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Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

sonyaellenmann.com

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Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#71

Post by Steeeve »

Joeri wrote: post #34
Veedrac wrote: post #26

> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either. Great, so you've learnt something for next time. > Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow i…

Meh, I'm an experienced dev and no questions that I might consider posing would get past the filters, either for being too vague, too specific, asking for off-site resources or asking for opinions. To be honest I don't even know what a good SO question is anymore, and i have 8000+ rep. You may believe the current rules and moderator brute squads work to keep the site clean, but from where i'm standing they work to ma…

I'm a moderator of a small stackexchange site. When we got started, there were all kinds of "this isn't an appropriate question for our site" arguments. I warned people that if you were too strict about what questions could be asked, nobody would want to stay. The counter-argument was you had to push for high quality questions early on to have a high quality community.

Nobody seemed able to know what a high quality question was, nor could come to an agreement on what topics specifically would be allowed.

I left the community and became a mod a year later because stackexchange asked me to - given that I had a high reputation on the site and the site itself was in danger of dying out. The site still exists today IMO, in spite of the users who are quick to criticize other peoples questions instead of answer them - and really because the topic itself is something a lot of people are interested in without a lot of other communities to go to for support.

Stackexchange's system encourages people to be bitchy and put down other people's questions. They are in the position they are because of SEO - and because google and yahoo's alternative solutions were short sighted. If the monetization model was really all that strong they would lose their market position very quickly.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#72

Post by weaksauce »

reitanqild wrote: post #30
Veedrac wrote: post #26

> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either. Great, so you've learnt something for next time. > Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow i…

Then maybe just maybe add a rule that you must lurk before asking questions? When the site clearly looks like as a place for noobs to get questions answered for free then maybe don't complain that you get just that.

The about us statement clearly states that it's a place for developers to "Developers trust Stack Overflow to help solve coding problems..." and "...our products aim to enrich the lives of developers as they grow and mature in their careers."

Pretty clear that it's for professional programmers and not beginners. I agree that it is a bit frustrating to google something and have the SO question marked as a duplicate of another unanswered question. There are many places to learn the basics of programming and SO is not that place.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#73

Post by hackuser »

jrumbut wrote: post #55
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #49

Disclaimer: I code for Stack Overflow and before that I was a mod. Many of these comments lack a sense of proportions regarding Stack Overflow. We get 8,000 questions... per day. There are more than 30 million posts, 12 millions of which are questions. Yeah, we have to close a lot of them, and we keep the ones which we can answer. Lists are disallowed for a reason. Opinions are disallowed for a reason. We aim to buil…

I guess what I genuinely don't understand is why lists are more harmful to the community than rudeness and vitriol. If I post a question that asks for an opinion or list, someone will swoop in and edit it or delete it. Why can't we do the same when someone embeds a little bit of professional problem solving with a lot of unprofessional personal attacks?

> I genuinely don't understand is why lists are more harmful to the community than rudeness and vitriol

An excellent question, which leads us to the heart of the matter ...

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#74

Post by reitanqild »

current_call wrote: post #54

But hey, if you don’t want a friendly community or you don’t want more people to ~learn how to code~, then you’re doing it right. I have all the community I want, thanks. If you think I'm being self centered, you have it backwards. I don't care what you do, but you think a community you aren't part of should cater to you.

Problem is a number of us were parts of the community and now treat it mostly as read only.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#75

Post by Veedrac »

catnaroek wrote: post #52
Veedrac wrote: post #26

> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either. Great, so you've learnt something for next time. > Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow i…

I don't disagree with the gist of your argument: the quality of Stack Overflow would greatly diminish if people (newbies or otherwise) were allowed to ask questions whose answers are in the manual. But there are better ways to correct undesired behavior. For starters: (0) Don't downvote newbies to oblivion. That's just being a bully. (IMO, downvotes should be reserved for bad answers.) (1) When contributing an answer…

For the most part, downvotes on poor questions don't cascade a ton. Questions that go lower generally deserve it.

