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This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen furthe

This is natural selection at work. Stack Exchange has become a frustrating site to use. "Closed as duplicate: different and unrelated question" reopen further explaining the question and how its not related "Closed as duplicate: the first question that was immediately closed with no replies" OR! Google around, find SE link on issue, everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why, convinces them to do it another way, only I don't have that option, so I open my own question, and its closed as a dupe of the one from google where the original question was never answered. or Post helpful answer that actually answers the users question as asked without berating them for wanting to do it that way Get yelled at in the comments for creating noise? --- The moral of the story is that stack exchange needs to die so that something else can come from its ashes that is able to look back at SE as an example of how not to do shit.

Avamander 7y ago
It would help to just remove the current moderators that are super pedantic about building a "knowledge base", when actually they just like exercising their power. I've also noticed a recent trend that moderators on SO are also now deleting questions to stop any objections to the close votes from lower-ranked users, it's ridiculous.
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  Questions are rarely deleted by moderators. The community, through voting, is very often the one to delete through voting directly, or through severe downvoting, in which case a bot removes bad questions. And if you have higher score, you can still see these deleted questions and answers.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond. I can see quite a lot, not everything though, and I don't want to grind reputation asking inane questions to get access to more, to keep my detailed questions from being closed without explanation and then deleted. These kafkaesque trials are ridiculous and obnoxious.
    - LeoNatan25 7y ago
      > Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond. Yes, I know, which puts the entire outcry here (from likely low-score users) in a very comical light. "Ban mods"—what they really are asking for is "ban high-score users who do not like my low-quality questions".
      - Avamander 7y ago
        > "ban high-score users who do not like my low-quality questions" Thanks for telling me you're part of the problem. You're not nearly as infallible in your judgement about what's a "bad question", it's plain and simple hubris most high-ranks have. The system should not allow such consolidation of power, there's a very good reason most democratic countries have separated the three powers.
        LeoNatan25 7y ago
        I'm not sure what "power" you think I have. I rarely vote to close questions. But I do flag, and do down-vote. Isn't that as democratic as it gets?
        Avamander 7y ago
        > Isn't that as democratic as it gets? Why should you be able to flag for close, downvote and get to delete all at once? It's basically all the power there is, especially bad if you own a tag badge. We have enough people to separate those tasks, it'd definitely reduce one person's ability to do harm.
        LeoNatan25 7y ago
        Everyone is able to flag for close, delete or downvote (above a very small point requirement—125, I thing). I cannot delete questions or answers on any whim. I can vote to to delete after a certain threshold of low-score passes. I don't see what is so problematic with this, as any user with a little persistence can reach this goal.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Not technically deleted perhaps, but flagging a unique and/or relevant question as a duplicate or not relevant, is guaranteed to make that question effectively invisible.
LeoNatan25 7y ago
What you are describing is human nature. The same things happen on Quora and other Q&A sites. As long as human nature doesn't change, the same patterns will emerge.
- MrStonedOne 7y ago
  As long as there isn't a push to fix it and prevent it and stop it, and coach around it, the issue doesn't get solved. That sounds like defeatist attitude. Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper. They could also add a regular segment to their blog or meta that is just about showcasing improper moderator actions in the light of this is why they thought that was the proper action, this is what they missed, this is how we can avoid that kind of mistake in the future. But all of this really has to be built in from the ground up, as no existing mod community with go along with that being added after the fact.
  - LeoNatan25 7y ago
    > Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue Any such answer I see, I flag as not an answer to the question, and those answers are often converted to comments or deleted. It seems you are not really familiar with all the tools in your disposal on SO. > They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper. These tools already exists, sans the penalizing. The whole idea is not to penalize anyone. Just as users are not penalized for asking bad questions, likewise users are not penalized for potentially bad votes.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    It's a realistic attitude. When you have been around for more than a couple of these cycles, you just see the same things happen, over and over and over. It's very difficult to sustain a technical solution in the face of human nature that moves at such a comparatively glacial pace.
rusk 7y ago
Ah yes, the good old "X/Y Problem" [0] Doesn't matter if Y is non-negotiable, or if I've purposely constrained Y, to get a specific answer for a specific technology. How infuriating for a "Questions and Answers" site, to be told when you're asking a question, that the question you're asking is wrong, and that "you should instead have asked ..." I swear to god, the SO mods are the dumbest, most priggish, humourless beaureucrats in existence. [0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x...
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  About 90% of the time it is an XY problem, though. A couple clarifying questions and it turns out the OP really needed something much simpler. For example, people who insist they can’t use a Laravel package because of “performance”, but it turns out they just don’t know how the composer autoloader works.
  - wokwokwok 7y ago
    No... Just answer the question. You’re not there to babysit the question asker or convince them to change their approach/hair style/choice of library. I know it’s frustrating to see people doing something wrong, or that you don’t agree with, but you know what you can do? Just... don’t get involved if you can’t answer the actual question that was asked, and if it’s a bad question, let it die a natural death.
