For debugging any specific issue with a person's computer, you need a back-and-forth approach to be able to iterate between different solutions, starting from simple to complex.

SU is directly opposed to that by discouraging back-and-forth in the comments. I think we'll all agree SU chatroom is not THE most helpful (please hold the flames) community of people from the point of view of the askers.

These types of issues are best dealt with in forums such as Sevenforums, Eightforums(http://www.eightforums.com) and other zillions of them. They have FAQs, multiple users, tutorials, and even a tiered system akin to a tech-support setup, where the simple stuff is handled by power users and the nutty cases by extremely-highly-experienced users or developers of tools.

Here on the other hand, it most definitely creates a million duplicates. Few of them result in solutions, because you don't get the handholding required when facing a very unfamiliar task. SU doesn't even greatly result in askers becoming more knowledgable in comparison to the situation at good forums. The community feel of a forum results in a lot more learning.

If you remove tech-support from SU, then you come to the "How Do I Do X?" type of questions. Here I mean those which are not also tech-support style. These are the best fit for SU right now. Granted, back-and-forth happens here also, but tech-support is about recovering from failure which happens in a lot more ways. In a properly working system, OTOH, rarely would a HowTo mysteriously not work resulting in back-and-forth.

SU doesn't seem suited for it at all. SU should be more about in-depth explanations about mechanisms, tradeoffs, little-known problems, and subtle pitfalls. BUT this heads out into the oh-so-dangerous territory of Not A Real Question.

We should be focusing more on the "Why can X be/(not be) done?" type of questions, and remove some of the sNARQ.

Summary : We should be focusing more on the "Why can X be/(not be) done?" type of questions, and remove some of the sNARQ.

For debugging any specific issue with a person's computer, you need a back-and-forth approach to be able to iterate between different solutions, starting from simple to complex.

SU is directly opposed to that by discouraging back-and-forth in the comments. I think we'll all agree SU chatroom is not THE most helpful (please hold the flames) community of people from the point of view of the askers.

These types of issues are best dealt with in forums such as Sevenforums, Eightforums(http://www.eightforums.com) and other zillions of them. They have FAQs, multiple users, tutorials, and even a tiered system akin to a tech-support setup, where the simple stuff is handled by power users and the nutty cases by extremely-highly-experienced users or developers of tools.

Here on the other hand, it most definitely creates a million duplicates. Few of them result in solutions, because you don't get the handholding required when facing a very unfamiliar task. SU doesn't even greatly result in askers becoming more knowledgable in comparison to the situation at good forums. The community feel of a forum results in a lot more learning.

If you remove tech-support from SU, then you come to the "How Do I Do X?" type of questions. Here I mean those which are not also tech-support style. These are the best fit for SU right now. Granted, back-and-forth happens here also, but tech-support is about recovering from failure which happens in a lot more ways. In a properly working system, OTOH, rarely would a HowTo mysteriously not work resulting in back-and-forth.

SU doesn't seem suited for it at all. SU should be more about in-depth explanations about mechanisms, tradeoffs, little-known problems, and subtle pitfalls. BUT this heads out into the oh-so-dangerous territory of Not A Real Question.