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Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

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Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#41

Post by viraptor »

foxhop wrote: post #23
viraptor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious - what was your username? I'd like to see the answers.

russellballestrini or foxhop You cannot delete your account on stackoverflow without writing to the administrators via email. It is a manual process for them,and they don't delete your account they just rename it and prevent you from logging in. The questions do persist. I'm pretty sure they also deleted my "spam" questions when they banned me. edit: the stack overflow account is the only one they deleted/renamed. He…

Not trying to offend, but from the answers I see, a number of them are just not right for SO. They're either very opinionated, or not answering the question itself. The first couple of questions from new users go to the moderators' queue automatically, so they will get more attention than stuff from others... then again, that's done exactly so that new users get the feel for what's acceptable and what isn't.

If you want to try again, stick around for some time. Add justifications / context to your answers. Some of your answers were of good quality and got appreciated. I wouldn't stop because some posts got closed. It is a community site after all and the big idea is that others can rewrite most of your post and if it gets improved that way, it's better if it stays around forever.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#42

Post by lnanek2 »

Often my favorite questions get killed, like the best ways to make money on Android. I'm very interested in which ads to run, in-app payments, etc.. The mod wanted it moved to some bullshit spin off site with no traffic. ;/ The sort of cut and dry questions they do allow on the site are often just the sort of thing you can find in the documentation anyway. Not very useful. Not to mention that stupid score system encouraging people to post bullshit crappy answers even when they aren't sure.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#43

Post by viraptor »

ericb wrote: post #35
viraptor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a subtle problem with closing questions - basically there's a list to choose from and you can't always express exactly why you made that choice. Even when people agree on closing a question I can often see a wide spread of chosen options. If you read into the FAQs / standards for questions, this one may not be off-topic, but is definitely low quality. Seeing the expression "is not considered a good, on-topic…

If being a duplicate is why it is being closed, a search must have been done. Could not a link to the other offerings be given instead? Failing that, saying it is because of duplication?

That's not the reason. All the posts listed above were actually created later ('09, '10) than the one from the main thread ('08). It's just a question that doesn't match the SO guidelines. It's not really bad, but it could be phrased better. Still - locked is probably better than closed here.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#44

Post by Shog9 »

You might like some data. See: http://stackoverflow.com/annotated-posts?tab=locked&filt...

1900 locked questions, out of which just over 1700 are locked because they were merged into duplicates, or migrated to other Stack Exchange sites.

< 200 locked questions out of 3.3 million doesn't seem so bad.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#45

Post by icebraining »

lnanek2 wrote: post #42

Often my favorite questions get killed, like the best ways to make money on Android. I'm very interested in which ads to run, in-app payments, etc.. The mod wanted it moved to some bullshit spin off site with no traffic. ;/ The sort of cut and dry questions they do allow on the site are often just the sort of thing you can find in the documentation anyway. Not very useful. Not to mention that stupid score system enco…

They have no traffic because everyone wants to shove everything onto SO.

And how does the score system encourage that? You often see people with negative score for wrong answers, how is that encouraging?

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#46

Post by sedev »

I call Betteridge's Law on this. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines ]

Stack Overflow has a fairly specific rubric for judging questions, and a central part of it is the requirement that they have a single verifiably correct answer. The example question does not, and it runs afoul of the guidelines in multiple other ways. The example question is something for a conventional discussion board or mailing list - it's not a good Stack Overflow question.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#47

Post by icebraining »

genwin wrote: post #39
MattBelanger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of SO is to have questions with ONE correct answer, and to have that answer there. Any question - such as this one - where the answer is "it depends" better be a work of art, or have an answer that explores all the considerations in exquisite detail, or it's going to get closed. Because there's no "one right answer" to this question. It's "on topic", but not a good question.

If that's SO's goal then I would say they've left a big hole in their strategy for a competitor. That goal sounds good in principle. In practice, very specific programming questions often (if not usually ) have multiple correct answers, with the best choice for a particular scenario being made by evaluating pros/cons just like the question I referred to. Some languages embrace multiple ways of doing things. For examp…

The "competitor" is Programmers.SE: the other site of the same network for more subjective, high level QA.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#48

Post by icebraining »

genwin wrote: post #12
Spooky23 wrote: post #8

I think they made the right call on this example -- the whole point of SO is to get specific answers to specific questions. This question is vague and without the context that a reasonable person would need to give a specific answer. There are plenty of examples of good questions being closed because they are perceived as generating too much discussion (esp. on the "programmers" se site). IMO, you've given us an exam…

Please elaborate. If I want to know the pros/cons of storing images in a database, vs. (say) storing only the links to images in the database, what more specific question should I look for? How is that question too general or vague? Apparently at least 400 people thought it was reasonable, than thought it was unreasonable. 50+ people thought it was reasonable enough to respond to.

Here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105191/what-a...

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#49

Post by icebraining »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #26

To the vast majority of the people using StackOverflow, it is a site for getting information about programming. The mods and superusers may know that it is a site for getting specific 1-to-1 answers to questions, but I'll guarantee that the average user browsing the site does not know that. You have to click to the FAQs to find that out, and many people will not do that. Even if you go to the About page, you see this…

The mods are elected by the community, though.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow being ruined by its mods?

#50

Post by genwin »

Shog9 wrote: post #44

You might like some data. See: http://stackoverflow.com/annotated-posts?tab=locked&filt... 1900 locked questions, out of which just over 1700 are locked because they were merged into duplicates, or migrated to other Stack Exchange sites. < 200 locked questions out of 3.3 million doesn't seem so bad.

That's great info. If accurate I must be unlucky to hit so many locked questions. I just scrolled through all 38 pages but didn't see the question I referred to in the OP.
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