This is a community mostly centered around humans helping other humans, by volunteering their expertise. It's not uncommon for the best answers to look beyond the immediate technical question being asked, addressing the larger picture. Or for people learning complex topics, for multiple approaches of thinking about the problem to be presented, reacting to what seems to click for the OP. Beyond "get questions answered", it's a community where people with different tastes and personalities post their takes on the questions, both technical and non-technical, and respond to one another. A social community!
If posting machine-generated answers without putting in much of one's own effort, experience, or personality becomes the norm, the community part of this forum will die off.
In the context of the community helping someone with a technical problem: I for one don't mind reading other people's responses, 
ing the ones I consider helpful and insightful, filling in gaps or adding my own perspective, etc. Heck, I enjoy it. But I have little to no interest in reviewing or even reading machine output, especially when no actual human consideration has filtered it or fixed it up. (It's fine to read something like "I asked AI but I don't understand what it's doing here [paste]". It's not fine when all the text presented is from an AI. In those cases, if I ended up reading the post before I realized what it was, I feel scammed.)
From the opposite perspective: If almost all of what people see when they ask questions on this form is AI copied responses, they will soon figure out to skip the middle-human and go ask an AI next time. They'll have zero incentive to stick around and become part of the community. There will be little social interaction because most of what they are reading will be machine generated.
Perhaps that was meant as hyperbole, but I know you're not answering 100 day old posts.[1] The two responses of yours I just saw were to 10 hour and 2 hour old posts.
This is community which is interactive in such a way that threads which don't get activity for a week or so typically don't get any more activity period, and where dormant threads are closed automatically. One result of this is that the same topic can come up and be reiterated multiple times. Which is perfectly fine, as different people learn in different ways, and repeating similar conversations is a perfectly normal human activity. This forum is not like stackoverflow; we're not trying to pinpoint one perfect answer to every question, and to have no repeated questions.
I explain this because it feels like you're trying to assert what should be acceptable here without knowing the forum/community that well. (I could be wrong, but all I have to go on is how you're talking about the forum, your actions so far, and how new your account is.) If you stick around a few months and get to know the community better, perhaps it will be clear how throwing AI responses at questions just to get some answer posted as quick as possible is not a good fit.
None of what I just wrote really addressed how to deal with questions which actually have been dormant for awhile (and by awhile, I don't mean 2 hours, more like days). Actually, I don't think dormancy is the real yardstick here, it's more of a secondary consideration. I think the real question is, should you try to help people out when you don't know the answer well enough to write it up yourself, without significant assistance?
I think it's fine to do so, so long as you actually understand the answer you end up suggesting -- i.e. you went and actually learned the answer well enough on your own -- and you're upfront about what parts you don't know. This is an approach that you can follow without involving AI, and I have done so many times myself. ("I don't know this library but based on the docs, have you tried...."). ("I don't know if it solves your actual use case, but I changed ... and at least it compiles"). I do suggest waiting a bit, like a day say, if it's a topic far outside your domain -- because perhaps someone else in the community who does know the answer, or is more of a domain expert, will reply.[2]
Some problematic aspects of using AI for such answers is that it's just too easy to get an answer to any question, post it without actually understanding it yourself or considering the larger context, and call it a day. Do not do that. If you're going to use AI in this situation,[3]
- Be upfront and say you asked AI at the top
- Do understand what it's saying and write it up in your own words before posting
- Please also apply some critical thought and don't assume it got everything right
AI assistance is fine, if you're upfront about it. AI message deliverer is not. People can go ask AI for uncurated answers on their own. I think most people don't want to see it here (or, frankly, anywhere social).
I like your enthusiasm. But note that even one of the people you were trying to help told you "please no AI responses". Consider taking this as a sign that your exact approach is missing something.[4]
I think my advice is implicit in everything I've wrote so far, but I'll try to itemize it anyway.
- Before going straight to AI, consider
-
If you can answer someone's question without AI,[5] do it that way. It's a better fit for this community and will usually be appreciated more.
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Else if the question has adequate answers you don't see a problem with, there's probably no need to supply another via AI
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Else if the question is far outside your experience, consider waiting a day for others with domain experience to answer first
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- When you do go to AI,
- Take the time to understand the answer yourself and supply some critical thought
- Be upfront about your use of AI in your response
- Write the prose yourself, with your words, your perspective, your personality
- Never just post AI output. Humans want to talk to humans here, even when getting answers to technical questions. (And it's against the TOS.)
Hopefully that didn't come off too harsh. I care about this community, including its human and social nature. I want others to appreciate those qualities, and I don't want to see them compromised and replaced by excessive machine-generated content. My hope is to get you to see and respect that point of view, and the value of our community. And recognize that the value of our community is more than "question got promptly answered".
I do appreciate that you care about helping others, and that you cared enough to create this topic.
In case it wasn't clear, while I am a regular here, I am not a moderator or on any official teams.
posts automatically close before that point, for one ↩︎
Once you know the community well enough, you may even be able to predict who's likely to answer what questions, and how well. ↩︎
a situation where you needed AI assistance to answer ↩︎
Be aware that posting AI generated answers will almost always be seen as a minimal effort response! After all, if it's pasted straight from the AI output, it probably is minimal effort. (An AI assisted answer that is worth posting, in contrast, will indeed take some effort.) ↩︎
e.g. off the top of your head, or minimal effort looking at some library docs, or posting a citation you already know about ↩︎