Right now, we suffer from a practice (NOT a "policy") of approving almost anything which is not blatantly off topic or outright spam. That's an unfortunate practice that seems, to me, to have developed over the last two or possibly three years.

And guess what: in the same span, the volume of well-written SOPW has diminished.

Worse, we have some folk (XP whoring? unable to evaluate the quality of a post? something else?) upvoting questions like the initial one in the thread you characterize as a strawman argument. Take a look at the last 24 or 48 hours worth of new questions. There are certainly some good ones, well asked; formatted readably; and non-obvious. But then look at the rest.

Now, I know the phrase "non-obvious" is a red flag to some, so just to make it clear: If the question is "how do I print hello? I don't understand (some quote from a doc or example). I regard that as a perfectly reasonable question. I still have times when the documentation seems as opaque as some of our laws, but I don't regard a question as reasonable if it leads me to believe the poster hasn't even tried to solve the problem other than by asking others to solve it.

In reply to Re^3: When do we change our replies? (Strawmen) by ww
in thread When do we change our replies? by stevieb

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