Of those questions about a day old with score Your RTFM tag doesn't seem to add very much over a moderate count of downvotes. I believe the rest of what you've said applies when downvotes happen.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#76

Post by hackuser »

droope wrote: post #28

Welcome to the programming community! People are generally kind and willing to help, but there is one caveat: there is frequently little patience for questions which you could have resolved yourself. With time you'll both learn to identify these and to write your questions in a way that it reflects that you've "done your research."

> there is frequently little patience for questions which you could have resolved yourself.

I don't think that's realistic; it's the rationalization for bad behavior.

IMHO the truth often is that there are many people who want the chance to act out on their frustrations or other emotional problems, and they seek a target they can rationalize attacking - like a guy going to a bar looking for a fight.

Or like the angry mobs on social media who pile on someone they don't know over an issue that doesn't affect them and about which they know almost nothing. Consider why, if it doesn't affect them and they don't even want to learn about it, they attack the object of their vitriol? It's the same motive and behavior, just a different context.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#77

Post by jrumbut »

hackuser wrote: post #73
jrumbut wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I genuinely don't understand is why lists are more harmful to the community than rudeness and vitriol. If I post a question that asks for an opinion or list, someone will swoop in and edit it or delete it. Why can't we do the same when someone embeds a little bit of professional problem solving with a lot of unprofessional personal attacks?

> I genuinely don't understand is why lists are more harmful to the community than rudeness and vitriol An excellent question, which leads us to the heart of the matter ...

I also wonder if there is any connection between the low value put on being polite and welcoming and the struggles to create bring more diversity to our community.

StackOverflow is where professional development happens, and so there is some responsibility on them to make sure that development is healthy.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#78

Post by reitanqild »

weaksauce wrote: post #72
reitanqild wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe just maybe add a rule that you must lurk before asking questions? When the site clearly looks like as a place for noobs to get questions answered for free then maybe don't complain that you get just that.

The about us statement clearly states that it's a place for developers to "Developers trust Stack Overflow to help solve coding problems..." and "...our products aim to enrich the lives of developers as they grow and mature in their careers." Pretty clear that it's for professional programmers and not beginners. I agree that it is a bit frustrating to google something and have the SO question marked as a duplicate of…

> Pretty clear that it's for professional programmers and not beginners.

SO itself begs to differ:

> Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it.

So very clearly not only professionals.

Also as lambda points out somewhere in this discussion you might be a seasoned pro in one language and a noob in another.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#79

Post by edem »

jedberg wrote: post #56
edem wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's a good question then? Read the FAQ and you will know.

With respect, I have to vehemently disagree. I've been using the site since the beta, have thousands of karma and twenty+ years of experience, and yet I can't ask or answer a question anymore. When I answer a question, it gets downvoted and then an inaccurate answer gets accepted and upvoted. When I ask a question, it gets marked as a duplicate, and then they link to the question it's a duplicate of, which is a quest…

I experience the exact opposite. Maybe something else is going on.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#80

Post by Latty »

toyg wrote: post #19
msftie wrote: post #2

Amen. In my opinion, SO has become a very toxic and discouraging community to participate in. It's a shame.

I think it's a bit like Wikipedia: the more you hang around, the less you like it. It's understandable though; after the 12324th question that basically boils down to "please do my homework", even a saint would lose his shit. It's the inevitable fate of every "beginners' resource", from IRC to forums, in the long run. Personally, I had decent experiences in most cases. I never got over the fact that it refuses to bec…

If people really wanted or needed those lists, someone would create a site for that purpose. The reality is that such a site would fail terribly, because those kinds of lists are opinions people won't agree on, and go out of date incredibly quickly. If you search for such a thing, you'll find blog posts from people giving such lists, and most of them will be useless because they are out of date.

StackOverflow is a good resource precisely because it's curated and maintained, including rejecting content that doesn't work on the site. Just like Wikipedia doesn't allow you to have your own page listing your opinions.

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