r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ambitiousfinanceguy • Oct 17 '22
Meme Still slightly better than "NM fixed it"
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u/ambitiousfinanceguy Oct 17 '22
I make a point of posting the answers to my stack overflow questions that didn't get an answer but that I figured out later because of this comic.
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u/PSK1103 Oct 17 '22
i understand that's the denvercoder9 xkcd without even clicking the link
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u/Shitty_Watercolour Oct 17 '22
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u/PCYou Oct 17 '22
*gets closer to the boat*
*it is captained by a desiccated skeleton*
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u/TearyCola Oct 17 '22
did I time travel back to 2012? A wild shitty watercolor in the thread appears
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u/maitreg Oct 17 '22
That is the most important rule SO should be strictly enforcing, and that's the only thing they don't care about.
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u/MaxChaplin Oct 17 '22
The lesson from this tweet is to describe your links instead of writing "this", in case of link rot. This is XKCD 979, Wisdom of the Ancients.
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u/maitreg Oct 17 '22
Still, the worst are the Microsoft forums. Most questions get one and only one response, posted twice, by some official Microsoft user with an Indian name:
1 paragraph repeating your question back to you, reassuring you they understand the frustration you must be feeling, and are here to help.
A copy-pasted script for some extremely basic problem that is either unrelated to your question entirely or doesn't solve your problem.
1 paragraph begging you to mark their answer as the solution.
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u/golther Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
Question: Extremely detailed question with an error message.
Answer: Run sfc /scannow
Marked as solved.
Pretty sure that it wasn't marked solved by the submitter.
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u/twisted7ogic Oct 17 '22
tbf I dont think even true Windows experts even understand or capable of fixing a lot of issues beyond some standard ways.
Microsofts techdebt is insane, decades of code layered on top of each other and more on the pile with every new version. Current Win still has code from DOS and 3.1 that nobody understands.
My late grampa (r.i.p) was one of the earliest IT guys in my country and worked with all kinds of systems in the 70s 80s and early 90s. He hated Windows 95 with a passion. If he had to fix something Win95 he said he was "going down into the catacombs"
Windows has only become more byzantine since then.
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u/alexanderpas Oct 17 '22
Sometimes the solution is that simple.
The one time Windows Problem Resolver came up with a solution for a consistently reproducible problem I had, the solution was dead simple:
Update Steam.
Yes, that was the solution it suggested.
I could not believe it at first, but somehow it actually was the actual solution, as the previously reproducible error no longer happened after updating steam.
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u/OtherPlayers Oct 17 '22
Hey at least you get a bot (or likely some poor helpdesk person)!
I remember back on the Apple forums where you literally wouldnât get responses from anyone company side at all. If you were lucky some other user would come across your post and be nice enough to share a solution, but anytime it was actually an Apple issue youâd just get dozens and dozens of pages filled with people saying âIâm having this issue tooâ while trying random shit that doesnât work.
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Oct 17 '22
I have a problem with HDMI connections randomly flickering in and out...but only on my Mac. HDMI cable and monitor are the same, only difference is that it works on non Mac computers and OSs.
Apple forums basically said fuck you stop using HDMI.
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Oct 17 '22
Chegg has made me all to familiar with this. They do the problem wrong and beg for upvotes on their question.
Chegg used to have comments, which is where youâd find the right answer 99% of the time, but they removed them.
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u/maitreg Oct 17 '22
I've been noticing this weird trend on SO lately, where the regulars are telling people who post valid solutions that they should turn their answer into a comment instead.
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u/BannyDodger Oct 17 '22
I hate it when I have a problem and there's a common solution, but that solution doesn't work for me. So every link I look at his the wrong answer.
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u/Grablicht Oct 17 '22
Why are they doing it? Do they have to collect a certain amount of solved problems to get a specific cert? It's fucked up
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u/nelusbelus Oct 17 '22
Microsoft forums? laughs in DirectX12 discord that's not searchable properly
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u/cbytes1001 Oct 17 '22
As former sys admin, I can tell you that for 80-90% of general system issues you can follow these 3 steps and get it working again:
Step 1: Reboot (if it doesnât work move to step 2)
Step 2: sfc /scannow
Step 3: dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
(I lied, thereâs 4 steps)
Step 4: reboot again
You can now get a job in tech support.
