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Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

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Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#141

Post by ryathal »

dietrichepp wrote: post #29
kstrauser wrote: post #15

My favorite is people downvoting and arguing about answers I posted over a decade ago. "Yeah, I know that's not how you'd solve a problem in Python today. It was a good answer in 2011 when I wrote it. How bored are you, exactly, that this is how you want to spend your days?"

I don’t care about the downvotes but I hate when people make misguided attempts to “improve” old answers. The most recent was someone who went in and removed use of the word “you” as an attempt to “depersonalize” the answer. There was some kind of recognizable idea behind the edits, but the user’s changes mostly just damaged the readability and made the answers more convoluted. The editor argued with me and linked to…

The edit thing is a self imposed problem because the site gamification for established Stack* sites mandates that people edit questions to get enough reputation for basic site functionality. Actually asking or answering a question is far too difficult for a new user, especially on SO.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#144

Post by suzzer99 »

jrmg wrote: post #9

My pet Stack Overflow annoyance: the number of questions that have highly voted confidently incorrect answers or (perhaps worse?) answers that do work, but not for the reason in the confidently incorrect explanation that follows the ‘what to do’ part of the answer.

Way more often than not it seems like the first few answers are either wrong, overly complicated, or advanced RTFM posts with massive upvotes. Meanwhile the 3rd or 4th answer with modest upvotes is actually the succinct correct answer.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#145

Post by jmartrican »

In the beginning, I've had questions downvoted. But after a while, I learned how to ask questions. I can say that this is not something I struggle with.

One issue I did have recently was with having one of my questions deemed a duplicate. And it was a duplicate if you only consider the fix or root cause. But the original question did not have the error message that i was getting, and hence never came across the original. Hence I did not think it was a duplicate. In time I was able to get the duplicate label removed, and the question opened back up.

I love SO. And I'm saddened by the OP's experience. I can imagine how frustrating they must feel. Hopefully, posts like this can lead to positive change.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#146

Post by zabzonk »

permo-w wrote: post #27

my most recent attempt wasn’t downvoted or closed, instead I got an ‘typo edit suggestion’ - or something to that effect - where someone had gone through and edited in about 5 false corrections to imagined typos. I did have the option to decline the edit, but it’s another example of the weird moderation culture does anyone have insight into the moderator process that’s encouraging these behaviours?

post a link that proves what you say

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#147

Post by Someone1234 »

rglullis wrote: post #114
wahnfrieden wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re just repeating what SO owners say, or aspire to. Why do you agree?

Because it's a reasonable justification. Why don't you agree?

SO is stagnant directly due to this policy.

Often time it is like taking a time-machine back ten years ago or more. For example a lot of JavaScript questions get answered with "use JQuery" even for things now built in, and no new questions can replace them nor is the timestamp on questions meaningful.

SO's policy will be the death of SO. Nobody has a reason to participate, it is a super toxic community, and it is out of date. Much like Twitter it is a matter of WHEN something better will replace it, not IF it will.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#148

Post by matsemann »

chrisan wrote: post #67

Someone did the work of getting to the bottom of this and OP eventually shared his questions that were deleted https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/116vvpp/saying_good... > The first question is a request for ideas. That's offtopic for SO. > The second question was a good question, but since it ended up being a bug in your setup, and not actually part of the language, it wasn't as useful of a general question. Th…

Yup, classic SO bashing. "They closed my question for no reason!!", "I asked a well formed question and they down voted me!!". And people either refuse to give examples (because they know they're lying), or when responding it's quite obvious why they got the reaction they got.

Mind you, I believe SO could be more friendly. But if you've tried moderating and being active there, you quickly understand the bluntness. With hundreds of useless questions being posted an hour, you quickly get jaded. Like, I genuinely want to help people there, but when you spend literally no effort asking your question you're not getting much in return.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#149

Post by BeetleB »

stuff4ben wrote: post #139
BeetleB wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation : > Reputation is entirely optional > The three most important activities on Stack Overflow are Asking, Answering and Editing - none of which require any reputation at all! Looking at what reputation brings, the highest one that matters to me is downvoting questions, which requires 125. My reputation is over 400, and I didn't have to deal with any trauma to get the…

That's basically what I'm saying. Lack of reputation inhibits your ability to participate in the site (beyond asking, answering, and editing questions).

And what I'm saying is ... that's OK for 99% of users. I'm not sure it's a problem that it is hard to participate beyond voting, commenting and asking/answering.

Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow

#150

Post by matsemann »

jmartrican wrote: post #145

In the beginning, I've had questions downvoted. But after a while, I learned how to ask questions. I can say that this is not something I struggle with. One issue I did have recently was with having one of my questions deemed a duplicate. And it was a duplicate if you only consider the fix or root cause. But the original question did not have the error message that i was getting, and hence never came across the origi…

If the other question solved your problem, it's considered a duplicate. However, a duplicate isn't necessarily bad, and getting your question closed for it shouldn't be taken as a slight. It's just another angle (as you had a different error) to get to the same answer.
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