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One issue I run into is finding a Stack Overflow question that exactly matches the issue I've run into, find that it's been closed for being a duplicate, click

One issue I run into is finding a Stack Overflow question that exactly matches the issue I've run into, find that it's been closed for being a duplicate, click the link to the question it's supposed to be a duplicate of, and find that the other question is completely unrelated. Not only can I not find the answer from SO at this point, but if I find the answer on my own I can't even help others. Another issue I've run into is the minimum numbers of characters needed to edit an answer. Once I found the answer that was chosen and upvoted had code that didn't make any sense. It was something like an instance of a point object "point1" and an instance "newpoint" and they wrote "point1 = newpoint;" but actually meant "point1 = new point();". When I realized the problem I tried to change it but wasn't able to because I wasn't changing the answer enough (I think there's a minimum 6 character limit). I didn't want to make random changes elsewhere just to make the minimum needed to fix it, so I let it be. I find Stack Overflow useful, but I don't try to participate in it anymore and don't stay signed in.

corobo 10y ago
The ones that really get my gripe are the ones that are flagged for being off topic.. Off what topic? This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered and this is a technical question that needs answering - Why is it closed?
- dhimes 10y ago
  Exactly. Double frustration if it was the first return from google.
  - corobo 10y ago
    That's the only way visit SO. It's double frustration all the time.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with the logic, but SO's "topic" is software development. Many questions that are technical but not regarding software are closed for being off topic. Some/many are migrated to sibling stackexchange sites. Some questions are closed because they require opinion-based answers ("What's the best ...?", e.g.).
  - corobo 10y ago
    What's stopping them setting up an opinions.stackoverflow then if they've already got sibling sites? Somewhere to contain all of the opinion-based questions.
    - initram 10y ago
      They do have some. For example the Software Recommendations Stack Exchange: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com
  - dionidium 10y ago
    > Some questions are closed because they require opinion-based answers ("What's the best ...?", e.g.). The problem with this is that there are opinions and preferences and biases (and so on) hiding all throughout even the most (seemingly) objective questions and answers. The SO folks think they're making a more meaningful distinction here than they actually are.
    - warbiscuit 10y ago
      Not to mention "what's the best <X> library" can frequently be answered in an objective fashion, if the answers give a breakdown of why. Things like "lib A requires excessive boilerplate compared to lib B, see example", or "lib A can't be installed under the following platforms", etc. What should be voted down on those types of questions isn't the question, but poor answers. It's really frustrating, because getting the opinion of experts who have tried a bunch of alternatives, and know the pros and cons that matter, is exactly why I go to SO frequently.
  - dcosson 10y ago
    What's kind of interesting is a lot of the target SO questions are implicitly opinion-based. For any "How do you do X" there might be multiple ways to do it so the question is actually "what's the best way to do X" which is up for anyone to interpret "best". And this tends to work out nicely, you'll often see multiple answers where the top upvoted one is not the selected one, or some answers build off of other ones and describe why they think it needed updating. This kind of nuance and seeing multiple, competing answers is often pretty helpful while you're learning. Plus some of the best, most interesting questions on there are "community wikis" which often tell you they should have been flagged as opinion based but are preserved for historical significance. Because of that I really don't see the point in being so dogmatic about closing opinion based questions. Even something like "emacs or vim" I can imaging being a useful question, with a highly upvoted, thought provoking answer arguing each side.
- wheaties 10y ago
  I have flagged many questions for being off topic. You could say I'm part of the "problem" but from my standpoint, someone will ask a question that can be answered so many ways that the scope is too broad. Many times the person asking doesn't know enough to understand just how broad the question they've asked is. That's why I also leave a comment telling them _why_ I just voted to close. This is, unfortunately, an unsolvable problem. They're asking the question precisely because they don't understand what they're asking enough to get a meaningful answer.
  - corobo 10y ago
    > You could say I'm part of the "problem" And I do! With lots of swearing! :) The only time I'm on SO is from a Google search result. They should at least make the danged site noindex itself for that page if it's the question has been closed. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've been searching for a solution and found a SO link and thought I had the answer coming my way only to see the thing was closed before anyone could answer the question. In all honesty, I don't give a rats why a question was closed. It was either closed and is now useless or open and has answers. The solution is to make the closed question not appear in Google search results. If the same question keeps appearing the solution is to let someone answer it.