    - dirkt 7y ago
      If Y actually has an answer - but often enough Y is so convoluted that it just won't work. Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. If the poster insists on Y, then he'll also have to accept the answer "sorry, you can't do it that way, for the following reasons".
      - rusk 7y ago
        Yeah, I know that this is the rationale for the rule ... but it really has become an excuse to close a question as duplicate just because one of the X solutions might "in theory" solve your problem, even if they don't. Even if you've stipulated in your question why, because you've anticipated all those alternative answers yourself, already.
squeaky-clean 7y ago
I deleted my account when I had a notification that a 5 year old question of mine was edited to remove a "thanks for any help" at the end. This was after the blog post stating SE had an unfriendliness problem and they would stop doing things like that. Edit: Wow speaking of edits, am I reading this right that Jeff Atwood himself edited the title to remove the word "stealing"?
- haasted 7y ago
  There is an unfortunate karma-reward for making edit suggestions. This regularly results in people making tonnes of similar edits across the site, eg correcting a common spelling error, adding slightly-related tags, or, like your case, removing things that to a Puritan appears superfluous to the question.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  It seems he does not enjoy being called a thief?
  - baud147258 7y ago
    Seems weird since he's not working at SE/SO since 2012: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exchange.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exch...
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- pfortuny 7y ago
  Yep: it seems so. That is pretty unbelievable; one posts a question and it gets CHANGED.
carlesfe 7y ago
Hah, exactly my experience: Open question about potential Android bug. I mention I have checked threads A, B, and C, and the symptoms of my bug are different, therefore why I opened a new question "Closed as duplicate: thread A" Sigh.
- ratsmack 7y ago
  Google leads me to the site because I have the exact problem. I'm excited to see someone has already asked the same questions that I would on the problem. Then I see the dead end and wonder if anyone actually read and understood the question. "Moderators" with a preconceived notion of what the question or subject is all about are not moderators.
tester347 7y ago
How is that possible that I created like 100 questions on SO/SE over years and 90+% of them weren't closed/marked? Im that lucky or people tend to do not care about quality of their questions and then cry about how SO is bad?
- fourthark 7y ago
  Maybe you have better communication skills than average, happen to include enough code so that people know you are putting in the effort. IME down/close votes have at least as much to do with soft skills and English proficiency as quality of the underlying question.
- detaro 7y ago
  Did your questions fit in a pattern of questions that SE fails at, or did they have straight-forward answers?
cujo 7y ago
Funny thing, I frequent a few of the SE sites, and the only ones that have this problem are the tech ones.
- apacheCamel 7y ago
  I feel like there is a lot to be said about this. It could be that a large portion of the tech sector is living up to the stereotypical "arrogant/egotistical/know-it-all" label that we get hit with quite often.
  - fourthark 7y ago
    Also an illusion that technical problems are black-and-white, when of course there is a social component which must be balanced with technical accuracy.
    - mumblemumble 7y ago
      I think this is a big part of it. At least some of the questions I see unnecessarily closed, it seems that the complaint is that the community disagrees with the business constraints being imposed on the problem, and would rather close the question than help someone to find a solution that meets their constraints. It almost seems like "closed as duplicate" needs to be split into "closed: duplicate," and "closed: you should just quit your job instead of solving this problem."
- jmngomes 7y ago
  Could it be that the problem is just a lot more visible on those specific sites, because they have a lot more users than any of the others? https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic
pjc50 7y ago
StackExchange needs a sibling forum. I know forums are in opposition to everything that SE stands for, but for quite a lot of cases the questioner would benefit more from a back-and-forth, or open-ended discussion, and then at the end of the process if it's been refined then turn it into a question. If not, then let the thread auto-close and maybe even expire into deletion. Also, any SE equivalent needs to understand the power dynamic between questioners and answerers, and what motivates people to put in the huge volunteer effort on which it's built.
- zbentley 7y ago
  Programmers, among others, are notoriously unable to give up on arguments. What makes you think discussion would help someone refine inquiries into a question rather than just an endless tribal war or bikeshedding session? Additionally, I can't imagine any format less friendly to a beginner/intermediate programmer than an endless thread of experts arguing minutiae and holy-wars couched as objective fact. Even as an advanced user, sometimes I want a straight and to the point answer, even if it's not the best possible one, so I can get on with my work or research from there. Remember, SE is foremost a site for readers seeking existent answers. Not askers. Not answerers. Neither of those last two groups has dwindled substantially enough in response to askers/answerers complaints to impact the experience of users seeking existent answers. Therefore, in my opinion, SE still works well.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    those arguments are how you learn. I get what you're saying, but I can tell you personally I learned SOOO much from getting into arguments with people and then going off and doing research during the argument. And sometimes I'll completely do a 180 after a few years because I REMEMBER those arguments, and I eventually understand their perspective because I started coming across the problems they were having. I may not always do a 180, but I WILL more fully understand the pros and cons of everything. And this is a major reason why the "discourse" here on HN is only half useful. Too many people think not being challenged is somehow good and educational. Perhaps for a subset of people, but there are many like me who learn through challenge. Just consider that often the very act of responding to someone forces you to consider their position better. Which is why trite dismissal is one of the poorest forms of argumentation ever made.
