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I had been participating in Stack Overflow since its public beta (though I'm not an active participant anymore), and this topic comes up every now and then, but

I had been participating in Stack Overflow since its public beta (though I'm not an active participant anymore), and this topic comes up every now and then, but the astronomical growth of Stack Overflow has not stopped. The composition of all-time high users are also quite a bit different from a few years ago. I am not saying there is not a problem, but I take complaints like this with a grain of salt these days. End of the day, I think it is important to keep in mind what Stack Overflow is not: it's not Khan Academy. It's not college classes. It's not your IRC buddy. It's more like Wikipedia (but not quite exactly that) than those things. Some choices should be made to keep the content quality high.

reitanqild 10y ago
Problem is as have been pointed out again and again: there are so many amazingly useful questions closed as "not constructive". All while IIRC quiz-type "trivia" questions seems be more OK.
jrumbut 10y ago
What I think the experienced users are missing is that newbie questions are an opportunity to let a newbie answerer learn to teach. When I decided I wanted to start helping out on SO I found it almost impossible for months because the easy questions were instantly shut down with a frustrated response from an elder statesman user. It's like when there's one guy who has maintained a system for years and won't let anyone else touch it but also complains about having no time for other projects. Eventually he has to let someone new take over parts of it, even if it means that at first it takes a little longer and it's not done quite the way he would.
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  I'm a 2k user and I've never asked a question. I find that the greatest benefit to my learning has been trying to answer someone else's question. That being said, I'd say on average there are 2 "async loop" questions on the "newest javascript questions", both of which tend to get an answer by a newbie and still get marked as a dupe. Just because it gets closed, doesn't mean you can't work on answering it. The research will benefit you whether or not you get the validation from answering it. However, I do understand that it's hard to know if it's the right answer without the feedback of an upvote or two.
  - jrumbut 10y ago
    Ha! I'm in almost exactly the same place. I set a goal of asking a positively ranked question recently and finally made it happen. What I'm trying to get at is not that low quality questions should be accepted, it's that when they are rejected a kind tone should be used so that new users are able to take the suggestion without being defensive and so that they feel encouraged to get better and try to keep participating.

reitanqild 10y ago

Problem is as have been pointed out again and again: there are so many amazingly useful questions closed as "not constructive". All while IIRC quiz-type "trivia" questions seems be more OK.

jrumbut 10y ago

What I think the experienced users are missing is that newbie questions are an opportunity to let a newbie answerer learn to teach. When I decided I wanted to start helping out on SO I found it almost impossible for months because the easy questions were instantly shut down with a frustrated response from an elder statesman user. It's like when there's one guy who has maintained a system for years and won't let anyone else touch it but also complains about having no time for other projects. Eventually he has to let someone new take over parts of it, even if it means that at first it takes a little longer and it's not done quite the way he would.

lloyd-christmas 10y ago
I'm a 2k user and I've never asked a question. I find that the greatest benefit to my learning has been trying to answer someone else's question. That being said, I'd say on average there are 2 "async loop" questions on the "newest javascript questions", both of which tend to get an answer by a newbie and still get marked as a dupe. Just because it gets closed, doesn't mean you can't work on answering it. The research will benefit you whether or not you get the validation from answering it. However, I do understand that it's hard to know if it's the right answer without the feedback of an upvote or two.
- jrumbut 10y ago
  Ha! I'm in almost exactly the same place. I set a goal of asking a positively ranked question recently and finally made it happen. What I'm trying to get at is not that low quality questions should be accepted, it's that when they are rejected a kind tone should be used so that new users are able to take the suggestion without being defensive and so that they feel encouraged to get better and try to keep participating.