I need a script to do...!

Question

Our community has taken a liking to re-enforcing the misconception that ServerFault is a script writing service. Examples here and here are just a couple recent threads I can point to.

I have no issue with someone who tries, or someone who posts what they've read and just doesn't get it. I have issue with those who don't try at all (or make no indication of their efforts in their posts). It's been my understanding that SF does not condone the "give me da codez" requests. So why is our community so freely answering these?

By responding to these questions before getting what attempts the asker has made only reinforces the behavior. Answers are provided by seasoned and nonseasoned SF members alike. Is this what we've become? How are we to address this issue going forward?

Another one 11/6/2015

And another 11/11/2015

Answer 1

I don't want to write scripts from the point of view of answering "write my script for me" questions.

However, I favour "teach a person to fish" type answers and sometimes the most effective way to do this, for whatever reason, is to write a script that shows the way, or debug the script for them, or whatever.

Answer 2

For my money, it is to do with the life cycle of a stack exchange contributor.

When you first start, you are an idealist. Maybe you want to help. Maybe you want to get some rep. Whatever. This is the premise of gamification.

But over time, you realise there is a steady flow of lazy people looking to outsource their work, and you get jaded and stop.

Before that happens, you may well pick up some easily answerable questions.

I find server fault overlaps with my expertise with Unix and stackoverflow. (my other niche of storage fits here, bit it isn't exactly busy).

However but because server fault is professional level, there is very little low hanging fruit - any simpler out of area questions are probably not appropriate in the first place, and neither is the site really busy enough to get much rep from a well crafted but niche answer.

This is why I think "I need a script" might get answered. It is in reach for more people to answer and yet more to know it is right and upvote.

This is exactly the same problem as the fastest gun in the West problem on SO, just from a different angle.

Answer 3

I don't know!

I won't write scripts or code for people on here because it's time-consuming and I don't want to support the code later. I'd rather explain theory, for the same reason you would I think: I'd rather the poster learn how to do their job.

That said, SO is all about code snippets. Who knows?

If other people are willing to waste their time doing other people's jobs, I don't really feel much interest in preventing them, though it is odd.

Do we know whether people who come here for code and get code later come back and ask more useful questions? That is a more interesting question to me than why people here answer coding requests.

Answer 4

Scripting is on the border of the programming. There are 4 cases which we should see:

1. Not professional sysadm, not professional programmer. They are asking mostly non-sense questions, which are harder to decipher, as to solve. Anyways, because they aren't professional system administrators, these questions are off-topic.
2. Not professional sysadm, but professional programmer. If they ask for a script, they want in most cases to learn the operating system, or one of its scripting interface. These questions can be off-topic (sometimes migratable to SO, sometimes not), or on-topic, it depends on the details.
3. Professional sysadm, but not professional programmer. They ask for scripts very rarely, and their systems tends to have fewer scripts, they favorize the complex software solutions against the scripted toolkit-like solutions. If they ask, their questions are mostly high-level and interesting.
4. Professional sysadm, and professional programmer. Probably this group has the smallest chance to ask for a script fragment. But if they do, their questions will be interesting and probably ontopic.

As you can see, the situation is similar to your last bigger destruction, the control panel case. You found a group of questions which is offtopic or simply low level in most cases, but not always.

If you construct a new rule, which destroys every question asking for scripts or script snippets, you will destroy a lot of high quality questions as well. You shouldn't do this, it is a massive content destruction, especially if you apply the new rule retroactively.