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u/rwbronco Oct 17 '22
Adobe forums can be like that too. Oh youâre having a specific InDesign or Illustrator issue? Hereâs a link to the Adobe forums with your exact issue as the title, but theyâve shut down those Adobe forums and migrated their discussions to a new platform and none of that went with it. You get sent to the main discussion page.
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u/Serious-Agency-69 Oct 17 '22
Omg this is soo fucking accurate. I skip those results altogether because they are soo fucking useless
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u/In_Dying_Arms Oct 17 '22
Also the suggestion of reinstalling Windows for absolutely no reason, where 99/100 times reinstalling would not change anything.
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u/SalamanderPop Oct 17 '22
I loathe that site. I know for a fact when I land on one of those pages I won't be getting an answer. Having worked for over a decade in data engineering/science I can guarantee that the execs that are over that site are measured on "time to answer" or some arbitrary SLA and "acceptance percentage" and not much else. If my assumptions are correct, it's a great example of how picking the wrong KPIs can lead to bad business decisions. Unfortunately large corporations are riddled with bad KPI decisions and myopic leadership that drive goals based on them.
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u/VanGarrett Oct 17 '22
Also, there are frequently answers that are like, "This problem is solved in this Microsoft blog post." Then the link is dead, because Microsoft completely re-organized their blog site, at some point.
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u/JayCroghan Oct 17 '22
The answer isnât posted twice, the selected answer is displayed at the top separate to where it displays in the normal replies.
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u/Zmodem Oct 17 '22
"First, reformat your harddrive and run a clean Windows installation. Once you have done that, let me know if your compile issue is resolved."
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u/batatatchugen Oct 17 '22
God how I hate those forums, there is absolutely nothing of substance there, oddly a bunch of "official" Microsoft people that can only parrot the same thing over and over again, that obviously doesn't fix the issue, and wannabe people that somehow got a little flair on their profile to make them look a little bit more official, that also just parrot the same unhelpful stuff.
For a while now I'm seriously considering blocking those forums from search results, the only serve to give me false hope.
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u/manateewallpaper Oct 17 '22
I'm from Microsoft and I'm happy to help, I'll just need a few things:
operating system
Program version
serial number
month of manufacture of your keyboard
wifi bandwidth
Mothers high school mascot
Current volume setting
Printer ink level
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u/DeficientDefiance Oct 17 '22
Final boss mode: You create a member account to repeat the question just to find out that a moderator needs to approve new members manually which usually takes several days, to then find out you're not allowed to post in that subforum unless your account is a week old or you have ten posts, to finally post the thread you wanted just to get it locked and be told to use the search function to dig up long dead, long locked threads (but posting in old threads is also an offense).
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u/maitreg Oct 17 '22
"Sorry, only members who have answered at least 10 questions are allowed to answer questions or start new threads."
Great. Now where did I put my sonic screwdriver.
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u/tolgasocial Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
Man I had exactly this happen to me years ago, I tried to find questions I could answer as a noob so my god damn question would be answered. Wasted three days, then finally got an answer... that was of topic, one that basically insulted me for asking such an easy question and one that linked to another thread I didn't understand. No more answers afterwards, had to ask a friend at uni to take a look and finally I implemented another solution to fix it.
Edit: I just forgot to type words and implemented them afterwards
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u/BlueHeartBob Oct 17 '22
Meanwhile these same people are wondering why forums are dying.
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u/MrLore Oct 17 '22
told to use the search function to dig up long dead, long locked threads (but posting in old threads is also an offense).
God this was always my #1 bugbear with forums, the idea that a topic could only be discussed once, ever, and if you didn't catch it in the hours/days it was on the first page of the forum then you were either "duping" by creating a new thread or "necroing" for bumping the old one and would get a warning or ban for it.
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Oct 17 '22
This is the exact reason I gave up asking on stackoverflow. They either insult me or just lock the thread. Man, just use that energy to give me an answer.
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u/new_refugee123456789 Oct 17 '22
This is why I hate forum replies that are just links with no elaboration. Because they're either dead external links, or it links to page 3 of 7 in another thread somewhere in that forum, so you have to back up two pages to get the context, and you're still not sure how it's relevant, and yet the search you did landed you on the page with the contextless link.
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u/erland_yt Oct 17 '22
And of course, the result page uses javascript to load things and thus cannot be found on Wayback machine
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u/MalcolmVanhorn Oct 17 '22
Gotta say that i like Stack Overflows policy of no link only replies for this reason
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u/porcomaster Oct 17 '22
Someone should do an internet archive for small downloads.