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apostacy 7y ago
One of the most frustrating things is when SE modes decide to deputize themselves on behalf of third parties, and try to enforce the laws of other countries or the intellectual property rights of decades old software. I've seen questions about how to bypass DRM on 20 year old software deleted. And why do they assume that the DMCA applies in other countries? What if you are asking how to build an unauthorized media player in a market where it is not for sale anyway? I remember in like 2011, someone asked how to virtualize OSX Tiger on a non Apple host because they needed to use this proprietary software for their business. The top answer was that it was 100% impossible to do this (not true) and that they were a horrible human being for even considering it because it violated Apple's TOS. I've also seen this happen when people want to do things like retrieve music that they paid for off of their devices. I have heard that in Saudi Arabia husbands have a legal right to monitor their wives communications. So if a Saudi woman posted on SE asking how to remove a keylogger her husband installed, would it be deleted for violating local law? Or what if a Saudi woman simply wanted help cracking the Google authorized wife-tracking app[1], so she could flee? That would be violating local laws, and upsetting Google. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693994447/apple-google-criticized-for-carrying-app-that-lets-saudi-men-track-their-wives https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693994447/apple-google-critic...
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > And why do they assume that the DMCA applies in other countries? The company is on the US, so it would be illegal for them to keep the answer.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted. I don't know that your statement is 100% accurate, but it's not far off the mark, either. The law in the US is such that a high-profile site that does business in the USA, like SO, is entirely reasonable if it wants to to err on the side of caution on these things. Not all the questions around the DMCA have been settled by the courts, so, no, we can't necessarily say for sure what is legal and illegal. But we can say that volunteering to help everyone to figure this out could be a very expensive proposition. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Linking_to_infringing_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
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ridaj 7y ago
Talking about X/Y problem — the actual incident described here doesn't seem to have anything to do with it, but rather to the ham-fisted handling of a disagreement between the company and a moderator. Or is there some relation between the two, eg was the disagreement about how to handle answers to what look like the wrong questions to ask?
edgarvaldes 7y ago
>Post helpful answer that actually answers the users question as asked without berating them for wanting to do it that way >Get yelled at in the comments for creating noise? Problem is: SE can edit and rephrase the whole question in order to be more helpful (both the question and the answer) for future visitors. The original question and intent from the OP doesnt matter that much to SE.
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sambe 7y ago
I would argue it was always like that. Some of it seemed to be actively encouraged by Jeff Atwood/moderators/senior users. You forgot another common one: "not clear what you are asking". I normally have to reply to this with "the question is in the final paragraph". Which often results negative comments and perhaps the question being closed. Or trying to edit a bug out of an answer, being refused because you didn't change enough, tidying up some wording, and getting the edit rejected for supposedly changing what the person is saying. I don't think any of it is specific to SO - online communities seem to attract people who like everything to be extremely specific and rule-based, regardless of whether that creates the best outcomes. I've seen mods destroy several forums. SO gets a lot of other stuff right though. I don't think it will die anytime soon, nor does it need to in order to improve things.
- mark-r 7y ago
  I've seen proposed edits on my own answers that would have changed them from correct to incorrect, so that's a real problem.
GordonS 7y ago
I agree about SO becoming a frustrating site because of crappy mods - in particular, questions being closed by someone who plainly hasn't even read the new question... drives me nuts! However, it really doesn't look like natural selection is at work here - I recognise several names in the list of resigned/fired mods, and they were some of the good ones. No, it really looks like SO is well on the way to "becoming evil", forsaking community in the name of profit - which cannot end well for them.
345218435 7y ago
how do you get yelled at by text? milennials, do yourselves a favor and grow some skin. just stop to care to much! it‘s the bloody internet and you and everybody else are free on there. not everybody will appreciate your help. you did your best. get over it. i cannot stand the flodding with people and their constant complaining „ugh, this community is not inclusive!!1!eleven!“. the hell, just leave! cyberspace is big and wide and there‘s more in life! good lord.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dwohnitmok 7y ago
AFAICT among mods there is a good deal of discontent because of the precise opposite reason. In their opinion Stack Overflow has gone overboard with the "Welcome Wagon" and made it overly accommodating to newcomers without thought for the downstream impacts to mods and quality answers. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386324/the-stack-overflow-i-wish-to-build-and-participate-in-is-no-longer-supported https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386324/the-stack-ov... https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331513/lets-take-a-look-at-the-interaction-between-staff-and-the-power-users-of-the https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331513/lets-take-a-... This particular wave seems to be touched off by the firing of a well-loved mod over disagreements in a new CoC.
bobloblaw45 7y ago
Man as someone trying to learn something new I avoid posting to that site like the plague. Oh yeah I'll search but you couldn't pay me to make a post because I've seen what happens to the people that post the question I was searching for.
chippingtoe 7y ago
everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why I fucking hate this, and it's been happening forever. It's those fucking assholes farming points for rep, who don't really want to help OP but still want their answer accepted.
ahaferburg 7y ago
None of that has anything to do with the topic discussed here.

