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It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to tur

by ProAm 9y ago

It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.

yulaow 9y ago
Same, and the problem is that the "mods" enforce that culture instead of fighting it, making it worse and worse over time.
lucb1e 9y ago
This is why I always vote in moderator elections for those who make a point of being kind to new people, or are still new themselves. Not the rookies who have nothing to say in the "why me" section and don't even have access to the moderator tools which you get at 10k rep, but a balance. Most of the community seems to be aware of the issue when prompted, but most times when I see moderation happening, it's not as friendly as one might hope... I always try to provide helpful pointers and comments for the author, if I happen to notice it in time.
- shagie 9y ago
  Unfriendly/ rude moderation is what happens when the tools in place to try to keep the site’s content in alignment with the person’s vision fail. Not enough votes. Not enough time. Poor filters. Too low a barrier to post a new question. People then turn to social tools. Rudeness ensues. An open question is what is the vision of the site... and there are probably many of them.
baud147258 9y ago
What's so bad about the culture? I've never had any problem there. Please note that I've answered a bunch of question, but only on a tag with not a lot of frequentation.
- ythn 9y ago
  On some of the high traffic tags (Java, C++, Python) there are a few high rep users that will swoop in on any basic-level question within seconds and close as duplicate/off-topic/too-broad, etc. So on the one hand it is not very newbie or tutorial friendly, but on the other hand, it clears away those kinds of questions to make room for more difficult questions that may not have a good answer on SO yet. Even still, most newbie questions do get some degree of help from empathetic users in the comments.
  - baud147258 9y ago
    Ok. Since, as I've said I'm not following high traffic tags, I've never experienced that.
  - mark-r 9y ago
    Thanks for noticing. Even when I vote to close a question, I try to leave something helpful behind.
nmstoker 9y ago
The perception of a culture problem on SO seems quite strong with a few people here. I'm sure bad things happen but it always seemed a) fairly rare and b) a price worth paying.... Without it, it would be like the Qlikview forums in no time! ;-)
- teh_klev 9y ago
  This is the thing. The vast majority of (sane) users likely get on just fine without complaint. It's usually a noisy minority of folks who vocalise their grievances, especially when the rules of the site won't fit their world view of how they think the site should work. I've been a user on the site (and once upon a time a diamond mod) since the closed beta (userid < 500). Sure I've had my ups and downs and haven't always agreed with the way some things work. But at the end of the day I still think SO and the SE network is hugely useful for getting answers to questions on stuff I'm pottering about with.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    It is more an issue of who people think the site is for. There's two big camps, those who feel that SO is for everyone, and those who think they're creating a reference encyclopedia. The encyclopedia crowd won the war, and those of us who just wanted SO as a place anyone and everyone could go and ask a question without getting bludgeoned to death by high karma users have moved on. This has resulted in a lot of questions going unasked and SO is gradually getting stale, and a general toxic element gaining more and more power within the community. It used to be that you had to take part in SO to understand how unhealthy it was, now that is leaking onto Google results. "No question is silly" on SO is "All questions are silly."
    - alphaalpha101 9y ago
      You're just plain wrong, mate. Anyone can ask a question. You just can't ask the same question that's been answered before or a question that is blatantly off topic.
- megaman22 9y ago
simias 9y ago
From a "lurker" perspective who often stumbles on SO after a web search it's really a great resource. On the other hand I never actually contributed anything to the website... because it won't let me. One day I stumbled upon a question regarding some problem I had, the accepted answer had a C code snippet that contained an error. I thought I'd be a good netizen and decided to create an account to submit a correction. It turns out that it wouldn't let me make an edit that was less than 6 character long (why? It was just a one character typo). So I decided to add a comment pointing it out, hoping that somebody would be able to fix it for me. You can't comment without a certain reputation threshold. So basically if I get it right if you have a new account you can only ask questions or answer them. Except if like me you only end up on SO from your search engine and generally end up on already-answered questions (or questions you don't know the answer to since you're looking for them) then there's nothing for you to do. I'm sure they must have done a lot of testing to end up with this system but it basically means that I'll probably never contribute anything to their website.
- vehementi 9y ago
  This has been an exact summary of my experience with SO. Extremely useful when searching for things. Difficult to get started contributing to.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    The thresholds for unlocking privileges are there to filter out offensive trolls and other drains on the community. This can be a bit annoying since it applies separately to every subdomain and I can't be bothered to build up rep in every place that I might want to make an occasional comment.
    - shagie 9y ago
      Once you have sufficient rep on one site, you get 100 rep on all sites which is enough to comment everywhere.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
JPGalt 9y ago
I am in this same frame of mind. When I started out in development I quickly found how unwelcome my questions were. The thing these mods and many other higher rep users are forgetting about is that to the new person these not a dumb duplicate questions. If a clearly new dev(and if you are not new yourself you can tell a new dev from a mid or senior level) asks a question that is truly a duplicate in every way, a little good faith that they do not know what they do not know to the level that they did not realize I think is not to much to ask. Apparently for some of these higher rep people it is. Further if it is actually a duplicate what harm is there to leaving it open with a link to another question that has an answer? How many times have you looked at multiple SO questions and answers to piece together something that fits your very specific use case? For me it happens that way more often then not.