    - coryfklein 10y ago
      > The solution is to make the closed question not appear in Google search results. If the same question keeps appearing the solution is to let someone answer it. This is a great idea. Have you considered discussing it on the Meta site? The solution would definitely have to be more nuanced - sometimes "closed" questions have useful answers on them so you wouldn't want to remove those from Google. But removing "closed" questions that provide no value would probably be an improvement.
      - corobo 10y ago
        Well that's the other side of the problematic coin. The majority of my experience with SO is closed questions. I generally consider myself a dumbass and not smart enough to figure out the rules to avoid getting topics closed, so I stick to reddit and HN (and it took years of lurking here before I started posting too!)
- coryfklein 10y ago
  > This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered I think this is a great reflection of one of the largest problems that Stack Overflow has to solve, and that is user education. The definition of what is on topic for Stack Overflow is much more specific than just being "technical", but most users don't even know that. This results in many new questions being closed. The community is constantly trying to reword these "closed" messages to be as friendly and helpful as possible, but to the newcomer it just feels like rejection. In many ways, Stack Overflow has solved all it's "technology" problems, and now is left with a lot of psychology and communication problems. The site could definitely use a professional communications specialist. (FWIW, for those curious, "on topic" is defined here: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    It may be true that most users don't know how narrowly the topic is defined, but it's also true that many users do know, and simply think it is defined far too narrowly. Sometimes, if you just can't seem to communicate some policy concept to your target audience, it's a problem with the policy, not the communication.
    - coryfklein 10y ago
      > Sometimes, if you just can't seem to communicate some policy concept to your target audience, it's a problem with the policy, not the communication. I agree 100%. If you were to claim that the "on topic" policy for Stack Overflow is too narrow, I would respectfully disagree.
      - sanderjd 10y ago
        Yep, I think it's too narrow. I'm more than happy to agree to disagree! I'm curious though, since you're certain this is the correct policy, why do you think it has been so hard to communicate?
        coryfklein 10y ago
Jemmeh 10y ago
The duplicate thread thing is the most common annoyance I have with it. Feels like the people moderating are not fully understanding what they're reading/not reading the whole thing.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  That's certainly possible in many cases. But it's so terribly common for duplicates to show up on SO that many folks have itchy trigger fingers. :/
Something1234 10y ago
Just add code highlighting if your edit falls short. It's like 20 bytes.
d0mine 10y ago
> Not only can I not find the answer from SO at this point, but if I find the answer on my own I can't even help others. If you want to helps others; post an answer, a comment (if it is a minor correction to an existing answer). If you can't post an answer or if the question is not the exact duplicate; ask a new question: - describe your specific problem - link to the duplicate (the back link is created automatically but you can also add a comment under the duplicate question explicitly if you'd like) - describe how it is different, how exactly existing answers have failed for you (what behaviour did you expect; what did you get instead, step by step) If you follow https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve then your question will be better than most questions already (and even if it might be closed as a duplicate; it would attract additional attention—if the question is the exact duplicate you could also create a bounty: it is unlikely to help with difficult questions but it would also attract some attention).
pc86 10y ago
> I didn't want to make random changes elsewhere just to make the minimum needed to fix it, so I let it be. Instead of just adding "I fixed a small code bug but SO has a minimum edit length, so here it is" to the end of the answer? s/newpoint/new point()/g may not be obvious to the next person.
cloudjacker 10y ago
It really depends on what language you are asking about. Stackoverflow has subcommunities. Some niche frameworks have great helpful communities While the general Javascript community there hates questions that aren't formatted a very particular way
coryfklein 10y ago
> and find that the other question is completely unrelated. Did you take advantage of this opportunity to comment or flag the answer for moderation? If a question has been inappropriately marked as duplicate, that's something that the community should be aware of, and SO has methods for doing so.