Avamander 7y ago

It would help to just remove the current moderators that are super pedantic about building a "knowledge base", when actually they just like exercising their power. I've also noticed a recent trend that moderators on SO are also now deleting questions to stop any objections to the close votes from lower-ranked users, it's ridiculous.

LeoNatan25 7y ago
Questions are rarely deleted by moderators. The community, through voting, is very often the one to delete through voting directly, or through severe downvoting, in which case a bot removes bad questions. And if you have higher score, you can still see these deleted questions and answers.
- Avamander 7y ago
  Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond. I can see quite a lot, not everything though, and I don't want to grind reputation asking inane questions to get access to more, to keep my detailed questions from being closed without explanation and then deleted. These kafkaesque trials are ridiculous and obnoxious.
  - LeoNatan25 7y ago
    > Moderators are part of the community that can vote and high-ranked people that vote have access to mod tools - they're basically moderators - just without the diamond. Yes, I know, which puts the entire outcry here (from likely low-score users) in a very comical light. "Ban mods"—what they really are asking for is "ban high-score users who do not like my low-quality questions".
    - Avamander 7y ago
      > "ban high-score users who do not like my low-quality questions" Thanks for telling me you're part of the problem. You're not nearly as infallible in your judgement about what's a "bad question", it's plain and simple hubris most high-ranks have. The system should not allow such consolidation of power, there's a very good reason most democratic countries have separated the three powers.
      - LeoNatan25 7y ago
        I'm not sure what "power" you think I have. I rarely vote to close questions. But I do flag, and do down-vote. Isn't that as democratic as it gets?
        Avamander 7y ago
        > Isn't that as democratic as it gets? Why should you be able to flag for close, downvote and get to delete all at once? It's basically all the power there is, especially bad if you own a tag badge. We have enough people to separate those tasks, it'd definitely reduce one person's ability to do harm.
        LeoNatan25 7y ago
        Everyone is able to flag for close, delete or downvote (above a very small point requirement—125, I thing). I cannot delete questions or answers on any whim. I can vote to to delete after a certain threshold of low-score passes. I don't see what is so problematic with this, as any user with a little persistence can reach this goal.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Not technically deleted perhaps, but flagging a unique and/or relevant question as a duplicate or not relevant, is guaranteed to make that question effectively invisible.

