[embedding-shape]

- Open issue on GitHub issues: Maintainer closes issue citing "Bug reports only"

- Open question on SO: Moderators close because it's too specific to a library

- Ask on IRC: Get piled on for not using the right vocabulary and your IP isn't masked

- Ask the LLM: Get hallucinated answer based on old API docs

- Ask technical lead: Get burned for asking basic question and put on PIP

- Ask my mom: She doesn't know enough computer to know the answer, but in explaining the problem to her, I finally figured out what I got wrong

[jeanlucas]

Usually #1 actually works, most cases, and missing discord, several healthy communities on Discord nowadays

[alloyed]

yep! 90% of the time if i have a question about a project there's a discussions tab that can take my question with a nearly identical interface to stack overflow's, and I can be reasonably sure there will be contributors or maintainers who will see it. Not much point to stack overflow as a second, silo'd site in that world

[antonvs]

You’re using your mom for rubber duck debugging, then. An LLM can work for that as well, usually better because it knows a lot more than your mom.

[embedding-shape]

It's fictional, I never actually got burned by a tech lead nor been put on PIP either, nor asked my mom to help me with programming :)

[antonvs]

That's not really relevant, the point is LLMs are actually pretty good for the scenario you described.

[embedding-shape]

So is IRC, the relevance being that none of what I wrote in my initial comment is actually serious or my actual beliefs.

[inigyou]

SO allows questions that are specific to a library.

[embedding-shape]

I like that out of all of them, that was the most false to you.

[inigyou]

SO closes your question for being a duplicate of some other random question that has nothing to do with yours. That would be true.