Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tired of Stack Overflow

arp242.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 517 posts

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#171

Post by Avamander »

jodrellblank wrote: post #145
Avamander wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for downvoting within the rules of the site Doesn't make it good for the site or it's users. It's a very poor excuse. > rant calling people unwelcoming snarky abrasive asses, is amusingly hatey. Are you a high-rank SO user? Also, what I stated is not a "rant" it's an empirical observation.

> Doesn't make it good for the site or it's users. It's a very poor excuse. Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research. Agreeing to follow the site rules, then not following the site rules and deciding it should be run the way you want it to be run instead, isn't good for the site either. > Are you a high…

> Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research. Agreeing to follow the site rules, then not following the site rules and deciding it should be run the way you want it to be run instead, isn't good for the site either.

How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research? I've seen a ton of those that have done their research and have gotten downvoted. In addition to those I have personal experience where I list what I've tried and found, and still get downvoted. I have to say, not listing any research has ended up better for me.

It's an excuse for just downvoting without really a good, constructive reason. It's absolutely fallacious to keep iterating over the same "it's a feature, not a bug" argument, the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist, same applies to the Stack Overflow Meta as well.

> Saying that people "should be held accountable" for their downvotes on an internet site is not "provable by means of experiment", it's "people I disagree with should be punished".

How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable? If you feel you are punished when you have to explain why then you shouldn't downvote.

> Calling people "snarky asses" is not experimental, it's subjective interpretation.

It's your interpretation of "snarky ass" you can't detect by observation of comments. I myself can verify by observation that such comments exist.

> Describing downvoting as lacking empathy, on a site where downvotes are intended to describe the question not the author, is subjective interpretation.

You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people.

Oh, and let's not forget, it's not a subjective interpretation that people get negative emotions towards random downvotes being thrown at them, it's very visibly observable one, might even say it's empirical.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#172

Post by robbrown451 »

jnovek wrote: post #21

This culture is why I've never contributed to Stack Overflow. I'm a reasonably senior engineer, I've been lucky to experience an extraordinary breadth of technology in my career, and I love helping people learn to program... but I just don't have the time or emotional energy for SO's top posters to pick apart the minutia of every word I say in an answer. The ROI for me is nil.

This is the same for me, although I contributed for a while almost 10 years ago, and managed to earn just enough reputation points (that still increase a bit here and there) that I can get some ROI by asking questions and adding bounties. Two or three times they have saved me an immense amount of work trying to figure something out that otherwise might have taken weeks or I would have just given up on.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#173

Post by runarberg »

I had this meta effect happen to me on one of my answer[1]. I mistakenly accused a downvote on my answer as retaliatory and asked on meta if there were any actions available. The meta effect came in full swing, the meta tread quickly became quite toxic (I suggested closing it for that reason but was refused) and my answer got even more downvotes.

This experience really caught me off guard. My experience with online communities has never been so hostile before. At the time I was taking a conscious effort and try to contribute back to SO, however this experience pushed me back. I’ve made a few contributions since then, but they probably would have been far more if people wouldn’t have been so hostile towards me in that meta thread.

[1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/385061/retaliatory-...

PS. I suspect the first downvote on my answer was because my answer was posted with a modern CSS, and I feel like (without having any evidence for) there are some people that actively downvote good HTML/CSS/JavaScript answers that use new syntax and features, while never explaining why the answer is “bad” in any way.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#174

Post by Veedrac »

prepend wrote: post #59
jnovek wrote: post #21

This culture is why I've never contributed to Stack Overflow. I'm a reasonably senior engineer, I've been lucky to experience an extraordinary breadth of technology in my career, and I love helping people learn to program... but I just don't have the time or emotional energy for SO's top posters to pick apart the minutia of every word I say in an answer. The ROI for me is nil.

Same here, I’ve been a reader for 10 years or however long, but their rules were too difficult for me to follow in order to vote. I had to visit every day and do menial, non-useful things just to be able to vote or answer. This didn’t work for me because SO wasn’t something I typically visited every day. So I just couldn’t get into the habit of being enough of a user to browse and vote so it was a vicious cycle of ap…

You don't even have to have an account to post an answer, nor any points to post a question. You need only 15 points to upvote (2 upvotes on an answer, or three on a question).

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#175

Post by enraged_camel »

wolrah wrote: post #126
baud147258 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the accepted answer means that the solution proposed worked for the asker, then there are the votes and comments to evaluate whether or not this is a good answer.

That's the theory, but it's amazing how often I click on a search result leading to SO and find an accepted answer that's either wrong or doesn't even answer the question.

A lot of the times, "right" and "wrong" depends on context. An answer that works for me may be the wrong answer for you. But the "accepted answer" mechanic is useful as a way for the asker to communicate to the site as a whole that the question is no longer in pending status, and that others who are browsing around to see what needs to be answered can move on to other questions.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#176

Post by timwaagh »

The question sounds a bit nonsensical to me tbh.

