81–90 of 517 posts
I feel like HN is turning a bit in this direction too. I feel like I’m seeing more downvoted comments, and they are more often than not perfectly good comments, and no one replies explaining why they don’t like the comment. Of course you can’t talk about it because it’s against the rules.
agree. I sometimes upvote a downvoted comment just because it looks like a reasonable comment, and I cannot see any reason why it was downvoted.
I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…
https://lobste.rs has downvote explanations[1]: when you want to vote a post/comment down, you're required to state why (pick from a list). Since the user can see why they're downvoted, misuse hardly an issue. I think such a system could work for stackoverflow too: provide reasons like [off-topic, hostile, spam, ...], but don't provide others ([stupid-question, too-easy, ...]). [1]: https://lobste.rs/about#downvotes
1. "This isn't welcome here." Should be flagged instead, and often is.
2. "This is factually incorrect but I won't comment as to why." I view this as lazy at best, and giving cover to #3 at worst.
3. "I disagree with this." Frankly this is the worst use of the downvote. If you disagree, say why (respectfully)!
Tags in Stack Overflow are pretty common (while they're not here) so I'd expect this approach to work better over there (first).
Anecdotal: Searching github issues has long since surpassed the usefulness of stackoverflow for me. Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. Or the people who could answer are also the people who are too busy and/or don't care enough to play the karma game.
Nonetheless I absolutely agree, lately I remove the open/close filter and just type a keyword and there’s almost always a perfectly healthy discussion from others experiencing the same thing, sometimes you can even just skim read for the post with tons of thumbs up emoji’s on it
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is my proposal for removing downvotes but people do not like it: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252338/downvote-sys...
That's ironic
I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…
https://lobste.rs has downvote explanations[1]: when you want to vote a post/comment down, you're required to state why (pick from a list). Since the user can see why they're downvoted, misuse hardly an issue. I think such a system could work for stackoverflow too: provide reasons like [off-topic, hostile, spam, ...], but don't provide others ([stupid-question, too-easy, ...]). [1]: https://lobste.rs/about#downvotes
I think I saw this done on TripleByte's website during the sign-up process where they filter applications outside of the US (and a few other criteria) with an explanation and a promise that they were trying to fix this.
That form of UI is unusual but very friendly.
I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…
This culture is why I've never contributed to Stack Overflow. I'm a reasonably senior engineer, I've been lucky to experience an extraordinary breadth of technology in my career, and I love helping people learn to program... but I just don't have the time or emotional energy for SO's top posters to pick apart the minutia of every word I say in an answer. The ROI for me is nil.
At this point I just ask a question, get an answer, and if I don't like the commentary, I just delete it. I post there under my real name, which means I either have to address or accept dumb/nit-picking criticism, which is a no-win situation. If the person who answers actually needs the points, I'll give that some consideration, but it seems like a lot of the time the solution is offered in the comments anyway. I don…
One thing that always bothered me about SO was that it shows who answered and their score. It should display answers without the user until an answer is accepted. There’s been many cases where a high score user answers, gets a lot of upvotes cos people are like “oh his score is 30k so he must be right” yet the answer is not good or incorrect. And there is a better more correct answer by someone with a Low score who g…
Marked as answered is a fundamentally horrible idea and that feature should be removed. The problem is that the person asking the question isn't capable of determining a correct answer. Far, far to often they pick something that appears to solve their problem but actually is a terrible idea.
Anecdotal: Searching github issues has long since surpassed the usefulness of stackoverflow for me. Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. Or the people who could answer are also the people who are too busy and/or don't care enough to play the karma game.
This has been my experience recently as well, specially with fast-moving JS frameworks and libraries.
If there are a lot of messages, I scroll straight to the bottom of the page, then slowly scroll up until I find a message with lots of thumb up or checkmark emoji reactions.
So it’s like a slightly less efficient StackOverflow!