by ProAm 9y ago

It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.

yulaow 9y ago

Same, and the problem is that the "mods" enforce that culture instead of fighting it, making it worse and worse over time.

lucb1e 9y ago

This is why I always vote in moderator elections for those who make a point of being kind to new people, or are still new themselves. Not the rookies who have nothing to say in the "why me" section and don't even have access to the moderator tools which you get at 10k rep, but a balance. Most of the community seems to be aware of the issue when prompted, but most times when I see moderation happening, it's not as friendly as one might hope... I always try to provide helpful pointers and comments for the author, if I happen to notice it in time.

shagie 9y ago
Unfriendly/ rude moderation is what happens when the tools in place to try to keep the site’s content in alignment with the person’s vision fail. Not enough votes. Not enough time. Poor filters. Too low a barrier to post a new question. People then turn to social tools. Rudeness ensues. An open question is what is the vision of the site... and there are probably many of them.

baud147258 9y ago

What's so bad about the culture? I've never had any problem there. Please note that I've answered a bunch of question, but only on a tag with not a lot of frequentation.

ythn 9y ago
On some of the high traffic tags (Java, C++, Python) there are a few high rep users that will swoop in on any basic-level question within seconds and close as duplicate/off-topic/too-broad, etc. So on the one hand it is not very newbie or tutorial friendly, but on the other hand, it clears away those kinds of questions to make room for more difficult questions that may not have a good answer on SO yet. Even still, most newbie questions do get some degree of help from empathetic users in the comments.
- baud147258 9y ago
  Ok. Since, as I've said I'm not following high traffic tags, I've never experienced that.
- mark-r 9y ago
  Thanks for noticing. Even when I vote to close a question, I try to leave something helpful behind.

nmstoker 9y ago

The perception of a culture problem on SO seems quite strong with a few people here. I'm sure bad things happen but it always seemed a) fairly rare and b) a price worth paying.... Without it, it would be like the Qlikview forums in no time! ;-)

teh_klev 9y ago
This is the thing. The vast majority of (sane) users likely get on just fine without complaint. It's usually a noisy minority of folks who vocalise their grievances, especially when the rules of the site won't fit their world view of how they think the site should work. I've been a user on the site (and once upon a time a diamond mod) since the closed beta (userid < 500). Sure I've had my ups and downs and haven't always agreed with the way some things work. But at the end of the day I still think SO and the SE network is hugely useful for getting answers to questions on stuff I'm pottering about with.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  It is more an issue of who people think the site is for. There's two big camps, those who feel that SO is for everyone, and those who think they're creating a reference encyclopedia. The encyclopedia crowd won the war, and those of us who just wanted SO as a place anyone and everyone could go and ask a question without getting bludgeoned to death by high karma users have moved on. This has resulted in a lot of questions going unasked and SO is gradually getting stale, and a general toxic element gaining more and more power within the community. It used to be that you had to take part in SO to understand how unhealthy it was, now that is leaking onto Google results. "No question is silly" on SO is "All questions are silly."
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    You're just plain wrong, mate. Anyone can ask a question. You just can't ask the same question that's been answered before or a question that is blatantly off topic.
megaman22 9y ago

simias 9y ago

From a "lurker" perspective who often stumbles on SO after a web search it's really a great resource. On the other hand I never actually contributed anything to the website... because it won't let me. One day I stumbled upon a question regarding some problem I had, the accepted answer had a C code snippet that contained an error. I thought I'd be a good netizen and decided to create an account to submit a correction. It turns out that it wouldn't let me make an edit that was less than 6 character long (why? It was just a one character typo). So I decided to add a comment pointing it out, hoping that somebody would be able to fix it for me. You can't comment without a certain reputation threshold. So basically if I get it right if you have a new account you can only ask questions or answer them. Except if like me you only end up on SO from your search engine and generally end up on already-answered questions (or questions you don't know the answer to since you're looking for them) then there's nothing for you to do. I'm sure they must have done a lot of testing to end up with this system but it basically means that I'll probably never contribute anything to their website.

vehementi 9y ago
This has been an exact summary of my experience with SO. Extremely useful when searching for things. Difficult to get started contributing to.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  The thresholds for unlocking privileges are there to filter out offensive trolls and other drains on the community. This can be a bit annoying since it applies separately to every subdomain and I can't be bothered to build up rep in every place that I might want to make an occasional comment.
  - shagie 9y ago
    Once you have sufficient rep on one site, you get 100 rep on all sites which is enough to comment everywhere.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

JPGalt 9y ago

I am in this same frame of mind. When I started out in development I quickly found how unwelcome my questions were. The thing these mods and many other higher rep users are forgetting about is that to the new person these not a dumb duplicate questions. If a clearly new dev(and if you are not new yourself you can tell a new dev from a mid or senior level) asks a question that is truly a duplicate in every way, a little good faith that they do not know what they do not know to the level that they did not realize I think is not to much to ask. Apparently for some of these higher rep people it is. Further if it is actually a duplicate what harm is there to leaving it open with a link to another question that has an answer? How many times have you looked at multiple SO questions and answers to piece together something that fits your very specific use case? For me it happens that way more often then not.