corobo 10y ago

The ones that really get my gripe are the ones that are flagged for being off topic.. Off what topic? This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered and this is a technical question that needs answering - Why is it closed?

dhimes 10y ago
Exactly. Double frustration if it was the first return from google.
- corobo 10y ago
  That's the only way visit SO. It's double frustration all the time.
wyldfire 10y ago
I don't necessarily agree with the logic, but SO's "topic" is software development. Many questions that are technical but not regarding software are closed for being off topic. Some/many are migrated to sibling stackexchange sites. Some questions are closed because they require opinion-based answers ("What's the best ...?", e.g.).
- corobo 10y ago
  What's stopping them setting up an opinions.stackoverflow then if they've already got sibling sites? Somewhere to contain all of the opinion-based questions.
  - initram 10y ago
    They do have some. For example the Software Recommendations Stack Exchange: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com
- dionidium 10y ago
  > Some questions are closed because they require opinion-based answers ("What's the best ...?", e.g.). The problem with this is that there are opinions and preferences and biases (and so on) hiding all throughout even the most (seemingly) objective questions and answers. The SO folks think they're making a more meaningful distinction here than they actually are.
  - warbiscuit 10y ago
    Not to mention "what's the best <X> library" can frequently be answered in an objective fashion, if the answers give a breakdown of why. Things like "lib A requires excessive boilerplate compared to lib B, see example", or "lib A can't be installed under the following platforms", etc. What should be voted down on those types of questions isn't the question, but poor answers. It's really frustrating, because getting the opinion of experts who have tried a bunch of alternatives, and know the pros and cons that matter, is exactly why I go to SO frequently.
- dcosson 10y ago
  What's kind of interesting is a lot of the target SO questions are implicitly opinion-based. For any "How do you do X" there might be multiple ways to do it so the question is actually "what's the best way to do X" which is up for anyone to interpret "best". And this tends to work out nicely, you'll often see multiple answers where the top upvoted one is not the selected one, or some answers build off of other ones and describe why they think it needed updating. This kind of nuance and seeing multiple, competing answers is often pretty helpful while you're learning. Plus some of the best, most interesting questions on there are "community wikis" which often tell you they should have been flagged as opinion based but are preserved for historical significance. Because of that I really don't see the point in being so dogmatic about closing opinion based questions. Even something like "emacs or vim" I can imaging being a useful question, with a highly upvoted, thought provoking answer arguing each side.
wheaties 10y ago
I have flagged many questions for being off topic. You could say I'm part of the "problem" but from my standpoint, someone will ask a question that can be answered so many ways that the scope is too broad. Many times the person asking doesn't know enough to understand just how broad the question they've asked is. That's why I also leave a comment telling them _why_ I just voted to close. This is, unfortunately, an unsolvable problem. They're asking the question precisely because they don't understand what they're asking enough to get a meaningful answer.
- corobo 10y ago
  > You could say I'm part of the "problem" And I do! With lots of swearing! :) The only time I'm on SO is from a Google search result. They should at least make the danged site noindex itself for that page if it's the question has been closed. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've been searching for a solution and found a SO link and thought I had the answer coming my way only to see the thing was closed before anyone could answer the question. In all honesty, I don't give a rats why a question was closed. It was either closed and is now useless or open and has answers. The solution is to make the closed question not appear in Google search results. If the same question keeps appearing the solution is to let someone answer it.
  - coryfklein 10y ago
    > The solution is to make the closed question not appear in Google search results. If the same question keeps appearing the solution is to let someone answer it. This is a great idea. Have you considered discussing it on the Meta site? The solution would definitely have to be more nuanced - sometimes "closed" questions have useful answers on them so you wouldn't want to remove those from Google. But removing "closed" questions that provide no value would probably be an improvement.
    - corobo 10y ago
      Well that's the other side of the problematic coin. The majority of my experience with SO is closed questions. I generally consider myself a dumbass and not smart enough to figure out the rules to avoid getting topics closed, so I stick to reddit and HN (and it took years of lurking here before I started posting too!)
coryfklein 10y ago
> This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered I think this is a great reflection of one of the largest problems that Stack Overflow has to solve, and that is user education. The definition of what is on topic for Stack Overflow is much more specific than just being "technical", but most users don't even know that. This results in many new questions being closed. The community is constantly trying to reword these "closed" messages to be as friendly and helpful as possible, but to the newcomer it just feels like rejection. In many ways, Stack Overflow has solved all it's "technology" problems, and now is left with a lot of psychology and communication problems. The site could definitely use a professional communications specialist. (FWIW, for those curious, "on topic" is defined here: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)
- sanderjd 10y ago
  It may be true that most users don't know how narrowly the topic is defined, but it's also true that many users do know, and simply think it is defined far too narrowly. Sometimes, if you just can't seem to communicate some policy concept to your target audience, it's a problem with the policy, not the communication.
  - coryfklein 10y ago
    > Sometimes, if you just can't seem to communicate some policy concept to your target audience, it's a problem with the policy, not the communication. I agree 100%. If you were to claim that the "on topic" policy for Stack Overflow is too narrow, I would respectfully disagree.
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      Yep, I think it's too narrow. I'm more than happy to agree to disagree! I'm curious though, since you're certain this is the correct policy, why do you think it has been so hard to communicate?
      - coryfklein 10y ago

Jemmeh 10y ago

The duplicate thread thing is the most common annoyance I have with it. Feels like the people moderating are not fully understanding what they're reading/not reading the whole thing.

wyldfire 10y ago
That's certainly possible in many cases. But it's so terribly common for duplicates to show up on SO that many folks have itchy trigger fingers. :/

Something1234 10y ago

Just add code highlighting if your edit falls short. It's like 20 bytes.

d0mine 10y ago

> Not only can I not find the answer from SO at this point, but if I find the answer on my own I can't even help others. If you want to helps others; post an answer, a comment (if it is a minor correction to an existing answer). If you can't post an answer or if the question is not the exact duplicate; ask a new question: - describe your specific problem - link to the duplicate (the back link is created automatically but you can also add a comment under the duplicate question explicitly if you'd like) - describe how it is different, how exactly existing answers have failed for you (what behaviour did you expect; what did you get instead, step by step) If you follow https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve then your question will be better than most questions already (and even if it might be closed as a duplicate; it would attract additional attention—if the question is the exact duplicate you could also create a bounty: it is unlikely to help with difficult questions but it would also attract some attention).

pc86 10y ago

> I didn't want to make random changes elsewhere just to make the minimum needed to fix it, so I let it be. Instead of just adding "I fixed a small code bug but SO has a minimum edit length, so here it is" to the end of the answer? s/newpoint/new point()/g may not be obvious to the next person.

cloudjacker 10y ago

It really depends on what language you are asking about. Stackoverflow has subcommunities. Some niche frameworks have great helpful communities While the general Javascript community there hates questions that aren't formatted a very particular way

coryfklein 10y ago

> and find that the other question is completely unrelated. Did you take advantage of this opportunity to comment or flag the answer for moderation? If a question has been inappropriately marked as duplicate, that's something that the community should be aware of, and SO has methods for doing so.