Is it only me or are "uncomfortable" answers largely ignored?

I do quite a bit of posting on forums, and I have noticed that in many cases when you take your time to explain how something work, or why you should do something perhaps in a not so obvious way, that answer tend to be ignored and never replied to.

Instead the original poster replies to the short answer which perhaps ignored things like best practices, performance, readability etc. And, very often I see endless discussion based on that reply, where the original poster never gets a satisfactory solution or even perhaps a working solution. And there I posted an elaboration which held the answer days ago! I also explained why solution X doesn’t work and solution Y only work in some circumstances etc.

In many cases, we have taken the time to write articles or blog posts where we have predicted most misunderstandings and explain why you should do it this or that way and what drawbacks workaround A has, and also what drawbacks workaround B has. So, we post the URL to the article only to find that it apparently never was read because the following discussions in the thread goes on for days and waste time to elaborate on things that could be understood by spending some 10 – 20 minutes to actually read the article or blog post we pointed to.

I find this state mildly depressing. Have we reached the sad state where we don’t tend to be interested in why something works, how it works, or even understand what we are actually doing? Quick fixes, anyone? Only 10 cents each!

Is this something new? I’ve been on forums for > 10 years now, let me try to think….. I believe that tendency has always been there, but perhaps it has been getting worse with time. What are your experiences? Am I only having a bad day?

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