When to give and not to give advice on WP

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Superb.

I wish I gave perfect advice all the time...but sometimes, I don’t.

I’m no guru, by any means. I’m an average sort.

If a person tells me to stop, or disavows what I’m saying, I’ll stop.

I feel genuinely good when I’ve helped someone, and especially if I help someone grow.

I like Steve’s metaphor of “dropping a lifeline.” Most people who are truly “drowning” really want to be saved.

Im maybe too “solution”-oriented, and sometimes just need to “listen.”

Gender has little to do with it. Ive been on both sides of the equation.

Like...sighhhh... a moment at work that still rankles years later.

A certain low level supervisor known to be a bully hassled me about some breaking some rule -that I wasnt really breaking- and even if I werebeaking the rules- it wouldnt have caused the problem that the rule was designed to prevent. The boss got distracted by someone else before we got into a shouting match about it. But he gave the appearance of just being jerk, and also being idiot because he was actually going against his own self interest by doing this inane harrassment of me. But we didnt have a fight, and I clocked out and went home. BUT as I walked out the store I noticed in another part of the worksite someone else HAD truly violated the same rule, AND had violated the rule in a way that DID create a textbook example of the very problem the rule was designed to prevent. I considered going up to the boss and saying "see here...why did you hassle me, and NOT hassle this other person?"

Thats the background. Now for the actual anecdote.

Some days later the topic came with another coworker. Maybe I didnt explain it clearly but the other guy began to pontificate upon his own technique for doing the job. Telling me a bunch of elementary crap that I had already figured out years ago on my own. The point is that this other worker, like most folks who "give advice" was just shooting off his mouth to feed his own ego, and had failed to actually hear a word I had actually said. Thus didnt even know what the issue was. And he proceeded to act AS IF the issue was that I was having trouble doing the job (I knew better than both him and the supervisor how to do the job). When the issue was that I was having trouble dealing with an as*hole dumbass supervisor. Not the same thing at all.

Now you might be thinking "what response WOULD you have wanted this coworker to give?"Good question. Probably something like "yeah, a lot of folks think that that particular supervisor is a jerk, but there isnt much you can do about it". Or "yeah he is a jerk, but if it happens again maybe you SHOULD point out the error of his ways to him, because he might be more reasonable than you think." Or something along those lines.

Sometimes it depends on where you come from as well. Like advice from American members might not be very relevant to a UK member. Once in a thread I started about feeling vulnerable to murderers in the street (as I live in an area with a high crime rate) I got advised by American members to take a gun out with me for protection. I thought they were joking at first. In the UK it is practically illegal, and unusual, to carry a gun about with you in public unless you're a police officer, and the vast majority of people don't own a gun.

The vast majority of urban Americans don’t own guns, either

I thought members of the London Metropolitan Police don’t carry guns.

Yes people will tend to give out advice based on their own situation or hypothetical.

You just gotta use your own judgment to know what advice to not follow.

Yes.
That is why I prefer aspie women,

I think a lot depends on the attitude with which the advice is given.

What I personally find most irritating about some kinds of advice is when the person giving it assumes that they know more about my situation than they actually do. An example that's popping into my head right now: "Why don't you just get in your car and go to ...." said by someone who assumed that of course I have a car, which I don't. (I found this especially annoying because surely that person had worked in NYC long enough to notice that LOTS of NYC residents do not have cars???)

More generally, I tend to be annoyed by any advice that contains the word "just," as in "Just do X -- it's so easy!" -- advice which assumes that there couldn't possibly be any aspect of my situation that makes action X difficult for me, or perhaps even impossible. It would be better to say something like, "Would it be feasible for you to do action X?"

So when someone asks generally for advice, I will give it if I think I see a solution, while trying to maintain a humble, tentative attitude about it. (I don't always succeed at the latter; I'm sure I sometimes come across as an annoying know-it-all too.)

I hope it wasn't me who told you to just "get in your car" or whatever.

I didn't have my own car until age 51. Before, I just had to take the train or bus.

If I did give that sort of advice, I apologize.

I find if you don't want certain advice that won't work, you have to say so in your post like "I do not have a car" or "I don't have my driving license."

No one knows your situation so when you come online and ask a bunch of random strangers for it, only you know what advice you can listen to and ignore the rest that doesn't apply to you or that isn't helpful and it's the thought that counts.

Of course if that person living in NYC actually gave you that advice and you also live in NYC, they could have been a troll because a pattern I have noticed in trolling is they really lack reading comprehension and they say stupid stuff.

If I happened to have given that advice, I would have been stupid that day. That doesn't make me a troll. It makes me somewhat oblivious that day. I don't remember every bit of advice I give people. If I did give that advice, I just wasn't thinking that day.

I don't always give the best advice; and people don't always give the best advice to me. Such is the way of the world.

I tend to give advice based upon my life experience. I don't rely on the results of studies. The results of studies don't take into account individual circumstance.

No, it wasn't you, nor did this occur on Wrong Planet. (Indeed it occurred in real life, in a doctor's office right here in my neighborhood.) I was just citing an example of particularly annoying bad advice from someone who should have known better, and also as an example of the likely potential annoyingness of any advice of the form "Just do X".

Agreed that it's best to describe one's situation as completely as possible when asking for advice -- although there's a tradeoff there, because a too-long-winded initial question (at least in an Internet forum) is less likely to get responses.

Anyhow, my point is that an important category of advice that is highly likely to be inadvertantly offensive is advice to do something that seems simple, easy, and obvious to the advice-giver. If a proposed solution to another person's problem (especially a person whom the advice-giver doesn't know well) seems simple, easy, and obvious, then it's highly likely that there is some important aspect of the person's situation that the advice-giver doesn't know yet.

After all, if the solution really is so simple, easy, and obvious, then it is highly likely that the person seeking the advice has already thought of that hypothetical solution and rejected it for some reason. And saying "just do X -- it's easy!" can easily come across as an insult to the advisee's intelligence. Or it can come across like Marie Antoinette's infamous advice, "Let them eat cake."

Therefore, when I think I see a simple, easy, and obvious solution to someone else's problem, I try to remember to take that feeling with a grain of salt, and as a signal to be cautious and humble in my manner of expressing the advice. I think it's best to ask some questions to understand the situation better, rather than give i immediatelyn to the temptation to say "just do X -- it's easy!"

I do this. But sometimes people don't read all of the post so they still give the certain advice that don't work and I find myself having to explain myself again.
I know people don't read the whole post if it's too long but if I'm interested enough to help someone then I do read the whole post first so that I can offer the correct advice (if the OP wants advice). If the post is too long then I either avoid replying and leave it to someone with better reading skills, or I skim through the post before giving advice on a certain thing to see if the OP has already mentioned it.

Well, who asked for this advice?

Most police officers are not allowed to carry guns. However, almost every time you’ll see someone carrying a gun in public, they’ll be an armed police officer. Most police forces (there are 44 territorial forces in Britain) have small armed units with about 50 officers. The Met has about 2,500 armed officers out of 32,000. Then there’s the Northern Ireland police, who are routinely armed, as are the special units that guard Defence sites and nuclear plants.