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https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/ has over a million subscribers and nobody gets upset if a neurosurgeon e

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/ has over a million subscribers and nobody gets upset if a neurosurgeon explains why washing your hands is important. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ has over a million subscribers and they get repetitive questions all the time without making anybody feel bad about it. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/ https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/ has almost a million subscribers and have no problem answering the same question again and again. https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/ https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/ has almost 14 million users and a mandate to respect each other. It would be pretty weird if a small group really "need" the "right" to suppress a larger group of their co-users just because the questions are programming-related. It makes sense they'd defend such a right vigorously to keep it though.

jasode 7y ago
Regarding your 4 examples: /r/NoStupidQuestions/, /r/AskHistorians/, /r/legaladvice/, /r/personalfinance/ I see why those 4 subreddits influence your thinking in how StackOverflow should work so it seems like it could adopt the same (social) mechanisms and it would only improve the site and not degrade it. However, notice that there is no reddit.com/r/ProgrammersAskAnyQuestion/ comparable subreddit that has more traffic and/or better answers than StackOverflow even though Reddit is older (2005) than StackOverflow (2008). Why is that? Here's my pet theory on why I think technical programmers' Q&A won't have the same dynamics as your 4 example sites based on observations of programmers asking questions for decades on USENET, Experts-Exchange, etc: - the questions on the 4 non-tech sites you mention are often "entertainment" in and of themselves. Whether it's the compelling drama of a girlfriend asking LegalAdvice about a boyfriend emptying her bank account or somebody on AskHistorians asking about Hitler (for the 100th time), the tolerance for dupes or silly questions is much more relaxed. - In contrast, programmers have less patience for answering someone else's "homework questions", or doing free consulting work for incompetent developers, or encountering poorly researched questions, etc. Programmers (in general) definitely have more of a smartass "lmgtfy"[0] type of defense against people wasting their time on a question forum. Yes, developers do want to help but they also have a lower threshold for annoying questions than the 4 sites you listed. (If you haven't read through the 2 meta stackexchange threads I cited in my comment you replied to, please do so to get a glimpse of this collective psychology. Also a recent 3rd thread to read to understand how some SO veterans feel.[1]) - Since a tech question like "What's the regex to extract an email address?" doesn't have the same entertainment value as "Do sighted people really look at the toilet paper after they wipe?"[2] ... the programmers volunteering their efforts don't want to see that duplicate regex question 10000 times. I might be wrong with my analysis. Perhaps somebody can start a new subreddit dedicated to answering any programmers questions. Specifically advertise the subreddit as having no moderation, no deletion of dupe questions, no closing of questions, no downvote buttons[3] to prevent anyone's feelings from getting hurt, etc. Basically, take all the social dynamic complaints about SO and make that subreddit do the opposite. We can then see if it attracts questioners (and good answers) like your 4 example subreddits. (I'm serious about that subreddit suggestion; it would be a fascinating experiment.) [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lmgtfy https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lmgtfy [1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386584/why-is-the-popular-how-much-research-effort-is-expected-answer-deleted/386617 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386584/why-is-the-p... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/cxurmr/do_sighted_people_really_look_at_the_toilet_paper/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/cxurmr/d... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ir1qg/why_have_some_subs_removed_the_downvote_button/ https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ir1qg/why_ha...
- benologist 7y ago
  If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Or improve the UI. The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed alternative to some basic filtering.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Are you talking about the JSON api? (https://api.stackexchange.com/docs https://api.stackexchange.com/docs) If so, there's no obvious API call where one can put a "not boring" filter as a parameter. Do you have source code examples of what you're suggesting? >The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed Right but there are 2 groups ... not just 1 group representing the question askers. There's also the other group of desirable experts providing answers. If you tune the site's rules to avoid ruining the experience of the question askers', you've now ruined the experience for the answerers. (Again, refer to the cited threads of answerers' complaining about their experience being ruined because of bad quality questions.)
    - benologist 7y ago
      I don't have a code example but I think even if the API is inadequate it doesn't really matter - filtering content can be solved in many ways. The browser extension "Reddit Enhancement Suite" I think literally just parses the page you're on to remove undesired content. Reddit's /r/worldnews has content filtering I think might be done with CSS. SO could obviously make a minimal effort to empower such functionality too or build it into their UI. There's search services like the one HN uses that make the content a flexible API. https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite
    - another-dave 7y ago
      Create a "beginner" tag and then let people annoyed by beginner questions filter them out. Or allow people to filter out questions from askers with less than N reputation. These solutions probably have their own flaws, but if there was an appetite to be more beginner friendly geberally you could probably road test them a bit more.