LeoNatan25 7y ago

What you are describing is human nature. The same things happen on Quora and other Q&A sites. As long as human nature doesn't change, the same patterns will emerge.

MrStonedOne 7y ago
As long as there isn't a push to fix it and prevent it and stop it, and coach around it, the issue doesn't get solved. That sounds like defeatist attitude. Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper. They could also add a regular segment to their blog or meta that is just about showcasing improper moderator actions in the light of this is why they thought that was the proper action, this is what they missed, this is how we can avoid that kind of mistake in the future. But all of this really has to be built in from the ground up, as no existing mod community with go along with that being added after the fact.
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  > Stack Exchange could add a rule forbidding asking why or adding answers that have caveats the question asker already said in op were unacceptable and deal with part of the issue Any such answer I see, I flag as not an answer to the question, and those answers are often converted to comments or deleted. It seems you are not really familiar with all the tools in your disposal on SO. > They could also add a system to review, rate, and appeal moderator actions, and penalize people who's moderator actions aren't proper. These tools already exists, sans the penalizing. The whole idea is not to penalize anyone. Just as users are not penalized for asking bad questions, likewise users are not penalized for potentially bad votes.
- thrower123 7y ago
  It's a realistic attitude. When you have been around for more than a couple of these cycles, you just see the same things happen, over and over and over. It's very difficult to sustain a technical solution in the face of human nature that moves at such a comparatively glacial pace.

rusk 7y ago

Ah yes, the good old "X/Y Problem" [0] Doesn't matter if Y is non-negotiable, or if I've purposely constrained Y, to get a specific answer for a specific technology. How infuriating for a "Questions and Answers" site, to be told when you're asking a question, that the question you're asking is wrong, and that "you should instead have asked ..." I swear to god, the SO mods are the dumbest, most priggish, humourless beaureucrats in existence. [0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x...

ceejayoz 7y ago
About 90% of the time it is an XY problem, though. A couple clarifying questions and it turns out the OP really needed something much simpler. For example, people who insist they can’t use a Laravel package because of “performance”, but it turns out they just don’t know how the composer autoloader works.
- wokwokwok 7y ago
  No... Just answer the question. You’re not there to babysit the question asker or convince them to change their approach/hair style/choice of library. I know it’s frustrating to see people doing something wrong, or that you don’t agree with, but you know what you can do? Just... don’t get involved if you can’t answer the actual question that was asked, and if it’s a bad question, let it die a natural death.
  - dirkt 7y ago
    If Y actually has an answer - but often enough Y is so convoluted that it just won't work. Asking the poster about X, and offering a solution Y' which will solve X should at least be attempted. If the poster insists on Y, then he'll also have to accept the answer "sorry, you can't do it that way, for the following reasons".
    - rusk 7y ago
      Yeah, I know that this is the rationale for the rule ... but it really has become an excuse to close a question as duplicate just because one of the X solutions might "in theory" solve your problem, even if they don't. Even if you've stipulated in your question why, because you've anticipated all those alternative answers yourself, already.

squeaky-clean 7y ago

I deleted my account when I had a notification that a 5 year old question of mine was edited to remove a "thanks for any help" at the end. This was after the blog post stating SE had an unfriendliness problem and they would stop doing things like that. Edit: Wow speaking of edits, am I reading this right that Jeff Atwood himself edited the title to remove the word "stealing"?

haasted 7y ago
There is an unfortunate karma-reward for making edit suggestions. This regularly results in people making tonnes of similar edits across the site, eg correcting a common spelling error, adding slightly-related tags, or, like your case, removing things that to a Puritan appears superfluous to the question.
Aeolun 7y ago
It seems he does not enjoy being called a thief?
- baud147258 7y ago
  Seems weird since he's not working at SE/SO since 2012: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exchange.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exch...
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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pfortuny 7y ago
Yep: it seems so. That is pretty unbelievable; one posts a question and it gets CHANGED.

carlesfe 7y ago

Hah, exactly my experience: Open question about potential Android bug. I mention I have checked threads A, B, and C, and the symptoms of my bug are different, therefore why I opened a new question "Closed as duplicate: thread A" Sigh.

