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"closed as no longer relevant ", I find that is a growing problem with StackOverflow. My colleagues and I personally asked several relevant questions (like this
by cft 9y ago
"closed as no longer relevant ", I find that is a growing problem with StackOverflow. My colleagues and I personally asked several relevant questions (like this one, that has many upvotes on HN), that were shut down or deleted by StackOverflow heavy-handed mods as "off topic" , "not relevant" etc. This made me give up on contributing and treat it as a read-only resource.
- sanderjd 9y agoI'm very curious about this: is there a reason the reductionists seem to win in communities like this? Wikipedia has a similar culture. Are there systemic forces that point this direction, or is it just an accident of the history of the specific people involved?
- cft 9y agoThere may be so much spam that they practice a shotgun banning approach without comprehension or real content evaluation. Somehow the best "spam banners" get elevated perhaps?
- chadcmulligan 9y agoin all these things the pedants win, because every one else says whatever...and goes outside in the sun
- reitanqild 9y agoOne thing HN does well is having reasonable mods.
- mrout 9y agoThere should be a niwdoG's law: the longer an argument goes on, on the internet, the greater the likelihood that someone will accuse someone else of being a nerd that spends all their time indoors, while arguing on the internet themselves.
- umanwizard 9y agoIt's worth noting that SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced, ever in history. Maybe the reductionism contributes to their high level of signal.
- reitanqild 9y agoMy problem is that it feels like they could have been much more useful. Annoyingly often it is also the most useful questions that are closed while things I consider trivia style/karma-farming operations like: "what is the reason for x" seems to be totally OK. I too find those trivia questions and their answers interesting but IMO they are a distraction.
- sitkack 9y ago> SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced Again, this a pull quote that couldn't even be asked to be written. Pure gold! Wikipedia is entertaining, valuable ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_...
- adamsea 9y agoMore valuable than Charms of Defence and Deterrence by Catullus Spangle?
- mfukar 9y agoAs a member of both, no, they're really not. The information on SE is very useful but highly transient (and redundant, but at least we constantly try to rectify that). It'd be extremely more valuable if it could be condensed into a guide or textbook or what have you to teach idioms to beginners. As for Wikipedia, I'm almost convinced most information on it is erroneous, unverifiable, or useless in the forms it is presented. I've stopped making contributions and try not to ever reference it at all.
- setr 9y agoprobably because both have the goals of being encyclopedic sources of knowledge, and successfully complete this goal following reductionist policies, and its a hell of a lot easier to follow a strict philosophy than a lenient one (because the latter invites heavy legal discussion by armchair lawyers, while the former minimizes it). In short, likely because its efficient and apparently sufficient
- sanderjd 9y agoI don't really agree with this, but I upvoted it because it's the best charitable explanation I've seen, even if I'm frustrated by what I perceive to be a missed opportunity.
- setr 9y agoWhich part do you disagree with? That its easier to enforce, or that its sufficiently effective? The former is intuitively true; finding good rules to enforce strictly is difficult, but enforcing is simple (is the act explicitly allowed/banned or not?). Find broad rules is trivial, but then you spend all the enforcement time arguing edge cases (see: US gov) The latter is defended by the assumption that wikipedia/overflow do indeed follow such a policy, and its difficult to argue that they are not successful. There might be something better out there, but at least currently the market seems to have converged on this policy; ala "democracy is the worst form of government, except for the all other forms we've tried.
- sanderjd 9y agoI disagree with the part about it achieving the goal of being an encyclopedic source of knowledge. Except it largely comes down to how you define "encyclopedic". I would like it to mean "broad and inclusive", but it often means "highly curated", which tends to translates to "conservative". I don't think the convergence of the market on this sort of policy provides any indication one way or the other, because of network effects. Both of those sites won their space before the culture we're discussing here became entrenched, and because of network effects, it is not realistic to unseat them.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago"Are there systemic forces that point this direction," When you can "contribute" to the community simply by clicking a delete button, rather than actually adding new and useful information, you're bound to get this sort of situation. StackOverflow mods are appointed to police content. The more content they remove, the more it looks like they're doing their jobs. It's the same with Wikipedia. Deleting someone else's hard work counts as a "contribution". It shows up in your profile just like writing a new multi-page article would. When the same credit is awarded for for destroying as for creating, the destroyers are always going to win.
- eastWestMath 9y agoI recognized a few of the names who deleted the post to be fine mathematicians who have contributed quite a bit to mathoverflow, so I don't think that applies. Mathoverflow is a Q&A site for professional mathematicians, you may have it confused with math.se.
- icantdrive55 9y agoNow I get it. StackOverflow just need to lighten up. There's been times where it looks like the Moderator isn't even reading the responses, or shut it down because he/she personally didn't find it interesting? I sometimes wonder if some the Moderators have a complete grasp of the English language? And the rewrites at Wikipedia, sometimes it seem like there's a financial motive to the rewrite. Years ago I bought a Domain name. It was the all to familiar neologism. Someone tried to buy it. I said no. The very next day the singular of a made up word was registered and his website was online. And Wikipedia was rewritten to "see the singular." that day too.
- mrout 9y agoMathOverflow is not StackOverflow. For that matter, StackExchange mods in general are not 'appointed'. A very few are employees of the StackExchange company, but the vast majority are just normal people that have contributed a lot. MathOverflow is intended for professional mathematicians. It isn't a general purpose discussion forum for mathematics. That such a thing doesn't really exist in a satisfactory form can't really be helped.
- 9y ago
- starmftronajoll 9y agoIn fairness, it was closed after being open for more than two and a half years. Although the point remains that the "no longer relevant" message is needlessly grating.
- sitkack 9y agoSimilar to the deletionists on Wikipedia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_i...
- deathanatos 9y agoMost of the SEs, in my experience, dislike questions, like this one, that boil down to subjective opinion. This makes them hard to answer, as answers no longer depend on fact or statistics, but someone's opinion of something. Frankly — while I feel for the questioner, and agree w/ him — this one seems very close to that edge. It isn't immediately clear to me that this question is relevant like you claim; the FAQ isn't really clear on it either: > The site works best for well-defined questions: math questions that actually have a specific answer. You'll notice that there is the occasional question making a list of something, asking about the workings of the mathematical community, or something else which isn't really a math question. Such questions can be helpful to the community, but it is extremely tricky to ask them in a way that produces a useful response.
- cft 9y agoI asked very well defined programming questions, that resulted in the same actions by SE moderators.
- yen223 9y agoWhat was the question?
- maaaats 9y agoI've never seen anyone claiming these kind of things actually providing a link, heh.
- mrout 9y agoOn MathOverflow? Every StackExchange site has completely different moderators, who are all just users that have used the site a great deal, contributed great answers and great questions.
- Chris2048 9y agoI asked a question on an electronics stack, but it was shut down by mods because they apparently couldn't answer the question, and decided it wasn't clear/valid. Clear case of mod ego.
- eastWestMath 9y agoMathoverflow is the Q&A site for professional mathematicians, not math.se where it may have been more appropriate.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI don't have a problem with it being closed if it's subjective but I do wish they would remove closed articles from the search.
- sideshowb 9y agoAgree this is a problem; there are a huge number of worthwhile questions that get closed on stack exchange. This is because they prioritize the reputation of the community over answering all worthwhile questions (and to be fair maybe they wouldn't still be with us if they hadn't). Still most of the mods would do well to remind themselves of the official advice https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-su... and be a bit more lenient.