4 ms·

There totally are good examples ui/ux designs that minimize the emotional impact of negative feedback. Stack Overflow might take a page from dating apps. Imagin

There totally are good examples ui/ux designs that minimize the emotional impact of negative feedback. Stack Overflow might take a page from dating apps. Imagine if Tinder told you all the hot people that rejected you! That's kindof where SO is now. Instead, Tinder takes a terrible experience (rejection), hides it, and only shows you the great experiences (acceptance). The main constraint to work around is that, currently, question pages are mostly globally public. SO could change that pretty easily. They already have a lot of the mechanisms. Like, it could be as simple as only showing downvotes and downvoters if you are logged in and have enough user 'points.' Otherwise, just show the newbies the result ('marked as duplicate' etc), and a [-] instead of -7 on the question tally. So it doesn't feel like a crowd of people yelling at you. And, what could be really super cool, is if the SO team can auto-recommend learning materials specific to the programming language/framework/whatever. Like if I ask a stupid question about Django models, which becomes marked as duplicate, SO NLP's the question then matches it to the Django docs, which they've also indexed via NLP. If there's some reason why you really need to see specific reasons the elite users decided the question was a duplicate or unclear, SO could use progressive ui design. Instead of blasting newbies in the face with criticism on the question page, make them click to reveal why H4x0r69 said your stupid XSS question confused CSPs and CORS, so the experience is a dialectic rather than public shaming.

oauea 7y ago
Then how would you ever learn? I don't know if you've ever spent time looking for questions to answer on SO. Before weighing in on the climate, please do so. You'll encounter an absolutely shocking amount of utterly stupid questions. Yes, I know, stupid questions supposedly don't exist. Judge for yourself after spending an hour looking at the new queue for PHP and JavasScript questions. Once you've done this, and still think the experience for new users should be made better, I commend your kindheartedness and patience.
- mushufasa 7y ago
  I'm not suggesting encouraging stupid questions. I'm suggesting that you can minimize the emotional impact of public shaming to newbies through progressive ui design, while keeping the same high standards for content. And also auto-suggesting documentation for newbies exactly so they can learn.
  - olooney 7y ago
    Right. "Closed as Duplicate" could be renamed "Great Question! We have an answer for you over here!" without change in functionality and it would be an improvement. They could take it further and keep the duplicate as a "rephrasing" or "alternative statement" of a question - shouldn't it improve Google search-ability, having several different ways stating a question? And asking a duplicate question in your own words shouldn't be penalized; it is, prima facae, both a good and frequently asked question. It would be so easy to make the question-asking experience better for the vast majority of users... and yet they don't.
- pugworthy 7y ago
  Down votes mean nothing - they are simply someone saying, "WRONG!" with no explanation of why. As such there is really not much of an opportunity to learn. Well, beyond not coming back. Imagine though if they had some kind of coaching system based on down votes. If you get no response or get negative on your early posts, you get a private (automated) message with helpful tips. Better yet, you get a link to a SO question that goes something like, "My question is not getting any answers, what can I do to improve it?" or "My question got down voted a lot, what can I do to improve it?"

oauea 7y ago

Then how would you ever learn? I don't know if you've ever spent time looking for questions to answer on SO. Before weighing in on the climate, please do so. You'll encounter an absolutely shocking amount of utterly stupid questions. Yes, I know, stupid questions supposedly don't exist. Judge for yourself after spending an hour looking at the new queue for PHP and JavasScript questions. Once you've done this, and still think the experience for new users should be made better, I commend your kindheartedness and patience.

mushufasa 7y ago
I'm not suggesting encouraging stupid questions. I'm suggesting that you can minimize the emotional impact of public shaming to newbies through progressive ui design, while keeping the same high standards for content. And also auto-suggesting documentation for newbies exactly so they can learn.
- olooney 7y ago
  Right. "Closed as Duplicate" could be renamed "Great Question! We have an answer for you over here!" without change in functionality and it would be an improvement. They could take it further and keep the duplicate as a "rephrasing" or "alternative statement" of a question - shouldn't it improve Google search-ability, having several different ways stating a question? And asking a duplicate question in your own words shouldn't be penalized; it is, prima facae, both a good and frequently asked question. It would be so easy to make the question-asking experience better for the vast majority of users... and yet they don't.
pugworthy 7y ago
Down votes mean nothing - they are simply someone saying, "WRONG!" with no explanation of why. As such there is really not much of an opportunity to learn. Well, beyond not coming back. Imagine though if they had some kind of coaching system based on down votes. If you get no response or get negative on your early posts, you get a private (automated) message with helpful tips. Better yet, you get a link to a SO question that goes something like, "My question is not getting any answers, what can I do to improve it?" or "My question got down voted a lot, what can I do to improve it?"