Proposal for canonical question: "How do I use a debugger to debug my C++ code?" [closed]

A list of links to videos? Ugh. Why do we even need this?

In general I'm not opposed to this idea. I've told many people to learn some debugging before coming back to the site with yet another question to be closed. Having somewhere I can bring them to that explains what that "debugging" thing is would be nice.

I don't like this incarnation of it, though.

I'll start by mentioning that we already have a specific close reason for these questions that doesn't involve duplicates:

Questions seeking debugging help ("why isn't this code working?") must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers.

To put it bluntly, the question linked here as an example just doesn't belong on the site. That's it. There's no lasting value gained by keeping it. I haven't deleted it yet only for the sake of discussion; under normal circumstances, I would.

That said, let's say we prefer to close by linking people to a duplicate.

So people will follow the link to the duplicate and find some list of links to videos and presumably follow one or more of those and watch them. Seems ok, but I have a few reservations about this, which are reservations against both the idea of linking to external content instead of providing it directly in the answer, and reservations against the video format.

Any regular old answer on SO can be improved by others. I can fix mistakes in answers, I can update outdated information, I can add missing information. This is by virtue of primarily two things: the information is in an easily editable format (prose), and it is right here on the site where I can edit everything, more or less.

A video cannot be improved as easy as prose. I can improve some prose while waiting in line at the post office. A video? Haha, good luck. An external video, though, is even worse: I would need to make my own video that would be a complete replacement for the existing one with the improvements I thought necessary and then replace the link to it.

Especially for a canonical answer, I really would prefer content I can directly improve here on SO. Canonical answers have to be top-notch. They are meant to be linked often, so they cannot be just average. They have to be the best. And curation is essential to keep that content as the best. A list of links to videos severely undermines the ability to keep the content at the level of quality it needs to be.

Canonical questions are encouraged on the Stack Exchange network, especially so on Stack Overflow in which so many duplicate questions are frequently asked. To quote Benjamin Gruenbaum:

Just do it.

The difficulty here is not getting the approval that this is a good idea—it almost indisputably is a great idea—the trick is actually writing such a good, high-quality, canonical answer. For some examples of successful canonical questions, see these examples:

• What is a NullPointerException, and how do I fix it?
• JavaScript closure inside loops – simple practical example
• How do JavaScript closures work?
• The definitive guide to form-based website authentication
• How can I prevent SQL injection in PHP?

For a number of these, I see many questions getting closed as duplicates to the above every single day. Many of them have an immense amount of work put into them. In order for these questions to "catch on" as canonical questions, they need to be well-written, they need to be complete, and perhaps most importantly, they need to be used as targets for duplicates.

Write a good answer. Make sure it's polished. Then close every question in sight that is a valid duplicate of the given problem.

To those claiming that such a question would be off-topic: yes. Maybe it would be. But the rules have been proven to be a little squishy in the past. I'm looking at you, The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List.

Sometimes a question's on-topic-ness can be outweighed by its usefulness. It just needs to have a really good answer. Anything less isn't going to cut it.

_{As a final note, if you actually spend the time writing a really good answer, you don't necessarily need to make it community wiki. You can if you'd like, but if you put effort into it, you deserve the reputation just like any other question/answer.}

Following @Alexis King's suggestion, I did write a Canonical Question - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28451362/how-do-i-use-a-debugger-to-fix-my-c-code/28451363.

It can be used to mark other questions as duplicates to it, or simply written as a comment in case marking such questions as duplicates is not good for the site for SEO reasons.

Some commenters said that closed questions eventually get auto-deleted but duplicates do not, though I think I've seen plenty of non-duplicate questions that aren't deleted.

Now we can wait and see if it flies or gets closed.