TIL the third most down-voted question on Stack Overflow has 3,735 upvotes and almost 1000 favorites.
You never know - it could be a favorite because it's so hilarious!
Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
91–100 of 103 posts
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#92I can't stand Stack Overflow. Quite obviously it is dominated by people who would much rather show you who's the boss by competing, not for who can provide you with the most useful answer, but by who can be first to find a reason why your question doesn't deserve an answer (and then to block anyone willing to answer from being able to do so). Yes, of course, I understand the assertion: that by attacking questioners i…
In SO's case, clearly the mod culture is not improving the quality or the reputation of the site. But I think it's mostly the hacker content that has this issue. The format seems to work better in other contexts. As someone said about academia - maybe the battles are so ferocious because the stakes are so low.
I don't think it's clear at all. For someone who visits the site without participating (for example to read an answer that showed up in a Google search), they see a bunch of good answers. That looks like a high quality site. Edited to add: And if their question was asked and deleted because it was considered "bad", it never shows up in a Google search.
You can't say the mod culture is not improving the quality of the site because you haven't provided the original content without moderation to see what it looks like.
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#93The questions which are really poor in quality end up being deleted. We did some analysis of deleted questions and our results were published at WWW 2014 [0]. The dataset of deleted questions (up until June 2013) is also publicly available [1]. We also built a machine learning system to predict questions that would be deleted in the future using various features [2]. [0] http://www2014.kr/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/p…
Can you declare a license for [2]?
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this attitude a lot and frankly it is quite annoying. If the guy wanted a lecture he would have asked for a lecture. He wants to learn how to do something without spending 100 hours in it. I know that feeling, lots of us have been there. You are not his mama to lecture him.
I'm just saying SO is not a site designed for this purpose, so he shouldn't get offended when his request for code is downvoted.
http://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions?page=2
Look who asked this question. "Not designed for this purpose," indeed. Joel and Jeff weren't sitting around trying to think of reasons for people NOT to use their site.
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#95The first one I looked at, "Favourite Programming Cartoons", was a blast. But hey, we've always been at war with Eurasia.
Er, no - the question is closed, not deleted, because StackOverflow acknowledges that we have not always been at war with Eurasia.
Some time between that question being asked and now, StackOverflow's community decided that they didn't want to be /r/programmerhumor
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just saying SO is not a site designed for this purpose, so he shouldn't get offended when his request for code is downvoted.
http://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions?page=2 Look who asked this question. "Not designed for this purpose," indeed. Joel and Jeff weren't sitting around trying to think of reasons for people NOT to use their site.
That is not a "plz write code for me" question though, it is just a very simple question. If it is too simple is discussed here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too...
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#97The question about the single-layer neural networks being closed really bugs me. The entire reason Stack Overflow is so great is that that are experts there, that can answer my stupidly specific questions.
If I wanted generic answers to a problem, I can Google them and find some half-assed forum post from 5 years ago.
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#98Sadly the Stackoverflow community seems to have become a lot more officious in the last few years and the number of petty bureaucrats has skyrocketed. I asked a genuine question which I didn't know the answer to and which I was hoping someone else may have come across. It was immediately downvoted for not having a proposed solution. Eventually it was upvoted and became positive because it was a genuinely useful quest…
I completely agree. I've asked a couple of questions now that had lots of genuinely useful answers, and were then closed for some perceived rule violation. Assuming for the sake of argument that the moderators were correct and my question was off-topic: it's really rude for half a dozen moderators to pile on and all say so. It gave the impression I was out of line / being told off and it really put me off continuing…
I agree that the messaging displayed for on-hold questions can seem like you're being ganged-up on. In reality, the way that questions get put on-hold (and eventually closed) is this: there's a review queue that users with enough reputation can go to, where they will be presented with a question that has been flagged as being "off-topic" (or having some other problem). The reviewer can either agree, disagree or skip the question. There's no discussion with other moderators around the matter, and you don't even know who the other reviewers are until you cast your vote. So the "put on-hold by John Doe, Jane Doe, etc." message that ends up on your question is not intended as a rebuke; instead it's meant to force the reviewers to act responsibly, since they won't have the shield of anonymity. This is in addition to many other checks that StackOverflow puts in place to try and prevent reviewer abuse. Point being, try not to take it personally when your question is put on hold or closed; nobody's trying to tell you off (they would do that in the comments if anywhere).
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#99The questions which are really poor in quality end up being deleted. We did some analysis of deleted questions and our results were published at WWW 2014 [0]. The dataset of deleted questions (up until June 2013) is also publicly available [1]. We also built a machine learning system to predict questions that would be deleted in the future using various features [2]. [0] http://www2014.kr/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/p…
Can you declare a license for [2]?
I assume you meant the code. Please feel free to use it. It is hardly "mine" because it just contains putting up 'sklearn' functions together. In case that is not appropriate, what license do you suggest?
Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm getting a 404 now when I click your link. Was your question deleted after you posted this?
Yes, that's how they roll on StackOverflow. Hope they fixed the bug so the guy who answered the question didn't lose his points. He was upvoted 13 times.
Well it's back up now. SO looks like it has a Wikipedia problem[1].