ratsmack 7y ago
Google leads me to the site because I have the exact problem. I'm excited to see someone has already asked the same questions that I would on the problem. Then I see the dead end and wonder if anyone actually read and understood the question. "Moderators" with a preconceived notion of what the question or subject is all about are not moderators.

tester347 7y ago

How is that possible that I created like 100 questions on SO/SE over years and 90+% of them weren't closed/marked? Im that lucky or people tend to do not care about quality of their questions and then cry about how SO is bad?

fourthark 7y ago
Maybe you have better communication skills than average, happen to include enough code so that people know you are putting in the effort. IME down/close votes have at least as much to do with soft skills and English proficiency as quality of the underlying question.
detaro 7y ago
Did your questions fit in a pattern of questions that SE fails at, or did they have straight-forward answers?

cujo 7y ago

Funny thing, I frequent a few of the SE sites, and the only ones that have this problem are the tech ones.

apacheCamel 7y ago
I feel like there is a lot to be said about this. It could be that a large portion of the tech sector is living up to the stereotypical "arrogant/egotistical/know-it-all" label that we get hit with quite often.
- fourthark 7y ago
  Also an illusion that technical problems are black-and-white, when of course there is a social component which must be balanced with technical accuracy.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    I think this is a big part of it. At least some of the questions I see unnecessarily closed, it seems that the complaint is that the community disagrees with the business constraints being imposed on the problem, and would rather close the question than help someone to find a solution that meets their constraints. It almost seems like "closed as duplicate" needs to be split into "closed: duplicate," and "closed: you should just quit your job instead of solving this problem."
jmngomes 7y ago
Could it be that the problem is just a lot more visible on those specific sites, because they have a lot more users than any of the others? https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic

pjc50 7y ago

StackExchange needs a sibling forum. I know forums are in opposition to everything that SE stands for, but for quite a lot of cases the questioner would benefit more from a back-and-forth, or open-ended discussion, and then at the end of the process if it's been refined then turn it into a question. If not, then let the thread auto-close and maybe even expire into deletion. Also, any SE equivalent needs to understand the power dynamic between questioners and answerers, and what motivates people to put in the huge volunteer effort on which it's built.

zbentley 7y ago
Programmers, among others, are notoriously unable to give up on arguments. What makes you think discussion would help someone refine inquiries into a question rather than just an endless tribal war or bikeshedding session? Additionally, I can't imagine any format less friendly to a beginner/intermediate programmer than an endless thread of experts arguing minutiae and holy-wars couched as objective fact. Even as an advanced user, sometimes I want a straight and to the point answer, even if it's not the best possible one, so I can get on with my work or research from there. Remember, SE is foremost a site for readers seeking existent answers. Not askers. Not answerers. Neither of those last two groups has dwindled substantially enough in response to askers/answerers complaints to impact the experience of users seeking existent answers. Therefore, in my opinion, SE still works well.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  those arguments are how you learn. I get what you're saying, but I can tell you personally I learned SOOO much from getting into arguments with people and then going off and doing research during the argument. And sometimes I'll completely do a 180 after a few years because I REMEMBER those arguments, and I eventually understand their perspective because I started coming across the problems they were having. I may not always do a 180, but I WILL more fully understand the pros and cons of everything. And this is a major reason why the "discourse" here on HN is only half useful. Too many people think not being challenged is somehow good and educational. Perhaps for a subset of people, but there are many like me who learn through challenge. Just consider that often the very act of responding to someone forces you to consider their position better. Which is why trite dismissal is one of the poorest forms of argumentation ever made.

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apostacy 7y ago

One of the most frustrating things is when SE modes decide to deputize themselves on behalf of third parties, and try to enforce the laws of other countries or the intellectual property rights of decades old software. I've seen questions about how to bypass DRM on 20 year old software deleted. And why do they assume that the DMCA applies in other countries? What if you are asking how to build an unauthorized media player in a market where it is not for sale anyway? I remember in like 2011, someone asked how to virtualize OSX Tiger on a non Apple host because they needed to use this proprietary software for their business. The top answer was that it was 100% impossible to do this (not true) and that they were a horrible human being for even considering it because it violated Apple's TOS. I've also seen this happen when people want to do things like retrieve music that they paid for off of their devices. I have heard that in Saudi Arabia husbands have a legal right to monitor their wives communications. So if a Saudi woman posted on SE asking how to remove a keylogger her husband installed, would it be deleted for violating local law? Or what if a Saudi woman simply wanted help cracking the Google authorized wife-tracking app[1], so she could flee? That would be violating local laws, and upsetting Google. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693994447/apple-google-criticized-for-carrying-app-that-lets-saudi-men-track-their-wives https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693994447/apple-google-critic...