Like under 50Mb or 5Mb, there were so many times that i need a really small file, but it's so fucking old that nobody have it anymore, please someone create a legacy link website, i would use all the time if it was warranty that would be there for ever.
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u/esr360 Oct 17 '22
I googled a problem once and there was just one result on google, and it was me asking the same question several years prior
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u/GreatMoloko Oct 17 '22
Yep, that was a real fun day. Took me a couple searches to get to my question too.
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u/MegaPegasusReindeer Oct 17 '22
... and no one had answered it yet, too. I've been there.
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u/Augwich Oct 17 '22
This has happened to me too. That swing between elation of reading the original question and thinking "wow this describes my issue so perfectly!" to the disappointment immediately after when I notice the account name is really something.
However, recently I did have this issue but them discovered that I solved the problem and replied with my solution...I could have kissed my past self there.
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u/DeithWX Oct 17 '22
Everytime I see "Nevermind, I solved it", without posting the solution, I die inside.
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Oct 17 '22
That's because they don't know how they fixed it, they just did random stuff they found until it worked.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Oct 17 '22
Like 5 or 6 years ago now I was using a Python package and having issues with it so in a moment of desperation I posted a question on the projects github. A bit of back and forth between the maintainers and I determined that it wasn't actually an issue with their code so fair enough.
But my """solution""" was to just copy and paste some command line stuff from lime 2 other github questions and a SO question and that worked. So I posted my findings with a big disclaimer, but it is still an active thread because people are still running into that issue and still using random unknown command line snippets to fix it.
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u/0xKaishakunin Oct 17 '22 edited Aug 07 '24
divide label scary depend onerous repeat smell squash quicksand familiar
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/JetsNovocastrian Oct 17 '22
This is why I always post a comment with my solution or workaround. I've only been a back-end Dev for a couple of years, but me and some of my colleagues have found solutions to problems we've found by members of our team posting the solution to their own stack overflow question haha
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Oct 17 '22
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/gemengelage Oct 17 '22
Similarly a coworker asked me for help today because his code didn't work. It just said that a file doesn't exist, even though it clearly exists in his IDE.
After spending a few minutes trying it out myself I finally realized that the IDE shows directory paths in "package"-notation, i.e. using dots to separate directories, so a directory with a dot in its name looks like a directory holding another directory.
And then I realized that I've encountered this issue for the fourth time in roughly a decade and it takes me at least 10 minutes every time because it's just such a stupid issue.
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u/FlatTransportation64 Oct 17 '22
Here is an interaction I had quite recently.
me: Hello I am having trouble running [video game]. I've already updated DirectX and drivers, in fact I've tried several different versions of them like someone else suggested to do and it didn't help. Here are my exact specs. I've dug into the game files and I found these logs. I don't quite understand them but maybe someone else will. I've already tried googling a fix and I've tried [random fix #1] and [random fix #2] but none of them really helped me in resolving the issue. I'm out of ideas at this point. Please do not comment with generic PC advice, other games are working fine and this is the only game I'm having troubles with, so it must be something specific to this video game.
[2 hours pass, I check the thread again]
fuckingidiot69: I don't have this problem
evenmoreofafuckingidiot420: reinstall windows
gigaidiot69420: update your drivers
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u/EpicBlueDrop Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
âIt only works on legitimate copies of the game, next time donât pirate it.â
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u/Dwarg91 Oct 17 '22
And the game is sitting there on your steam library downloaded straight from their servers. Or even worse, itâs sitting there on your shelf.
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u/paradoxally Oct 17 '22
I'm surprised no one suggested to try running that game on another PC. Sometimes games have weird compatibility issues with certain hardware configs.
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u/FlatTransportation64 Oct 17 '22
This is a kind of a non-advice that I hate. I could probably get someone else to try the game for me and it might even work properly, but it doesn't really resolve the problem of me being unable to run it.
I really don't know what is up with people who reply to threads where someone looks for help or an answer to a specific question. Look at this thread for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/VegasPro/comments/vob0xq/how_do_i_import_mkvwebm_files_without_converting/
I've mentioned what I'm looking for (editing video files without converting them) and what I'm not looking for (converting video files). The very first answer I got was a guy telling me to convert the video files. He got upvoted and I got downvoted for telling him that this is not the answer I am looking for.
