Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#71

Post by DanBC » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

chippy wrote: post #70

The mod explanation for the Neural Net question is revealing: "This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet"

That's a canned response. When users vote to close a question they have to pick from a list. When a question is closed the most popular reason for closing is automatically shown.

I guess it tells us that people will vote to close even if a question doesn't fit into any of the close reasons, and that a previously "too broad" question would be closed as "too narrow" if you tighten it up.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#72

Post by olavk » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

lamuerteflaca wrote: post #58

olavk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it bluntly, it would have been much more educational for you if you had actually tried to code it yourself. If you during this had encountered a concrete problem or question which you couldn't solve on your own, you could have posted it on SO.

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.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#73

Post by DanBC » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #64

melling wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's perfectly acceptable to ask how to split a string in C#? That's not covered many other places? It's a duplicate, yet highly up voted question. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8928601/how-can-i-split-a... There's probably 100x more C# information than elisp on the internet.

It is highly upvoted because many people have found it useful. Contrary to your question, it's a question with many uses. > That's not covered many other places? (...) > There's probably 100x more C# information than elisp on the internet. So what?

Melling's question can't win: closed for being too broad; attacked for being too narrow.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#74

Post by DanBC » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

olavk wrote: post #38

melling wrote: post #3

I've got the most downvoted Emacs question. It was actually even more downvoted at one point. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11706028/creating-a-elisp... It was a pretty good question but I got into a debate with a moderator. That was my last question and I did a rage quit. As you can see it was a simple well-defined question, and it produced two good answers.

I see lots of complaining over SO moderation in this thread and other places, but the actual examples shown always turn out to very sensible moderation. For example your question is clearly not appropriate for SO. You are not asking a specific question, you are just asking people to write code for you. That somebody was nice enough to actually write your code for you, does not mean it was a good question! Now there m…

> Now there might actually be an audience for a "write my code" website, where users could post programming tasks or homework exercises, and other developers then might try to solve them for the fun and challenge of it. But SO clearly does not want to be that kind of website.

Bountify, if you're prepared to pay for the code. Codegolf on SE if you want to explore the range of answers that meet the spec but which can't be turned in as homework.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#75

Post by olavk » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

olavk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see lots of complaining over SO moderation in this thread and other places, but the actual examples shown always turn out to very sensible moderation. For example your question is clearly not appropriate for SO. You are not asking a specific question, you are just asking people to write code for you. That somebody was nice enough to actually write your code for you, does not mean it was a good question! Now there m…

Actual examples always turn out to have very sensible ex post facto rationalizations of moderation decision. Yes, there's always a good argument - this question is too short, that question is too long, this question looks too much like homework assignment, that question looks not enough like homework assignment, etc. The point is, when you look at even few examples taken together, you realize that those "sensible mod…

Well there are thousands upon thousands of questions on SO which are not closed, so some people apparently still manage to ask in such a way that the questions are not closed. But of course it could be totally random as you suggest. But can you provide an example of a quality question that was in line with the SO guidelines, but still closed?

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#76

Post by jorjordandan » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

For some reason some of these have tons of UPVOTES like the question about formatting Javascript dates. Something went wrong somewhere!

Actually several of the questions have a bunch of upvotes. Certainly more than I've ever gotten on SO...

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#77

Post by biomimic » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

This is actually fairly hilarious.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#78

Post by leereeves » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

The history of the neural network question is an interesting case study in democratic moderation:

http://stackoverflow.com/posts/3455660/revisions

100,000 emails too, with many more moderators:

http://stackoverflow.com/posts/3905734/revisions

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#79

Post by ZoFreX » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

vijayboyapati wrote: post #16

Sadly 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 to be active on the website.

Re: Most Down-Voted Stack Overflow Questions

#80

Post by jlarocco » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #3

I've got the most downvoted Emacs question. It was actually even more downvoted at one point. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11706028/creating-a-elisp... It was a pretty good question but I got into a debate with a moderator. That was my last question and I did a rage quit. As you can see it was a simple well-defined question, and it produced two good answers.

That wasn't a question at all. It was letting people know you wanted them to write code for you.

If your "question" starts out, "I'd like to create...", and finishes with the expectation that else somebody will write the code for you, it's a pretty good bet you're going to get down voted.