Hello friends,
I've been learning Rust on and off for the last 6 months and I seem to come across a bit of a problem with questions on Stack Overflow (SO). There are people triaging issues with overly strict criteria for duplicates. I think this is a community problem because all these duplicates get closed and newbies like myself have a harder time trying to find the answers we are looking for (or potentially even answering questions).
Here's an example: vector - String's lifetime when returning Vec<&str> - Stack Overflow
an apparent duplicate of vector - String's lifetime when returning Vec<&str> - Stack Overflow
Sure, the answer might be the same, but the questions certainly don't look the same. Also, it may not be obvious to some of us why the ownership issue underlined by the compiler is related to record
as opposed to field.1
which is the real issue.
Just because the answers are the same, that doesn't mean that the questions are and the question is the critical part that leads to the solution. In this duplicate scenario, one cannot explain why the answers are the same except in comment. The "why" should be part of the answer, not just a comment.
I think that this is a major community issue that will turn people away from Rust, especially since I've observed this happening to new SO users.