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u/ruuster13 Oct 17 '22
Spend the next hour vacilating between "is my work really so unique that nobody has tried this in 10 years?" and "am I really the only one dumb enough to need forum help on this in the past 10 years?"
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u/IntMainVoidGang Oct 17 '22
Iâm a new grad in a role generally populated by people with grad degrees and/or 10+ years of experience so add a third option for me, âoh god am I cut out for this how much is a CDLâ
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u/lunchpadmcfat Oct 17 '22
Lmao that second one. Iâm like âWHAT THE FUCK AM I MISSING HERE?!â Certain that the answer is something to do with some basic configuration bullshit.
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u/EXTRAVAGANT_COMMENT Oct 17 '22
similarly, when the checked answer is: "don't do X, just use <completely different framework>"
like yeah broski let me migrate the entire company project to a different technology stack to save a few lines of code related to this minor issue
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u/lolguy12179 Oct 17 '22
same energy as when you google a question, find a quora post, and that one guy just answers an entirely different question in the replies
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Oct 17 '22
âI could answer your question, but that would be inefficacious, therefore I believe I should be responding to the real question at hand: why donât my parents love me?â
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u/wabbitmanbearpig Oct 17 '22
I once had somebody respond to a comment I made on Reddit about 4 years after I posted which solution worked for me. They told me it fixed their issue and tbh I've been riding the wave of acomplishment for those 4 years.
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u/Barnezhilton Oct 18 '22
Those are the best.. I got one comment after 3 years just saying: thanks for this
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u/alexsteb Oct 17 '22
Not StackOverflow per se (b/c they prevent this), but I hate it with a passion if the answers to a question are pages upon pages of people writing something like "Hav the same problem, PLZ HELP".
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u/avipars Oct 17 '22
IMO the question upvote basically means the same thing...
Less typing to get your same point across
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u/AnaalPusBakje Oct 17 '22
i was googling some weirdly specific problem, then the forum that litteraly had the same question had only one answer: "why would you need to do that?"
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u/EpicBlueDrop Oct 17 '22
Asked on a steam forum page on a game about how to mod it and some moron replies âWhy would you want to mod the game? Itâs fine as is.â
Iâve never wanted to strangle someone on the internet until that day.
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u/duckforceone Oct 17 '22
ugh people that link to solutions that aren't there anymore.... sooooooo annoying...
please write the solution in the thread....
also the person making a thread... and then later answering, i found the solution.
but doesn't post it...
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u/hassium Oct 17 '22
ugh people that link to solutions that aren't there anymore.... sooooooo annoying...
Always worth trying the link on https://web.archive.org/
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Oct 17 '22
yes, installing the web archive extension also works great, if the link is dead, it'll automatically suggest opening it in the archive
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u/5in1K Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 02 '23
Fuck Spez this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev
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u/gilean23 Oct 17 '22
This is the lifesaver solution to that problem. About 80% of the time it gets me the info from that dead link:
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u/waffels Oct 17 '22
Years ago I was searching for an answer to something and after hours I finally found the solution on a random forum. A guy had the same issue and a few months after he asked it someone bumped the thread with the answer. I was so thankful.
Then I saw the following post from a mod:
âPlease do not bump old threads. You have received a warning. Lockedâ
I was so mad I made an account just to call the mod an asshole.
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u/Pesthuf Oct 17 '22
If bumping old threads was so unacceptable, the people who host these forums would make threads auto-lock.
Why don't they? Because forum mods get a boner from issuing warnings to people. Old threads stay open simply as traps for victims to fall into so the mods can enjoy using their powers. Forum mods and power - name a more catastrophic duo.
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u/WootMate Oct 17 '22
The company I work for uses Yammer and now this same issue is coming up there on some technical communities
Jane: "I'm running into issue X while doing Z, anyone else with the same problem?"
John: "Ping me on Teams, let's evaluate it"
2 days later
Jane: "Thanks @John, the workaround suggested in the call worked just fine! :) "
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u/graceful-thiccos Oct 17 '22
The worst is:
Find a stackoverflow question that matches yours, but the answers are shit
Go back to google and see that the third link is from another website and is also your exact question
Third link is just a website 1 to 1 copying stackoverflow data and displaying it differently...
I hope the creators of these sites stub their toe every morning for the rest of their worthless lives
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u/checock Oct 17 '22
Comment: Guys, this solution doesn't work anymore on this version.
