Lately I have put a lot of effort on making my question aspecific, and not related to my context, so people can answer them without wasting time trying to understand where the question begin.

So I turn it into "Arcane" question building dumby base or UserCase on well known problem.

Someone call my question "arcane" , and I can't stop asking myself if it's a good or a bad thing?

When my question was really hard to understand I feel like people try to answer them. Because they were trying to fix a real problem. And my arcane question got ignored because people don't want to waste time on a imaginary problem.

But there is no imaginary problem, my arcane is based on a solid Real life issue.

And explaining it correctly in "arcane mode" make it easier for me to solve or to understand. Because when facing a problem the biggest issue is to understanding it.

So for me and for SO What is the best choice? going arcane or not? or there is a "juste milieu" ?

  • 1
    The comment OP is talking about: stackoverflow.com/questions/40173156/… – user247702 Oct 21 '16 at 14:13
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    That person didn't call your question "arcane", they called your data structure "arcane". – user247702 Oct 21 '16 at 14:15
  • Given the definition of the word "arcane" (understood by few; mysterious or secret), that would make for very poor questions on Stack Overflow, but not necessarily close-worthy (but you may get downvotes). If this example question applies... I'm not sure. For the life of me I haven't figured out yet why the expected results are 1,4,5. – Gimby Oct 21 '16 at 15:01
  • Gimby its a bitfield .. it makes everything go arcane in a flash. Its 1,4,5 because we compare on column color, type , type2, and version.. Because the compacted comparator is 71 – Drag and Drop Oct 24 '16 at 6:07
  • 71 is 2^0+2^1+2^2+2^6 = 1+2+4+64 – Drag and Drop Oct 24 '16 at 6:08
  • Looking at your original question, what does "Byte = 71" even mean? It appears to mean "find this set of columns and then find rows where the data of each row in the indicated columns matches." If that's true, "Byte = 1" is sufficient to return 1,4,5 from your example data (Type2 and Version are all identical, and there's no red-colored item with a Type of "Type2"--ugh, that sentence makes me queasy). If I had to come maintain this code after you left the company it's for I would quit on the spot. Byte=71 conveys no information about what the query is supposed to be doing. – Draco18s no longer trusts SE Jun 24 '18 at 17:36
  • @Draco18s, "I would quit on the spot", I see what you mean and it's a natural reaction. Because that an unconventional way to store information. but for an IE5 compatible Vb6 mainframe thats not the weirdest thing. – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 6:12
  • I use Byte in the question instead of bytefield value as a bytefield store a byte. It's been one years, and still the question is clear for me. You don't have to select row on a large dataset based on the comparer. The question is about column because row are already selected from 1 to 120 element have to be send, those column act as group by. – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 6:19
  • The comparer value is store in Bd and yes at First sight it has no meaning. So does a primary key. To extract the meaning of a flag you either have to write it in binary or use the appropriate conversion. – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 6:21
  • "Byte=71 conveys no information" is like Chmod=Xyz convey no information. Even if Chmod has only 3 byte value x=1, w=2, r=4. and my comparer has 10. But 777/755/644 has a meaning that is in the byte convertion table, the 1rst table of my original question – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 6:27
  • chmod for user permissions go back decades to a time when programming was still done at the assembly level and things like enums didn't exist. Enums are wonderful, wonderful tools and let you do the same thing, but with readable, refactorable values instead of magic numbers. For example, chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=r, I don't see a 777 the any more! – Draco18s no longer trusts SE Jun 25 '18 at 20:26
  • @Draco18s, Well the issue is the whole thing run with VB6 active X in an IE5 browser... So it's actually decades old code. I wish I could refactor. The reallity is simple: How many pages use this data structure and this db table ? Too many, and some I don't even know about. Compare How many time I take to warp my head around an bytefield ? Sometimes with legacy code You can't take a fresh strat. That's why I din't upvote the answer stating that it was an X/Y. The issue is fix in a ugly VB6 style, I wanted to know if a Sql function could have fix it. – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 20:36
  • Afaik Enum are just a kind layer on top of bytefield. things like HasFlag is not that old Net4 I think. And decade old code make me think of the time people had to live print our code so it doesnt take memory space. – Drag and Drop Jun 25 '18 at 20:55

You're describing an XY question. You're asking a question about how to solve a particular problem with a technique that you think will solve your actual problem.

Such questions aren't inherently wrong or bad. It's certainly not wrong to ask such a question. The biggest risk is that there's a fairly decent chance that you'll get an answer that answers the actual question that you asked without solving the actual problem you have (or, worse still, is a very poor solution to the actual problem that you have). If you're willing to take that risk, people certainly can't stop you from asking a question without including the broader context.

What will typically result in a much better result for you is to actually include the context though. Ask a question about the actual problem you have, then go from there to explaining what you're attempting to do to solve that problem, and why that attempted solution isn't working. (You may also do the reverse; explain the problem you're having with your very specific problem, and then explain at the end what the context of this problem is, in the event readers would consider it helpful.) While it is good to keep the context to your problem reasonably brief, and to work to ensure that the context you are providing is relevant to the question itself, by adding some context you're able to make it much more likely that solutions that you get will actually be helpful to you.

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