3

Over the last few days I've seen the same user post a series of questions, all on the same topic. Each question is a little further on from the previous one. I'm curious what Meta's opinion on this is. Each question is okay, but the core question is one that's covered widely by a huge variety of questions (accessing EC2 instances via SSH).

The questions themselves aren't terrible, although seem to lack some research effort. But my main issue is that the asker doesn't seem to be putting in much effort to learn themselves. They get a comment or answer pointing them to the next step, and then just ask another question to get the next bit.

I don't want to gatekeep, and I don't want to punish a lack of knowledge. But it's frustrating when I see pretty much the same question appear every couple of days from the same user. My usual approach is to suggest trying to get some formal training on the subject (which I've already done in this case).

1
  • 2
    Sounds like these are likely questions already answered. Just find the question with a valid answer and flag appropriately.
    – Paul
    Commented Mar 14, 2022 at 15:41

1 Answer 1

7

We're a Q&A site, answering questions is what we do. If the questions are dupes of existing questions, vote-to-close as dupe and let the system take care of it. I don't think that suggesting "get some formal training" is going to be helpful -- at the very least, it would trigger the question "what formal training should I take?", and that would be a shopping question, and off-topic...

If a user's question stream is frustrating you, it's probably best just to disengage from them and let others handle those (or nobody, as the case may be). For the extreme case where someone's going way over the top with their questions, you can flag for the mods to take a look at; we can contact the user privately and drop a "calm down, bro" on them.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .