121–130 of 333 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how rarely the community get any answer from the SE company, I doubt we'd ever get their side of the story.
Well until someone comes forward with some concrete evidence we'll never anything beyond this he said, she said tale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 90% of the time it is an XY problem, though. A couple clarifying questions and it turns out the OP really needed something much simpler. For example, people who insist they can’t use a Laravel package because of “performance”, but it turns out they just don’t know how the composer autoloader works.
No... Just answer the question. You’re not there to babysit the question asker or convince them to change their approach/hair style/choice of library. I know it’s frustrating to see people doing something wrong, or that you don’t agree with, but you know what you can do? Just... don’t get involved if you can’t answer the actual question that was asked, and if it’s a bad question, let it die a natural death.
This is... weird, IMO.
I'd much prefer as a new user "I think I know what you're trying to do, your way is gonna cause you a bunch of pain, there's a better way, and here's why" to zero answers and a dead question.
This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen further explaining the question and how its not related "Closed as duplicate: the first question that was immediately closed with no replies" OR! Google around, find SE link on issue, everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why, convinces them to do…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who am I oppressing exactly? By downvoting, am I oppressing the asking person? That’s ridiculous. Why does everyone insist on being so weak-minded?
I think people don't want to feel like they're in some sort of social Darwin experiment where they have to compete to prove the worth of their questions. They just want help with their problems. As many have noted, there is a conflict between the goal of a wiki and the goal of getting answers to people. I speak as someone with a decent score answering questions, who had to fight tooth-and-nail for years to stop peopl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Y actually has an answer - but often enough Y is so convoluted that it just won't work. Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. If the poster insists on Y, then he'll also have to accept the answer "sorry, you can't do it that way, for the following reasons".
> Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. No! Goodness me, why is this so difficult? It should not be attempted. That’s an arbitrary expression of your opinion on the poster. If the question can’t be solved in the way it’s asked let it die gracefully with a “no you can’t do it that why” and suck up the down votes when someone comes along and proves yes yo…
I see a lot of people arguing about mods being too strict. I abhor the recent trend of content decontamination like many others do. But for Q&A sites like SE, I think it is a necessity to stay on topic. Yes, some moderators might have been too eager in some cases, happened to me too. But since these people are all volunteers, I think they should get some support from the community. I mean I might have to look for ano…
> necessity to stay on topic Try a little exercise: ask a computer literate person not familiar with SE to find out what questions are on-topic on https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/
software development methods and practices
requirements, architecture, and design
quality assurance and testing
configuration, build, and release management
Questions that need improvement may be closed until someone fixes them.
Don't ask about...
explaining, writing or debugging code
support for tools or products
finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers, tutorials, articles, or blogs
career or education advice
legal advice or aid
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Y actually has an answer - but often enough Y is so convoluted that it just won't work. Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. If the poster insists on Y, then he'll also have to accept the answer "sorry, you can't do it that way, for the following reasons".
> Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. No! Goodness me, why is this so difficult? It should not be attempted. That’s an arbitrary expression of your opinion on the poster. If the question can’t be solved in the way it’s asked let it die gracefully with a “no you can’t do it that why” and suck up the down votes when someone comes along and proves yes yo…
Well, if StackOveflow/StackExchange is still following Jeff Atwood's philosophy, asking a question isn't necessarily about the questioner either. The question & the answer is for the community more than questioner.[0]
Understandably, most question askers see Stack Overflow as a "Siri/Alexa" type of resource to ask a question. E.g. If I ask Siri voice AI, "where's the nearest Starbucks?", she doesn't talk back about any X/Y problem such as "Is your actual problem that you're not getting enough sleep and therefore you're really asking how to cure insomnia instead of a caffeine fix?" No, Siri just responds with the address of the closest Starbucks. Why can't Stack Overflow be just like that?!?
The above "Siri" type perspective is a huge misunderstanding because the messaging from founders Atwood/Spolsky about Stack Overflow's editorial purpose is very nuanced and difficult to grasp. It's been 11 years since 2008 and that "wiki" intention is still drowned out by the frustrated by users who simply want any of their questions answered: they don't care if it's a duplicate; they don't want pushback on X/Y; they don't want their question downvoted/closed/deleted.
In contrast, the moderators (a.k.a. the high rep fellow users) of Stack Overflow are definitely not in the mode of mimicking Siri/Alexa. They're humans and they definitely will "talk back" to you and ask, "what exactly are you trying to accomplish?" Heck, the famous blog by Microsoft's Raymond Chen (The Old New Thing) is basically a collection of essays about various "X/Y Problem" submitted by customers.
(To downvoters... I don't mind the downvotes but please help with quality of this discussion: If there's a public statement from Stack Overflow explaining its true intended purpose that contradicts my cite, please reply with a reference to it for the benefit of readers of this thread.)
[0] https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376?r...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, people need to stop volunteering their time for free to commercial enterprises and then thinking that time investment gives them rights regarding the management of the enterprise.
If you pay people for their labor then you can set terms in exchange for pay. It validates and reinforces the agreement. I’m being attached here for saying people should be paid for work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, the good old "X/Y Problem" [0] Doesn't matter if Y is non-negotiable, or if I've purposely constrained Y, to get a specific answer for a specific technology. How infuriating for a "Questions and Answers" site, to be told when you're asking a question, that the question you're asking is wrong, and that "you should instead have asked ..." I swear to god, the SO mods are the dumbest, most priggish, humourless be…
About 90% of the time it is an XY problem, though. A couple clarifying questions and it turns out the OP really needed something much simpler. For example, people who insist they can’t use a Laravel package because of “performance”, but it turns out they just don’t know how the composer autoloader works.
I often come across these questions in Google searches months/years after they were closed, and I'm pretty darn sure I legitimately need to do Y. (If I'm wrong, it's for a very different reason than the OP.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Volunteering is a common concept in many communities. We have volunteer fire fighters, volunteer paramedics, volunteer librarians, volunteer social worker, volunteer ... Some of these in fields, and sometimes even in close alignment to payed people. In the context of SO there is a community producing Creative Commons (while there was recently a license change making the company less trustworthy) contents to help peop…
Wikipedia and Mozilla were at one time mainly Non-Profits that people volunteered at for the same reason people volunteer at other non-profits, to benefit wider society Both are turning more and more to be more profit-seeking, (Mozilla more than Wikipedia ) and it is tarnishing their reputations SE has always been a for-profit business, this makes Volunteering more like Free Labor and less like "doing something good…