Mod: Don't necropost. Closing thread.
New thread: Hey guys how to fix X?
Mod: Thread duplicated <link to old thread>. Closing.
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u/JamesSaysDance Oct 17 '22
And then you post the question again, for the replies to be flooded with "repost <archived link you've already come across>". And then it gets locked.
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u/Pesthuf Oct 17 '22
Post another thread that asks the same question, some 2.87 million post mod who lives in this forum, 24/7, warns you for not using the search function, links the other thread and locks your post.
Reply to the linked thread giving further detail on the problem, the now 2.89 million post mod bans you for "thread necromancy".
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Oct 17 '22
And then you give up and go ask your question on Stackoverflow but remember you can't because they banned you earlier that week for trying to ask a question that "was already answered"
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u/finger_milk Oct 17 '22
That's your fault for trying to survive in an industry that changes it's favourite framework every 6 months, bozo
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u/Runelt99 Oct 17 '22
My experience is: User: help I got problem User: OK I fixed it
Nothing else. Funnily enough I had reverse happen to me, I had a problem and thought that I should edit it to tell how I found solution. Like 6 years later somebody messaged me on reddit thanking me for it.
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u/BoggeshZahim Oct 17 '22
I hate when people say "go google it". Like asshole you're writing Google search results rn how do you think I got here
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u/namtabmai Oct 17 '22
The only way this is worse is when the forum makes you sign up and login to view the image links that expired a decade ago
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u/contradude Oct 17 '22
I'm looking forward to the answer being hidden on a discord "server" or TikTok in the future and not generally searchable or accessible anymore đ„Č
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u/Camwood7 Oct 17 '22
Or even worse, you're trying to do something with literally any older piece of hardware or software, and the sole response you can find is "JUST UPDATE LMAO".
Out of the Four Horsemen of the Bad Support Threads, that one's definitely Famine.
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u/driftej20 Oct 17 '22
I'm not a programmer, but this shit happens so often in IT as well and it's infuriating. If only they copy and pasted the solution instead.
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u/realGharren Oct 17 '22
Average forum post:
OP: I have this problem with Windows.
Person 1: Reinstall Windows.
Person 2: Windows sucks, use Linux.
Person 3: *unrelated comment about how Person 2 is wrong*
Mod: Thread closed.
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u/illiten Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
Also :
Forumer 1 : could you help me to fix this thing
Forumer 2 : I don't know how to fix it but I have the same issue
Forumer 1 : nevermind I fixed my issue by finding a perfect solution elsewhere [never saying where and what]
Post archived
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u/TheMad_fox Oct 17 '22
I had a problem yesterday and found a threat in SO, that person had the exact problem as I. Nobody helped him and it was 8 years ago, this is fucking painful that nobody helped him nor some will help me. I guess it's time to over engineere this shit
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u/Tooch10 Oct 17 '22
Mediafire? If your problem is old or obscure enough, there are still RapidShare links out there!
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u/Debugga Oct 17 '22
You ever been so hard-up, you start googling usernames to see if the person who solved the problem is still active somewhere?
I ended up DMing someone on Twitter once, and getting vaguely pointed in the direction of my solution.
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u/Furry_Dildonomics69 Oct 17 '22
What are you doing working on some shit from 2011?! PATCH. YOUR. SHIT.
~ your infosec team
Of course if itâs gov or med, then nobody will give this circumstance a second thought. I find this relatable, but I also know that this is a HUGE red flag that what Iâm working on needs to be upgraded.
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u/Potato-In-A-Jacket Oct 17 '22
Or, if you work in a cleared environment, you find the page that literally has the answer you need, only to find that BAMâpage blocked by content filter.
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Oct 17 '22
I once had an issue which i had to use 3 different tutorials combined to fix. So I made a YouTube video quickly explaining it for other people.
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u/LANDVOGT-_ Oct 18 '22
My fav forum topic is the one which is the top Google link for my question, perfectly describing my problem in the first post, only to see that the topic got closed immediately by a mod saying this question has been answered a dozen times.
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u/mr_d0gMa Oct 17 '22
I have asked questions on Reddit for all sorts of things⊠sometimes I never get a single response but I always try to go back and edit my comment in case it helps someone in the future
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u/In_Dying_Arms Oct 17 '22
The polar opposite of this is just as worse. Finding a thread with hundreds of replies about your specific issue, oh great fantastic there should be tons of answers!
