The best subs weren’t like this though.

Questions that were previously asked (repeatedly) would either be downvoted or answered with a link to an earlier question with answers.

The latter is the case for Askhistorians. r/fitness has an extensive wiki, which answered basic and more advanced questions, and a daily “simple questions thread”. Lots of answers in that thread are basically links to the wiki.

It requires a lot of moderation (most of the threads/answers were deleted very quickly in those subs), but it made it into some of the most qualitive subs out there.

It is to be expected though for certain topics where most questions have been asked and answered by now (history, older games,…). You might come up with an interesting question, but most likely, someone else has come up with it before you.

But many people are bad at searching (or are lazy or narcissits) so post it anyway. It’s low effort for them, but very annoying for people that have been part of the community for a while. So many subs where moderation was not as strict will suffer from this.

Given how much worse searching things on the fediverse is, we might see the same issues here in time.