marcosdumay 7y ago
> And why do they assume that the DMCA applies in other countries? The company is on the US, so it would be illegal for them to keep the answer.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  Not sure why you're downvoted. I don't know that your statement is 100% accurate, but it's not far off the mark, either. The law in the US is such that a high-profile site that does business in the USA, like SO, is entirely reasonable if it wants to to err on the side of caution on these things. Not all the questions around the DMCA have been settled by the courts, so, no, we can't necessarily say for sure what is legal and illegal. But we can say that volunteering to help everyone to figure this out could be a very expensive proposition. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Linking_to_infringing_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

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ridaj 7y ago

Talking about X/Y problem — the actual incident described here doesn't seem to have anything to do with it, but rather to the ham-fisted handling of a disagreement between the company and a moderator. Or is there some relation between the two, eg was the disagreement about how to handle answers to what look like the wrong questions to ask?

edgarvaldes 7y ago

>Post helpful answer that actually answers the users question as asked without berating them for wanting to do it that way >Get yelled at in the comments for creating noise? Problem is: SE can edit and rephrase the whole question in order to be more helpful (both the question and the answer) for future visitors. The original question and intent from the OP doesnt matter that much to SE.

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sambe 7y ago

I would argue it was always like that. Some of it seemed to be actively encouraged by Jeff Atwood/moderators/senior users. You forgot another common one: "not clear what you are asking". I normally have to reply to this with "the question is in the final paragraph". Which often results negative comments and perhaps the question being closed. Or trying to edit a bug out of an answer, being refused because you didn't change enough, tidying up some wording, and getting the edit rejected for supposedly changing what the person is saying. I don't think any of it is specific to SO - online communities seem to attract people who like everything to be extremely specific and rule-based, regardless of whether that creates the best outcomes. I've seen mods destroy several forums. SO gets a lot of other stuff right though. I don't think it will die anytime soon, nor does it need to in order to improve things.

mark-r 7y ago
I've seen proposed edits on my own answers that would have changed them from correct to incorrect, so that's a real problem.

GordonS 7y ago

I agree about SO becoming a frustrating site because of crappy mods - in particular, questions being closed by someone who plainly hasn't even read the new question... drives me nuts! However, it really doesn't look like natural selection is at work here - I recognise several names in the list of resigned/fired mods, and they were some of the good ones. No, it really looks like SO is well on the way to "becoming evil", forsaking community in the name of profit - which cannot end well for them.

345218435 7y ago

how do you get yelled at by text? milennials, do yourselves a favor and grow some skin. just stop to care to much! it‘s the bloody internet and you and everybody else are free on there. not everybody will appreciate your help. you did your best. get over it. i cannot stand the flodding with people and their constant complaining „ugh, this community is not inclusive!!1!eleven!“. the hell, just leave! cyberspace is big and wide and there‘s more in life! good lord.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dwohnitmok 7y ago

AFAICT among mods there is a good deal of discontent because of the precise opposite reason. In their opinion Stack Overflow has gone overboard with the "Welcome Wagon" and made it overly accommodating to newcomers without thought for the downstream impacts to mods and quality answers. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386324/the-stack-overflow-i-wish-to-build-and-participate-in-is-no-longer-supported https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/386324/the-stack-ov... https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331513/lets-take-a-look-at-the-interaction-between-staff-and-the-power-users-of-the https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/331513/lets-take-a-... This particular wave seems to be touched off by the firing of a well-loved mod over disagreements in a new CoC.

bobloblaw45 7y ago

Man as someone trying to learn something new I avoid posting to that site like the plague. Oh yeah I'll search but you couldn't pay me to make a post because I've seen what happens to the people that post the question I was searching for.

chippingtoe 7y ago

everybody is arguing about why the user wants to do it that why I fucking hate this, and it's been happening forever. It's those fucking assholes farming points for rep, who don't really want to help OP but still want their answer accepted.

ahaferburg 7y ago

None of that has anything to do with the topic discussed here.