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There was a time in my life, and that time is still persistent even now, when every question that I asked on SO was flagged, and I was banned for 7 days with a

There was a time in my life, and that time is still persistent even now, when every question that I asked on SO was flagged, and I was banned for 7 days with a message which said something like this - "It seems your basic concepts are unclear. Kindly revise then and get back to us" I swear to God I was so pissed off. Here I am , genuinely asking for help, and then these tech oligarch's were blocking me sitting in their ivory towers. Hope this paper helps me out!

abtinf 9y ago
Can you give an example of a question you asked?
- mark-r 9y ago
  A closed question that has a negative score will eventually get deleted. They call it the Roomba.
wyldfire 9y ago
Wow, I'd used SO quite a bit but I've not heard of banning users asking legit questions. Then again, it might make some sense if you can skew your mind into fitting SO's goals (which don't quite align with many question-asker's goals). SO wants curation and objective answers to objective questions. Vague or poorly-scoped questions? Toss em in the bin. Questions about "best way" "best library" or "best tool for"? Subjective or not-software -- in the bin. As a question-answerer, a frustrating question would be one that tries to articulate a bug/problem but never cites any code, compiler error or runtime error. When posed by anyone who is not already an expert these questions very often cannot be addressed without a roundtrip involving "ok, please share the code so we can reproduce the problem". No joke -- that tip about the MCVE or SSCCE was super valuable. Unfortunately I'd bet that just the act of making this example would probably yield an answer to the person's question most of the time, without even needing SO. Novice question-askers lacked the expertise/experience to know to do this or just the patience required. I'm not faulting them, I remember what it was like to be a novice. It's a reasonable expectation to turn to a mentor and show them the code and ask them what you're doing wrong. > Hope this paper helps me out! > > Results: We found that regardless of user reputation, successful questions are short, contain code snippets, and do not abuse with uppercase characters. As regards affect, successful questions adopt a neutral emotional style. This matches my experience. But I'd love to hear how the results might change if they filtered on low reputation question askers. When HN bashes SO, I feel conflicted. I totally understand why so many folks are disappointed. But I also think that it's good for what it wants to be.
- codinghorror 9y ago
  The people who are dissatisfied invariably ask opinion based questions. That is not what Stack Overflow is for. Sure, there is always more than one way to do it, and any good SO question often has three solid viable answers — but if there are dozens? hundreds? .. it’s no longer a question, but a bikeshed type discussion.
  - sideshowb 9y ago
    Personally I get dissatisfied when over zealous mods fail to follow stack overflow's own guidelines on subjective questions. It would be a better site if, before closing a question as subjective, a user had to scroll down this and click "agree": https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-su...
    - codinghorror 9y ago
      Well, sort of, but it is a complex, slippery slope and easiest to just avoid the realm of opinion altogether.
  - nix0n 9y ago
    What is the correct place for opinion based questions, when you want a technical opinion to help you solve a specific technical problem?
    - codinghorror 9y ago
      Anywhere but Stack Overflow. It is a great big Internet!
  - user5994461 9y ago
    >>> any good SO question often has three solid viable answers the first viable answer is giving you the solution, except it doesn't work because the API has changed many years ago. the second viable answer is telling you that you don't want to do that and it's certainly wrong to try. the third viable answer is a guy advertising to use another library for just that. (Just because you use C++ doesn't mean you have boost or Qt available but fair enough). The fourth viable answer is a guy advertising for his own library to solve that same problem. It may or may not be shameless advertising. The github link is dead half the time. The topic is closed. It will never be possible to post the right valid answer to that problem. Answers cannot be edited. They will rot forever and mislead an entire new generation.
lostlogin 9y ago
Flagged as duplicate. Hasn’t happened to me, but nothing is more frustrating that having someone else ask my exact question then it gets flagged.
- katastic 9y ago
  And then the duplicate doesn't even have the answers you need.
  - cpburns2009 9y ago
    The best part is when the duplicate is related to your question, but the duplicate question is structured differently so you don't know how to apply its answers to your question. Sure, if you already knew the answer the duplicate answers make sense, but without that knowledge (hence why you asked in the first place) they are completely unhelpful.
    - mark-r 9y ago
      If the duplicate doesn't answer your question, you're supposed to edit your own question to indicate why the linked question wasn't helpful. At that point you're supposed to magically attract enough attention to get the question reopened. Unfortunately it rarely works out that way.
- foepys 9y ago
  I often reach assumed duplicates via Google but still get very insightful answers. If I click on the link pointing towards the assumed original, it's sometimes completely deserted with a single two-line answer that's been outdated for three years.
  - menacingly 9y ago
    And they're happy to leave the duplicate up for the inbound google benefits it provides.
mark-r 9y ago
That makes it sound like your questions were so basic, they indicated you weren't familiar with the technology you were asking about at all.

