aren't. Someone giving you a rude answer has probably something very wrong going on in his life and needs to feel smart at others' expense.

Unfortunately this behaviour has generalized. I've been trying to ask questions in unfamiliar areas and it's easier to educate myself than asking for help online.

[philomath_mn]

ChatGPT has infinite patience for the most basic questions, I'd probably start there. Yeah it makes things up and doesn't have personal experience, but you could probably get a decent answer (or at least a direction for further inquiry) after a few back and forth questions.

I thought its answer to the biking question was reasonable, give it a try.

Outside of that, you probably need some people that you know personally -- that should cut down on the unwanted pushback.

[turtleyacht]

If your questions already exist, search for those.

Look up your local public library's online catalog. Some even provide free access to Udemy, Libby, and Overdrive. Some of those have content (free) from Great Courses, for example.

Try free online textbooks. Make small experiments on your own. Write up your experiences.

Who knows; maybe someone had the same question.

[h2odragon]

Part of it may be that since wikipedia etc exists; you're "supposed to do your homework" before even asking. The idea that people might discuss things from and in a state of ignorance as a means of learning or even just social interaction, rather than from laziness ... that's not something most people think of. "Sophomoric discussion" is an insult now, somehow.

It's fun how often things that "everybody knows" are, once you get someone talking about them, not actually as well known and universally agreed as everyone seems to take for granted.

[whitfieldsdad]

I've noticed this phenomenon as well - all knowledge that has ever been documented is considered common knowledge these days, but, most people don't have a working understanding of it.

It's sort of like the dirty little secret of the 21st century - knowledge is power - therefore you must know everything to be powerful - therefore, by faking advanced level knowledge of all things is the shortest route to becoming all-powerful.

So, we have all of these people who get upset by beginners because they're the weakest, least powerful people - even if we're only powerful because we've lied about the things we have a working knowledge about (e.g. quantum physics, how vaccines work, the pros and cons of wearing a skin-tight latex bodysuit vs. a t-shirt and jeans while riding your bicycle to the grocery store to get milk because it makes you 5% faster).

[thfuran]

"Sophomoric" was never a compliment.

[whitfieldsdad]

I don't really understand the meaning of sophomoric discussion, but, is it basically being open to, and discussing thoughts, ideas, concepts, etc., that you're not an expert in?

Isn't talking about, and exploring things that you're not an expert in, good, rather than bad, as that's how you learn new things?

[thfuran]

>Isn't talking about, and exploring things that you're not an expert in, good, rather than bad, as that's how you learn new things?

Potentially, but that's not what "sophomoric" means. It's roughly the intersection of overconfident and immature.

[whitfieldsdad]

Ah, gotcha, I didn't realize that sophomore was an insult - I just thought it meant you were a student

[thfuran]

It is in reference to sophomore year as the second year of study—being like a kid who has studied a bit and fancies that they now know a lot. But "sophomore" itself doesn't have the negative connotation.

[rrmdp]

ChatGPT is your friend :)