> I have a list of packages and I want to figure out if this is a standard package.

He wants to figure out if his list of packages is a standard package? Doesn't sound logical.

I don't like to downvote. I know what it's like to harvest 80 downvotes on reddit. But in this case, yeah. I approve downvoting nonsense.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#177

Post by randcraw »

jasode wrote: post #140
el_cujo wrote: post #16

I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…

>If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasonable response. Just remember that if you don't give users a built-in and formal downvote button, they will rebel against that UI and invent an informal downvote mechanism to express their disapproval. E.g. a bunch of stackoverflow users would type "-1 downvote" in the c…

An alternative form of downvote is to reply with a negative comment. This makes a lot of sense since upvotes imply that you agree with all or most of the post while a downvote reveals nothing about what part of the post you dislike or why.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#178

Post by NobodyNada »

Many of the culture problems with SO are a result of poor or outdated site design and moderation tooling -- and the high-rep users are aware of this and have been pushing for better tools for years. Unfortunately, the company has been neglecting the Q&A site and focusing instead on money-making products like Jobs and Teams. Over the past few years, Stack Overflow has launched several new products (Documentation, Developer Stories, Teams, etc.) and UI redesigns (which were often usability disasters, see [0] and [1]).

Meanwhile, the moderation tools (downvotes, close votes, etc.) have not scaled well and are now woefully inadequate and inefficient. Requests for improved tooling have been silently ignored for years (see [2]) -- for example, an absolutely trivial request to re-word one sentence in the review queue guidance ([3]) was unimplemented for several years (and its eventual implementation was really just a token effort from the staff when tensions between the staff and the community were at an all-time high).

Believe me: SO users know the site is not functioning well, and we've been doing everything we can to try to fix it (some users even create bots and userscripts to work around the site's deficiecies). However, there's only so much we can do without the cooperation of the staff. Tensions have been escalating over the past few years, and there's a lot of mistrust and cynicism on all sides between the company, the site's "power users," and new users. At this point, many of the power users are tired of fighting an uphill battle and have reached the point of giving up ([4]).

Fortunately, there have been some encouraging signs recently: over the past few months, the company has finally started to implement some of the much-needed features we've been requesting for years ([5]). Hopefully these efforts will continue -- we'll just have to wait and see.

If you're interested in reading some more of the history behind this, there's an excellent analysis at https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/258777.

[0]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/349118/3476191 [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/386505/3476191

[2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285889/258777 [3]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/332546/3476191

[4]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/386324/3476191

[5]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/08/20/upcoming-on-stack-over...

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#179

Post by adventured »

outadoc wrote: post #157
jasode wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasonable response. Just remember that if you don't give users a built-in and formal downvote button, they will rebel against that UI and invent an informal downvote mechanism to express their disapproval. E.g. a bunch of stackoverflow users would type "-1 downvote" in the c…

Simple alternative: show a downvote button, but make it so that the score must be >= 0.

I use this approach on a service of mine that is built around a community. It works, I recommend it. When you hit 0 and someone tries to downvote further, it informs you that that action is impossible (no user supplied content can be voted into negative territory). I regard negative point voting to be an unnecessary form of community punishment. If something is spam, abusive, or otherwise breaks the rules, then it needs removed. If a user persists in posting that type of content, they get removed.

In a decent community you don't get punched in the face for asking an ignorant or lazy question. Instead, you do not get any reward or positive feedback for it (upvotes, attention to the question). The default of decency is a neutral, respectful treatment to others; a floor of dignity. People can learn how to better contribute without being either subtly or overtly attacked or bullied.

I also give downvotes an expense, they cost points (they subtract from your account score), and I increase the cost as it makes sense. So a user must earn the ability to downvote through contribution. If the system has too much downvoting, you can gently alter that behavior by ramping the cost overall and individually (if a given user is prone to downvoting heavily, you increase their cost beyond the base system cost).

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#180

Post by will4274 »

Avamander wrote: post #3

> Can people truly not comprehend how downvoting a post to -20 (or more) is perceived by the author of that post? No, Stack Overflow high-rank users certainly do not. (A current community moderator literally said "Voting is not a friendly or unfriendly activity.") I've too suggested that the UI should be changed to be less abrasive and that high-rank people should be more accountable for their actions and been downvo…

> lack of empathy

I think this interpretation is colored by your own bias. Downvotes only show a lack of empathy if downvotes are a social mechanism to comment on the asker, not the question. Particularly given that the SO guidelines explicitly say that downvotes are for the question, not the asker...

I'm reminded of every stop sign I've ever stopped at in my life. Some asshole is always waving me ahead of them, even though the rules of the road say it is their turn. They probably think they are being considerate. But I don't think they are being considerate - I think they are making traffic flow less well, an inconsiderate act.

Interpreting downvotes as a lack of empathy is the same sort of wrong reasoning as thinking that letting somebody go in front of you at a stop sign is considerate. It disregards the well documented and publicly posted rules for something you made up.

Post reply on HN