[civilized]

Both problems come from hiding assumptions in an attempt to focus on a conclusion, which is presumed to be the only relevant information. That's not a bad thing to do in general -- we always have to be selective what we communicate. It's only bad if your hidden assumptions are wrong.

[cjbgkagh]

I wouldn’t say bad as I would maybe say sub-optimal but unavoidable - assumptions have to be made. I’m assuming the ‘bad’ comes from the cumulative ‘microagressions’ to which I would prefer people just toughened-up a whole lot.

Quite often the person asking questions is a newcomer and is on the path to making the same newbie mistakes we all made when we started. Knowing what question to ask is half the battle.

I got pulled into HR by a young intern for not answering her stated question and instead suggested she was taking the wrong approach and offered an alternative approach. It was clear to all involved that my assumption was indeed correct but she still took it as a condescending slight. It seemed like to me she was looking for reasons to take offense.

I stopped helping her or other interns after that, let the young’uns figure it out for themselves. I figured my time would be better spent shielding myself from the consequences of the coming competency crisis.

[civilized]

I would like to offer a different perspective than the one you are getting from a couple other folks. Not being in the room it's hard for me to be sure, but my guess is that both of the following are true:

1. The person you tried to help could have taken your suggestions in the spirit intended, rather than leaning on a threatening or insulting interpretation of them.

2. You could structure your response in a way that would make your good intentions clear and make the other person more open to the information and less likely to feel threatened or slighted.

It could even be that, from some reasonable perspective, the other person is 100% to blame for the negative outcome, and still, at the same time, you have the ability to avoid such things in the future by adjusting your approach. It's like defensive driving: I'd rather not have accidents at all, and if it's possible to avoid them, I adjust my driving style accordingly. Regardless of how poorly others drive and how much to blame they'd be for accidents I prevented by being defensive.

That way, we can hopefully get the enjoyment of helping others, and the gratitude of those who are more inclined to be grateful, without the trouble of unintentionally angering those whose response is more... complex.

[falserum]

I bet that problem was not the answer but how you did it.

[cjbgkagh]

Well the end the result is now I don't answer questions, except occasionally on HN. The end result of all this mansplaining / geeksplaining is nosplaing. I just hope we can make AIs advanced enough to take over before the wheels fall off.

She went on to accuse a bunch of other people of some other nonsense so it was really a matter of time rather than the manner in which I answered questions.

[bmer]

I think this is a win-win for everyone involved.

In the highly likely case where your answers are crap, the world is spared yet another person who thinks they are well-suited to add to the mess. In the equally possible case where your answers are not crap, you are spared having to deal with people who cannot appreciate your campaign medals.

nosplaining is great. Welcome to how most of us live.

[cjbgkagh]

"In the highly likely case where your answers are crap" hahahaha.

I think there is a natural impulse to want to help others but there has been a shift of dynamic where the flood of newbs with their entitlement and hostility to those helping them has pushed knowledgeable and helpful people away. And now the newbs can only talk to each other where they can reinforce each others ignorance with the false perception that what they know is correct because they perceive it to be the consensus.

The suggested requirement to avoid the microaggression is to answer both X and Y even when most likely X is irrelevant on the off chance that it isn't. According to some I'm not even allowed to XY probe and must answer both aspects in full to avoid offence. Sure; let me do more free work for you. I used to have some of my code available as open source but got sick of the barrage of questions by those who fail to do even the modicum of effort to understand what they're doing and then get mad at you when you don't provide the exact worked solution to their problem.

People no longer fail to learn, other people have failed to teach them. It's a complete abandonment of personal responsibility. Sure, at this stage I'm shouting into the wind but I think things are going to get really bad really quickly and I feel sorry for those who will have to endure the consequences.

[bmer]

I disagree: I don't think there's a pure natural impulse to want to help others. It's usually coated with a bunch of other stuff, inadvertently (e.g. when dealing with attractive members of the opposite sex: wanting to prove our value; or when dealing with requests for help within an organization beyond what our job descriptions require: we hope that people will recognize that as we stand we are "undervalued").

I don't think the suggested "requirement" (?) to avoid microagression is to answer both X and Y. I think the suggestion to avoid microagression is to avoid using the term microagression in the first place.

Another one would be to recognize that you are fully within your rights to not offer help where it's not your job to offer help. No one cares if you choose not to answer support requests for your open source project, nor will the world suffer for it.

On the flip side, you can't expect those you do help to care enough to show you respect for your help either. If being respected and/or people making special allowances for your tone is something you do care about, well, then don't help to begin with. Contrary to our self-centered worries, the world will go on fine without us. It might even go on better without us; who is to say, after all? Most certainly not us.

Here's a piece of advice I keep hearing from people who are more powerful than me (Usually, these were also people older than me, but that is becoming less true as I grow older myself.): you're owed absolutely nothing. No one is.

Most human beings on this planet live in full awareness of that fact. So its only a matter of time until those who don't, end up learning that too.

[falserum]

Might be abit too dramatic regarding consequences.

Mentoring is force multiplier in virtualy all scenarios, but there is a fraction of people who are self starting eager readers, that will manage to get out of the newbie stage on their own (as long as they are not actively sabotaged).

Btw. You sound overburned. Btw2. I find being selective of whom to help, very healthy for me.