jasode 7y ago

Regarding your 4 examples: /r/NoStupidQuestions/, /r/AskHistorians/, /r/legaladvice/, /r/personalfinance/ I see why those 4 subreddits influence your thinking in how StackOverflow should work so it seems like it could adopt the same (social) mechanisms and it would only improve the site and not degrade it. However, notice that there is no reddit.com/r/ProgrammersAskAnyQuestion/ comparable subreddit that has more traffic and/or better answers than StackOverflow even though Reddit is older (2005) than StackOverflow (2008). Why is that? Here's my pet theory on why I think technical programmers' Q&A won't have the same dynamics as your 4 example sites based on observations of programmers asking questions for decades on USENET, Experts-Exchange, etc: - the questions on the 4 non-tech sites you mention are often "entertainment" in and of themselves. Whether it's the compelling drama of a girlfriend asking LegalAdvice about a boyfriend emptying her bank account or somebody on AskHistorians asking about Hitler (for the 100th time), the tolerance for dupes or silly questions is much more relaxed. - In contrast, programmers have less patience for answering someone else's "homework questions", or doing free consulting work for incompetent developers, or encountering poorly researched questions, etc. Programmers (in general) definitely have more of a smartass "lmgtfy"[0] type of defense against people wasting their time on a question forum. Yes, developers do want to help but they also have a lower threshold for annoying questions than the 4 sites you listed. (If you haven't read through the 2 meta stackexchange threads I cited in my comment you replied to, please do so to get a glimpse of this collective psychology. Also a recent 3rd thread to read to understand how some SO veterans feel.[1]) - Since a tech question like "What's the regex to extract an email address?" doesn't have the same entertainment value as "Do sighted people really look at the toilet paper after they wipe?"[2] ... the programmers volunteering their efforts don't want to see that duplicate regex question 10000 times. I might be wrong with my analysis. Perhaps somebody can start a new subreddit dedicated to answering any programmers questions. Specifically advertise the subreddit as having no moderation, no deletion of dupe questions, no closing of questions, no downvote buttons[3] to prevent anyone's feelings from getting hurt, etc. Basically, take all the social dynamic complaints about SO and make that subreddit do the opposite. We can then see if it attracts questioners (and good answers) like your 4 example subreddits. (I'm serious about that subreddit suggestion; it would be a fascinating experiment.) [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lmgtfy https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lmgtfy [1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386584/why-is-the-popular-how-much-research-effort-is-expected-answer-deleted/386617 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386584/why-is-the-p... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/cxurmr/do_sighted_people_really_look_at_the_toilet_paper/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/cxurmr/d... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ir1qg/why_have_some_subs_removed_the_downvote_button/ https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ir1qg/why_ha...

benologist 7y ago
If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Or improve the UI. The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed alternative to some basic filtering.
- jasode 7y ago
  >If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Are you talking about the JSON api? (https://api.stackexchange.com/docs https://api.stackexchange.com/docs) If so, there's no obvious API call where one can put a "not boring" filter as a parameter. Do you have source code examples of what you're suggesting? >The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed Right but there are 2 groups ... not just 1 group representing the question askers. There's also the other group of desirable experts providing answers. If you tune the site's rules to avoid ruining the experience of the question askers', you've now ruined the experience for the answerers. (Again, refer to the cited threads of answerers' complaining about their experience being ruined because of bad quality questions.)
  - benologist 7y ago
    I don't have a code example but I think even if the API is inadequate it doesn't really matter - filtering content can be solved in many ways. The browser extension "Reddit Enhancement Suite" I think literally just parses the page you're on to remove undesired content. Reddit's /r/worldnews has content filtering I think might be done with CSS. SO could obviously make a minimal effort to empower such functionality too or build it into their UI. There's search services like the one HN uses that make the content a flexible API. https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite
  - another-dave 7y ago
    Create a "beginner" tag and then let people annoyed by beginner questions filter them out. Or allow people to filter out questions from askers with less than N reputation. These solutions probably have their own flaws, but if there was an appetite to be more beginner friendly geberally you could probably road test them a bit more.