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> Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over. Every moderator on every site will tell you this; without this narrative they wouldn't exist. Is there any

> Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over. Every moderator on every site will tell you this; without this narrative they wouldn't exist. Is there any proof that this is the case though? To me SO is super useful with ~20% of great threads killed for being off topic. Voting puts good topic on top, no need for administrator intervention.

sklivvz1971 10y ago
On top of what? Help vampires waste answerers time, not readers time. Which is why they vote to close. No one wants to browse 200 lines of code to find the missing semicolon.
- exstudent2 10y ago
  "Help vampires" aka people with a question that's been answered, are only a problem if you don't have proper search tools to show that a question has already been asked (or answered). If you provide those, and people still ask, maybe their question actually is different. If you provide similar question tools for answerers, let them link to the other question/answers but there's no value in closing the question. That's just hostile and kills the opportunity to generate actual content. Also, let's be real. It's not the marking dupes that's problem it's all the "off topic" closures. Side note: you work at SO and call your users "help vampires". I think that elitist attitude is a huge part of the problem we're discussing here.
  - sklivvz1971 10y ago
    Help vampires: people that ask questions which have no value other than themselves. Duplicate questions are not "help vampires" by any means. This is a good example of that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30721824/near-syntax-error http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30721824/near-syntax-erro... Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting.
    - exstudent2 10y ago
      First of all, if someone wants to answer that, more power to them. I'm talking about stuff like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/378959/is-there-a-static-code-analyzer-like-lint-for-php-files http://stackoverflow.com/questions/378959/is-there-a-static-... Good work closing that one! > Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting. You don't know who I am so I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't know about community management or content generation. I'm simply telling you that calling your users names is insulting. It's good advice not a reason to attack me.
      - shagie 10y ago
        The Q&A format poorly handles the ever growing list of libraries that can do something. A wiki format is better for that. Maybe the documentation / examples that exists now. But sifting through dozens (this was closed before it got there) answers is more noise than signal. People aren't bothered to curate and clean old broken answers in such a format. Try slant.co for such a question instead.
    - smoyer 10y ago
      While those telling the user who posted the question wer correct about deleting the comma, this question would have had immensely more value if they had simply said "don't build your query that way". There are many ways to mitigate SQL injections in Java - I would have up-voted any answer that responded with (e.g.) a parameter used query. So to me, this question's answers could in fact make it interesting and valuable.
Veedrac 10y ago
The new questions queue (http://stackoverflow.com/questions http://stackoverflow.com/questions) should convince anyone that help vampires are real. Even if not, most experienced answerers regularly see literal copy-pasted homework questions (often several duplicates from different students) and people circumventing question bans to write yet more horrible questions. Help vampires aren't just real, they're everywhere. If they didn't exist, it wouldn't be necessary to enlist high-rep users to engage in moderation.
- exstudent2 10y ago
  Almost all of those have zero answers and many have been downvoted. Not sure I'm seeing a problem. Better UI can make this even less of a problem. Punishing the entire community isn't helpful. See the link to my response to the mod down thread if you want an example of the real problem on SO.
  - Veedrac 10y ago
    Downvotes and close votes are two sides of the same coin. In the case of help vampires, the two are roughly equivalent. It's still moderation.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Then why don't they just make it just a little bit harder to ask the first question? Today this is one of the default privileges, and IMO that is asking for work.
  - Veedrac 10y ago
    What does "a little bit harder" mean? Any reputation requirement is out of the window because it would alienate far too many people from ever contributing. A screening process wouldn't work well because SO already puts too much burden on moderators (which is largely why people end up making rushed moderation decisions).
    - reitanqild 10y ago

sklivvz1971 10y ago

On top of what? Help vampires waste answerers time, not readers time. Which is why they vote to close. No one wants to browse 200 lines of code to find the missing semicolon.

exstudent2 10y ago
"Help vampires" aka people with a question that's been answered, are only a problem if you don't have proper search tools to show that a question has already been asked (or answered). If you provide those, and people still ask, maybe their question actually is different. If you provide similar question tools for answerers, let them link to the other question/answers but there's no value in closing the question. That's just hostile and kills the opportunity to generate actual content. Also, let's be real. It's not the marking dupes that's problem it's all the "off topic" closures. Side note: you work at SO and call your users "help vampires". I think that elitist attitude is a huge part of the problem we're discussing here.
- sklivvz1971 10y ago
  Help vampires: people that ask questions which have no value other than themselves. Duplicate questions are not "help vampires" by any means. This is a good example of that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30721824/near-syntax-error http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30721824/near-syntax-erro... Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting.
  - exstudent2 10y ago
    First of all, if someone wants to answer that, more power to them. I'm talking about stuff like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/378959/is-there-a-static-code-analyzer-like-lint-for-php-files http://stackoverflow.com/questions/378959/is-there-a-static-... Good work closing that one! > Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting. You don't know who I am so I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't know about community management or content generation. I'm simply telling you that calling your users names is insulting. It's good advice not a reason to attack me.
    - shagie 10y ago
      The Q&A format poorly handles the ever growing list of libraries that can do something. A wiki format is better for that. Maybe the documentation / examples that exists now. But sifting through dozens (this was closed before it got there) answers is more noise than signal. People aren't bothered to curate and clean old broken answers in such a format. Try slant.co for such a question instead.
  - smoyer 10y ago
    While those telling the user who posted the question wer correct about deleting the comma, this question would have had immensely more value if they had simply said "don't build your query that way". There are many ways to mitigate SQL injections in Java - I would have up-voted any answer that responded with (e.g.) a parameter used query. So to me, this question's answers could in fact make it interesting and valuable.

Veedrac 10y ago

The new questions queue (http://stackoverflow.com/questions http://stackoverflow.com/questions) should convince anyone that help vampires are real. Even if not, most experienced answerers regularly see literal copy-pasted homework questions (often several duplicates from different students) and people circumventing question bans to write yet more horrible questions. Help vampires aren't just real, they're everywhere. If they didn't exist, it wouldn't be necessary to enlist high-rep users to engage in moderation.

exstudent2 10y ago
Almost all of those have zero answers and many have been downvoted. Not sure I'm seeing a problem. Better UI can make this even less of a problem. Punishing the entire community isn't helpful. See the link to my response to the mod down thread if you want an example of the real problem on SO.
- Veedrac 10y ago
  Downvotes and close votes are two sides of the same coin. In the case of help vampires, the two are roughly equivalent. It's still moderation.
reitanqild 10y ago
Then why don't they just make it just a little bit harder to ask the first question? Today this is one of the default privileges, and IMO that is asking for work.
- Veedrac 10y ago
  What does "a little bit harder" mean? Any reputation requirement is out of the window because it would alienate far too many people from ever contributing. A screening process wouldn't work well because SO already puts too much burden on moderators (which is largely why people end up making rushed moderation decisions).
  - reitanqild 10y ago