Can you break this down Barney Style for me? [closed]

Question

I occasionally come across SuperUser content. This most recent question was a link from another Stack Exchange, and sounded interesting, so I thought I would check it out.

I'm not very active here, because I apparently tend to ask the wrong questions, attract mods/people who don't like my posts, etc. ultimately getting downvotes, not what I am looking for, and an unsatisfying experience. I'm not here to complain, this is to set the stage.

So here I am looking at this absurd question, the comments, the answer, the up votes, etc, and I am flabbergasted when I compare this to my own experiences. I ran this by a completely nontechnical friend of mine, and his reaction was a "tilt head like dog" reaction. He is not a techy person, but understands troubleshooting and is otherwise quite intelligent.

Adding insult to injury, the OP has more positive feedback than I do, and presumably has more such questions like this. As my friend puts it, "maybe he shotguns it", getting 1 or 2 feedback all over the place.

So, is this particular post just new enough that no one has gotten to it to suggest edits, close it, or tell the OP how messed up their question is? Or is this the type of question that SuperUser wants to attract?

PS(?)

I do 2nd - 4th tier tech support (field techs call in) as a day job, and over the past few years, I have noticed the quality of calls has dropped drastically. We now regularly field such off the wall calls such as this (different industry though) and have to steer people not only into the right direction, but the right frame of mind, explaining vast swaths of technology they have overlooked with their cavalier attitude.

In the chicken and egg cycle, which one of these is the chicken and which one is the egg?

Answer 1

So here I am looking at this absurd question

If you think the question is absurd, why did you answer it?

When you have enough rep (125) the correct response is to downvote questions you think are absurd (not useful).

If you hover over the downvote arrow you will see:

This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful

Answer 2

It might not be a particularly great question - the idea behind it is a bit bizarre - but it's written fine, and is on-topic. Therefore, I don't see a reason to close it. You're free to vote up or down as you please, of course.

It might be "absurd", but it's fairly well-researched (note the bit about theoretical speed). Simple questions can lead to expert knowledge being shared.

Also note that the question only has two upvotes at the moment. That's actually not much, especially considering that it's a Hot Network Question, a status which can result in massive upvoting. HNQ is a fairly arbitrary thing, and that can be frustrating when you try hard but never hit that jackpot. Keep working, it'll happen to you eventually.

Answer 3

While the premise of the question is unusual, the question has a few redeeming qualities.

It has a clear problem statement - one based off a few apparent misconceptions but the OP was pretty clear over what he wanted. The comments in some cases are downright illuminating. I didn't know there was pci-e over a physical ethernet layer for one. Its clearly sparked some interest, since it was a HNQ (Which I'm a tiny bit baffled about) and it has quite a few answers.

That said as far as HNQs go, this is pretty unusual - I usually see a narrower range in upvotes (with answers clustered together), and it took a little longer than usual to get attention.

As for why the other user has more rep, I have no idea. A random selection of your answers seem ok.