@MichaelHampton I had not! None of my search terms found that easily. :P I guess my question's a dupe then. Sorry about that. Thanks, though!

"I guess I've become too accustomed to not actually having to talk to people" I feel like that should be a t-shirt. Specifically, I feel like that should be my t-shirt.

This is especially relevant to SF, but since it's also often relevant to SO, SU, and other technical SE sites, it may make more sense on the global meta.se . I'd be okay with it being moved there.

@MadHatter I suppose accepting it while explicitly noting that the accepted answer was untested would probably be the most pragmatic, reasonable response given the options and assuming leaving a question open forever is not an acceptable solution.

@MadHatter Sort of by definition, acceptance implied the answer is acceptable. Another person may decide not to answer based on the fallacious (but perfectly justified) assumption that the other answer solved the problem. "in its current form it cannot be answered" Exactly. So accepting an answer makes no sense; it would be the Q&A equivalent of an argument from ignorance.

I feel like you're intentionally using as many English idioms and as much pseudo-legalese as you possibly can. This is noticeable, in part, because you also demonstrate a complete disregard for the rules of capitalization and grammar. Your post reads like the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a homeless man with a penchant for cPanel. The result stretches the definition of "readable" to its logical limit. I feel less knowledgeable for having read it. Please, please proofread next time.

Since I apparently can't edit it... It's also worth pointing out that you can also use the syntax: [RFC 1796][] so long as the later citation is the same string (i.e. [RFC 1796]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1796).

What if they got a screenshot from someone else (e.g. the helpdesk got it from a client), and in researching the problem they haven't found a good solution, but they also don't want to type out the entire ream of JVM stack trace they've been researching / find and figure out how to use a good OCR system that will transcribe the text for them?

...In other words... You're right. Smart vendors are probably already using shills and not being so obvious.

@Bill For example, if I were doing marketing at Microsoft, since they seem to be circling the drain, I'd up the number of IE, C#, VB, and Office questions and answers on the SE sites using sockpuppets and mechanical turks so that people would see those as trending or "hot" technologies they should learn and use. And when it does catch on... yay! Market share. Of course, I'd also fund "think tanks" to come out with "research" disparaging Linux- which they've already done. That's on the public record. Marketing is not an ethical profession.