May 1, 2013
Cross, unvalidated
Just as a general note to self: there is pretty much no point at all in asking the internet for help with actually difficult questions. There are plenty of sites where it is possible to do so, and some are really very good, for what they're good for. But the strength of Stack Overflow and its assorted less famous brethren is in providing a venue for asking questions to which many people know the answer. It's not quite "the wisdom of crowds" -- we all know crowds are almost definitively unwise -- but it is at least a kind of commonisation of knowledge, as those who know a little pass it on to those who know less. There is an underlying economy of scale, having so many possible donors that some of them will usually deign to answer your lowly question in return for a few reputation tokens.
When it comes to things that very few people understand, however, the system falls down. Even if those people were willing to help -- and they often are -- the odds of them encountering your question at the right moment, out there on the storm-toss'd waves of cyberspace, are minuscule. You're basically on your own with the literature. So face it and knuckle down.
Occasionally I forget this, but it only leads to wasting time.
I guess we could say this is why universities exist. Well, one of the reasons. Not that they're exactly perfect when it comes to the free flow of wisdom, but there is some benefit to having lots of smart people stationed together and at least theoretically within reach.
Posted by matt at May 1, 2013 10:34 PM