No, unless our goal is to prevent people from joining the site. Since "too trivial" is closely related to google questions, I will address both at once.
- We should be encouraging new users to participate in the community, and many such people have questions that might seem very basic to users with more experience and expertise in the field.
This question seems to be suggesting that Stack Overflow should only be used as a last resort - when an answer cannot be found elsewhere on the internet.
Surely this is the opposite of the site's intended purpose. I thought it was supposed to become the first place people would come for answers. To quote the FAQ,
"No question is too trivial or too "newbie"."
Source
And:
Joel says that the only bad simple question is a duplicate simple question. I say simple questions are OK as long as they’re actually interesting (in some way) for other users to consider and answer.
The podcast quoted above, along with some suggestions from users, led to the introduction of a new close reason: "General Reference". After this new reason was tested, Jeff changed his mind and said that it was a valid reason to VTC:
Per the discussion in Stack Exchange Podcast #20, and after evaluating the close reason on english and scifi, I now agree with Joel: I believe this close reason has too much potential for abuse and misunderstanding. It is unlikely we will ever adopt this close reason network wide.
- The suggestion that an answer can be found by using Google is actually all the more reason to answer basic questions here. We want people to see our site in the Google results, don't we? Imagine a person who has never heard of SE. This person googles "What species is Chewbacca" or whatever, and the third result is from SF&F.SE. This person now knows about us, and it is at least possible that he or she will join the site. This is something to be desired, not discouraged.
Part of the thinking behind Stack Overflow was for those Google searches to link somewhere useful.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html
By answering questions properly, instead of saying 'just Google it', you hopefully set up a definitive answer that Google will find for evermore.
Source
Seriously, read the article linked in the middle of that quote. One of the original principles on which the SE network was founded was "Make sure that Google searches produce useful results - namely, our results". I see no legitimate reason to change this fundamental principle now.
The most basic questions are likely to be the questions that are most common. All the more reason to answer them here so people have access to the best information available.
Meta Stack Exchange has made it abundantly clear that it is unacceptable to close questions simply because the information is already available elsewhere. The general guidelines are quite emphatic about this point: we should embrace the non-googlers, not shun them.
This site is a community of like minded people who are interested in the subject at hand; we are experts, amateur enthusiasts, students, professionals, scholars, and lay people. We are not the "Did you do enough research" police. It isn't our job to punish strangers for not doing what we might do if we were in their position. We are here to provide answers to relevant questions. We are supposed to make information readily available to whomever needs it. We are not supposed to make sure everyone does their homework.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't see any legitimate reason to deny people access to useful information, especially not on the grounds that it is too rudimentary to be bothered with.
