Your questions are relatively simple in the context of what the core content is but difficult to read and understand at first glance.
I personally think the mixed formatting of your questions — with seemingly randomized bolding and italicization as well as unnecessary headers — makes me not even want to read the question.
First off, I answer and participate in this site — and others across the Stack Exchange network — and I do a lot of copy edits of posts. Many times what I do includes breaking up a huge wall of text in a single massive paragraph into smaller chunks. It’s easier to read that way and I believe helps the most get positive interactions.
That said, I look at something like this question and I immediately stop wanting to read when I see the following:
- “Big Sur Update Problems , After Update Fails, Space is Still Occupied”: Your “question” starts out with something very unhelpful: Saying you have “Big Sur Update Problems.” No disrespect but what does that tell anyone? That you updated to Big Sur and now have problems? Your title should focus on the actual problems. So I fixed it by changing it to: “After a failed Big Sur Update, of 17GB previously available only 5GB remains free on my machine. What to do next?” Also, that original title is not a sentence but each word is capitalized which is not great grammar-wise.
- Those Subheads Aren’t Helpful: The original post had the following four subheads “How We Got Here,” “The Problem,” “My Theory” and “The Question.” No disrespect but this is not the kind of question that needs some movie-like 3-4 act structure: Your original Big Sur update failed, 12GB of 17GB takes up space and now you don’t know what the next steps are. This can all be stated without the heads.
- Asking “Anyone with similar experience?” at the end: This might be just me, but asking something like that after you have stated you have a problem and outlined the details is a bit pandering/coy. Do you want people to respond with answers or “Me too!” responses like: “This happened to me too! How do you solve it? Let me know!” By basic definition of what this site is, anyone who can answer your question has had experience and will provide you with an answer. Please do not coyly ask for commiseration when what you want is a solution.
That said, I have posted an answer to your Big Sur question after my cleanup of the question. Here is what the question looked like originally and here is my cleaned up and updated revision.
And in the case of your issues with an external PCI adapter and graphics card, your original formatting was truly confusing so I have updated that as well; your original version can be seen here and the updated version can be seen here.
This was equally a simply issue that was hard to decipher because you used things like:
- Quote formatting where there was no quote.
- Bold and italicized text that didn’t need to be bolded or italicized.
- Linking to an image on your Google Drive when it could simply have been added as an embedded image in the post.
- Listing specs but doing so in such a haphazard way it was hard to understand what is what.
- And finally, you are referring to “EXP GDC Beast v8 Mini PCI-E” only by it’s technical name and never clearly stating that it is an external GPU adapter. Not only is that a very niche item, most people really don’t know what that is. So just using jargon further makes it hard for people to understand what you are dealing with.
I am loathe to update this answer yet again, but I would like to shed light on a recent interaction you had with me in the comments on a new question of yours specific to the external GPU adapter you are using:
“@Giacomo1968 I don't see your issue. Are you running SU from a 100 GB HDD in your basement ? So what if mine is a very niche question ? Niche problems exist too, and I'd say its well worth it if I manage to fix this that the solution be public and can help even one person !! I do not understand this obsession you have in your comments across all my questions about the question needing to be universal... a specific question is "good" , as stated in the SE guidelines. A good , serious technical issue that needs the help of a forum is not be general, it tends to be specific and unique !”
Screenshot of the above comment; the upvote on the comment is me acknowledging I read and the flag is a moderator flag I made due to the rudeness:
Let me state clearly, I have positively edited your post to make it clearer read and understand. Here is your last edit. And here is mine. My edits were done even after you insulted me by saying:
“Are you running SU from a 100 GB HDD in your basement ?”
Seriously? This is how you deal with people who disagree with you?
What the heck do you want from a community that provides you with rock solid advice for free?
Congratulations! You purchased a piece of endless tweaker hardware for $40 to $50 that “promises” to connect your laptop to an external GPU. Mazel tov my friend! Hardware that you claim will work by then you state you need to literally wrap in aluminum foil to get it to work:
“To test if electrical interference and related noise from other devices was the cause, by securely wrapping all cables from the EXP GDC in aluminum foil.”
But when somebody dares to point out to you that maybe — just maybe — this questionable piece of hardware might be the cause of these issues, you lash out at them.
You can’t have it both ways:
- You want a fast response but you don’t want any criticism of the hardware you are struggling with. And you engage in personally insulting those who try to help you using the “tried and true” nonsense insult that implies “you spend too much time here.” What else could implying someone is in a basement like a “loser” responding to you mean?
- When the response is slow you are oblivious to the fact you are using niche hardware and perhaps people can’t really give you advice.
Perhaps I can give you a much better tact: You are constantly pointing to other forums where people clearly have more experience with this external GPU device. Perhaps it is better if you post on those forums about this specific piece of hardware. And perhaps when you get a solution after hashing things out there, you post your solution here.
Why complain about Super User’s lack of response to external GPU issues when you clearly know there are other forums that can better address your niche issues?
Anyway, once bitten twice shy: I’m avoiding your posts moving forward for all of the above reasons.