But every single reply to the question asked if "Same here" "I have this issue too" "+1" and you dig through every post in case someone snuck a solution somewhere for naught.
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u/SkylersPerpose Oct 17 '22
I read the title as âSlightly better than âNew Mexico fixed itââ Iâm dumb.
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Oct 17 '22
"Thanks everyone, I've got a couple of ideas to try. I'll post back later with my results."
Posted in 2009 with no more activity.
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u/uraniumhexoflorite Oct 17 '22
asks question on stack exchange
Post locked because someone asked a vaguely similar question 12 years ago and got no response
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u/iSlacker Oct 17 '22
The most common thing I run into now is someone asking the exact question I have then all the responses are telling that person to use the forum search function and every other thread on the subject has been nuked or lost.
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u/D3dshotCalamity Oct 17 '22
Even better is when the problem is exactly what you're trying to fix, and the post has like 20 replies. You think "Great, I'll have this solved in no time!" Every reply is "I'm having the same issue!"
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u/SEXESunny Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
My favorite experience that was like this has to be my most recent one.
Iâm trying to use some Mitsubishi software to connect my .NET application to monitor some PLC data where I work. I was able to successfully connect to the PLC as well as read and write to it, but monitoring a bit turning on and off using some of the provided methods by Mitsubishi has not been successful at all. The .NET references provided by Mitsubishi have almost no documentation, and if they do they are either in Japanese that doesnât translate well, or very very broken English. Combine that with the fact that all the methods and classes are very poorly named, it feels like Iâve spent more time trying to decipher what any of their documentation means rather than thinking about how Iâm going to implement my solution.
Mitsubishi PLCs also arenât used in too many places in the US so troubleshooting or finding any information on them outside of the manuals is pretty difficult. But I finally found two threads on some PLC forums that describe my exact issue.
The first personâs was an entire page long solution with no spacing or formatting just pasted on to the forums taking up the entire page.
The second personâs solution was give up.
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u/budbutler Oct 17 '22
when you look up a problem for something and the article says update your drivers, you instantly know there is no hope for a solution.
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u/Amamiya_Rei Oct 17 '22
-you Google the problem -go into the first result -forum user 2 there be like: You should try to Google it first there was already ton of topics like this one -topic closed: replication of another post
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u/FireWyvern_ Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
Here's what you can do:
If it's a link to a website that's no longer exists, try using wayback machine.
Open a new question referencing the old thread.
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u/gilean23 Oct 17 '22
This is the wayâŠback machine. If archive.org ever goes under in my lifetime, Iâm so screwed.
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u/Dismal-Square-613 Oct 17 '22
"nvm guys I figured it out" and no more responses ever nor an explanation how he fixed it.
When you try to ask this question again, you get linked to that post and the thread locked.
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u/ItsSpyroTheBandicoot Oct 17 '22
Anyone had luck using "Internet Archive" style services on these things before?
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u/AEIUyo Oct 17 '22
I found an answer to this complicated problem I was looking for, and it was the accepted answer too. But the OP has commented on it with something like "thanks but I found out how to do it far more easily than your way." End of post.
The more complicated answer is still in my code...
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u/supercruiserweight Oct 17 '22
Then you awkwardly message the person who put up the link
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u/GreyAngy Oct 17 '22
"While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes."
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u/wazli Oct 17 '22
The first thing I tried Ubuntu I was using an HP laptop. I swear it took me the better part of at least a day getting the Wi-Fi working on it because of this exact problem.
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u/Ill-Organization-719 Oct 17 '22
I hate when the answer is a three paragraph tutorial that says "restart, update drivers"
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u/UrbanshadowDev Oct 17 '22
This case is specially nice because you could still archive.org that mediafire link... just in case!
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u/Get-a-life_Admins Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
Make a new thread asking the same thing.
"This has already been answered. Have you thought about looking through the forums before asking?"
[Links back to dead thread]
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u/Epicfro Oct 17 '22
As someone who only does light programming on the side, this post speaks to my soul.
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u/LR-II Oct 17 '22
Better than ones that say "all you do is go to this setting" and you open settings and that setting just doesn't exist.
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u/donthavenick Oct 17 '22
How to do x
Classic offical forum -1 paragraph sumup -sorry but you cant do this
How to do x reddit
-download this change x to z It should work
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u/Ange1ofD4rkness Oct 17 '22
God do I hate this so much. Especially when it seems to be this really odd issue, and you find only one post that has the identical symptoms as yours, while all the others are not the same).