abtinf 9y ago

Can you give an example of a question you asked?

mark-r 9y ago
A closed question that has a negative score will eventually get deleted. They call it the Roomba.

wyldfire 9y ago

Wow, I'd used SO quite a bit but I've not heard of banning users asking legit questions. Then again, it might make some sense if you can skew your mind into fitting SO's goals (which don't quite align with many question-asker's goals). SO wants curation and objective answers to objective questions. Vague or poorly-scoped questions? Toss em in the bin. Questions about "best way" "best library" or "best tool for"? Subjective or not-software -- in the bin. As a question-answerer, a frustrating question would be one that tries to articulate a bug/problem but never cites any code, compiler error or runtime error. When posed by anyone who is not already an expert these questions very often cannot be addressed without a roundtrip involving "ok, please share the code so we can reproduce the problem". No joke -- that tip about the MCVE or SSCCE was super valuable. Unfortunately I'd bet that just the act of making this example would probably yield an answer to the person's question most of the time, without even needing SO. Novice question-askers lacked the expertise/experience to know to do this or just the patience required. I'm not faulting them, I remember what it was like to be a novice. It's a reasonable expectation to turn to a mentor and show them the code and ask them what you're doing wrong. > Hope this paper helps me out! > > Results: We found that regardless of user reputation, successful questions are short, contain code snippets, and do not abuse with uppercase characters. As regards affect, successful questions adopt a neutral emotional style. This matches my experience. But I'd love to hear how the results might change if they filtered on low reputation question askers. When HN bashes SO, I feel conflicted. I totally understand why so many folks are disappointed. But I also think that it's good for what it wants to be.

codinghorror 9y ago
The people who are dissatisfied invariably ask opinion based questions. That is not what Stack Overflow is for. Sure, there is always more than one way to do it, and any good SO question often has three solid viable answers — but if there are dozens? hundreds? .. it’s no longer a question, but a bikeshed type discussion.
- sideshowb 9y ago
  Personally I get dissatisfied when over zealous mods fail to follow stack overflow's own guidelines on subjective questions. It would be a better site if, before closing a question as subjective, a user had to scroll down this and click "agree": https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-su...
  - codinghorror 9y ago
    Well, sort of, but it is a complex, slippery slope and easiest to just avoid the realm of opinion altogether.
- nix0n 9y ago
  What is the correct place for opinion based questions, when you want a technical opinion to help you solve a specific technical problem?
  - codinghorror 9y ago
    Anywhere but Stack Overflow. It is a great big Internet!
- user5994461 9y ago
  >>> any good SO question often has three solid viable answers the first viable answer is giving you the solution, except it doesn't work because the API has changed many years ago. the second viable answer is telling you that you don't want to do that and it's certainly wrong to try. the third viable answer is a guy advertising to use another library for just that. (Just because you use C++ doesn't mean you have boost or Qt available but fair enough). The fourth viable answer is a guy advertising for his own library to solve that same problem. It may or may not be shameless advertising. The github link is dead half the time. The topic is closed. It will never be possible to post the right valid answer to that problem. Answers cannot be edited. They will rot forever and mislead an entire new generation.

lostlogin 9y ago

Flagged as duplicate. Hasn’t happened to me, but nothing is more frustrating that having someone else ask my exact question then it gets flagged.

katastic 9y ago
And then the duplicate doesn't even have the answers you need.
- cpburns2009 9y ago
  The best part is when the duplicate is related to your question, but the duplicate question is structured differently so you don't know how to apply its answers to your question. Sure, if you already knew the answer the duplicate answers make sense, but without that knowledge (hence why you asked in the first place) they are completely unhelpful.
  - mark-r 9y ago
    If the duplicate doesn't answer your question, you're supposed to edit your own question to indicate why the linked question wasn't helpful. At that point you're supposed to magically attract enough attention to get the question reopened. Unfortunately it rarely works out that way.
foepys 9y ago
I often reach assumed duplicates via Google but still get very insightful answers. If I click on the link pointing towards the assumed original, it's sometimes completely deserted with a single two-line answer that's been outdated for three years.
- menacingly 9y ago
  And they're happy to leave the duplicate up for the inbound google benefits it provides.

mark-r 9y ago

That makes it sound like your questions were so basic, they indicated you weren't familiar with the technology you were asking about at all.