Oh, we know there are a whole raft of problems, the least of which is that on average there are only about three regulars checking in every day. This occurs on most of the mainstream forums proportional to the size of the community.
I completely get what you are saying & where you are coming from. But if we provide a quick answers service we won’t develop the community (which is what this forum is all about) and it won’t be sustainable for the few that can give reasonably useful answers. They can’t possibly answer all the questions, so the feed a fish principal comes in to play.
As this topic of supporting a highly complex subject has a direct bearing on my work, I spend time looking at how the other big forums work and I see things are pretty similar, except Stack Overflow which will actually (temporarily) ban you before you’ve even got started if your first question is not to their guidelines.
Even the forums with paid support staff on it will direct you to additional materials at the point of asking that one “direct” question. But you can see the good will wearing thin when someone tries to use it as a remote development service because the asker just doesn’t have the fundamentals under their belt.
There is also the challenge of the content of the opening question - typically more information is needed and there are assumptions made on both sides about what is known and what kit is being used. In some instances we can’t answer properly until we know the “why” - why does the OP want to do that because it currently doesn’t make sense. We rarely achieve a win on the first 5 responses. When the questions of clarification get to post #20 I start asking people to focus as it becomes like pulling teeth but we’ve got invested in getting to an answer.
In some random ideal world the vendors with the much deeper pockets than most of us would fund more materials, graduated levels of documentation so that people don’t get in to the weeds too quickly, simpler examples and “known good” hardware recommendations.
But in return those wanting to make would have to commit to using those materials. We are all pretty good with setting up WiFi now - get out router, plug in, run wizard, done. Want to connect a device to WiFi to send sensor data - use the Arduino example HTTP Client for ESP32. Just add your WiFi name & password and you should have a working demo.
But wait, someone left the security certificate in the HTTP example - which introduces some “what’s that for” queries. And it’s a GET, so now the user has to learn what a GET is. And then they have to find a starter for the web server end. Which means they need a web server.
That’s WiFi. LoRaWAN has the potential to be somewhat easier. Setup a TTIG gateway from docs, done. Get a known good off the shelf device that is in the registry, add the EUI’s & AppKey and the device console starts showing data. Add integration to dashboard service that has some pre-built charts and you are done.
But as soon as you need to tailor the LW setup or create your own device or want to setup your own endpoint for processing uplinks, the possibilities explode from a few pages of setup to hundreds of pages of potential solutions. And then some fundamentals start cutting in - like Fresnel Zones or radiated power or duty cycles or generating valid EUI’s, or, or.
I can see that there is some sense in having an Ask Us Anything service - how would you propose that it is funded?
I see that the majority of devices have ADR as it keeps kittens safe so it’s hard to say what’s going on.