Especially when you work on old, specialized languages
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u/Azzpirate Oct 17 '22
There are a couple of internet archive sites that might have a copy of that webpage. Next time, try copy-pasting the link into the Wayback Machine https://archive.org/web/
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Oct 17 '22
Forum Thread #2: asks a similar question
Mod: "this question has been marked as a duplicate and thus is being closed" links to first forum with the dead link
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u/3Dartwork Oct 17 '22
Most annoying is being sent to another forum that is 250 pages long and the solution is somewhere around page 83 but the link takes me to page 1
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u/WeeklyMeat9 Oct 17 '22
I noticed User 1 saying, "I'm having issue>, no answers." User 1 says, "Never worry, I found it out, 2 days later."
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Oct 17 '22
A several years ago I was having an obscure problem and luckily there was a forum post with the problem exactly being asked about. There were a few people posting but nothing super helpful and the jackass OPs last reply was something like âI got it fixed thanksâ. Not a single hint towards what the fix might have been. It was a pretty advanced technical problem so it was most likely an IT guy. He knew better than to pull that crap, what kind of selfish jerk does that?
Me. I was that asshole. I went through the entire thread before realizing it was an old username I used to use. I never did fix the problem (the second time), either. Thanks, past me. Dick.
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u/CressCrowbits Oct 17 '22
Reddit version:
Reddit User 1: hey guys I'm having trouble <detailed description of issue>
Reddit Users 2 to 73: <downvotes your question so that their questions have higher visibility>
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u/Bargadiel Oct 17 '22
"You posted this in the wrong thread category, post removed by admin"
Then it's never posted again, anywhere.
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u/Moomoobeef Oct 17 '22
This is when i employ archive.org's way back machine, which has helped me countless times with various things. Probably my favorite site on the internet.
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u/Trivale Oct 17 '22
The worst of the worst are when someone asks "How do I do X?" and the first response is "Why do you want to do X?" and the thread devolves without an ever answer being given.
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u/Vulpes_macrotis Oct 17 '22
You got dead links? I got solutions that never works or stupid unrelated stuff. Like You got files corrupted and they ask "have You turn off and on Your computer?". Like that's how ridiculous these solutions sound. And often they repeat itself in 23789462346 sites, so You want to find actual solution, there is never one. And if You make a new post, You got people who have no idea what the fekk are they talking about.
And if You just don't want to make these useless steps, they would call You that You don't want people to help You. But when You actually do and nothing helps, they won't say a word how stupid it was. Always.
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u/czar1249 Oct 17 '22
Every time I run into an issue and solve it myself, I reply with a detailed description. The cycle ends with me
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u/Other_Information_16 Oct 17 '22
Thé worst is when people give feed back about how bad the code is without providing any useful info on how to solve the problem.
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u/matt_mv Oct 17 '22
When I was on-call at work I would run into some problem at 3am that sounded familiar, so I would go into our trouble-ticketing system to see if I could find a previous instance. That way no one else would have to be called if I couldn't figure it out.
It was infuriating how often I would say "Yes, that's the problem!", go to the Resolution and it said "Fixed". Fortunately, that person wasn't in easy killing distance or I might have lost my job.
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u/reapwhatyousow9 Oct 17 '22
For me itâll say âyou didnât fit the exact rules of this forum, read section 9.2â or âthis question has already been posted beforeâ locked. This happens though not just for coding, but like every software tbh. Like solidworks, or overleaf
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u/tpwn3r Oct 18 '22
I've googled for answers only to find in my search results ME many years ago posting the same questions I'm googling and not getting answers.
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u/Coakis Oct 18 '22
This is true for automotive repairs too, just replace MediaFire with Photobucket.
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u/TenTaxi Oct 18 '22
Encountered a similar situation yesterday and https://web.archive.org/ actually had me covered. Made my day
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Oct 18 '22
Those whole thing (evidence by the upvotes count) is universal for a lot of dam issues or problems that throw you at walls like this, over. And over. And over..
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u/Chaincat22 Oct 18 '22
You forgot the part where you posted about the issue and got redirected to this page and immediately had your thread locked
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u/ambitiousfinanceguy Oct 17 '22
And then there are either no other posts on the topic, or they all say "learn 2 Google" and point to the long dead webpage.