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Ask HN: Where can you safely ask beginner-level questions online in 2023?
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?
- rrmdp 3y agoChatGPT is your friend :)
- turtleyacht 3y agoIf 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.
- nojs 3y agoHonestly 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 3y agoHonestly, 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 3y ago... 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.