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I think people don't want to feel like they're in some sort of social Darwin experiment where they have to compete to prove the worth of their questions. They j

I think people don't want to feel like they're in some sort of social Darwin experiment where they have to compete to prove the worth of their questions. They just want help with their problems. As many have noted, there is a conflict between the goal of a wiki and the goal of getting answers to people. I speak as someone with a decent score answering questions, who had to fight tooth-and-nail for years to stop people from downvoting and close-voting questions they didn't understand in one of "my" tags.

LeoNatan25 7y ago
That’s understandable. Anyone downvoting a question they don’t understand is wrong. But objectively, there is a very large daily volume of very low quality questions. People can’t be arsed to, or are unable to, perform even the most rudimentary search, and just dump their questions, often in terrible English (In my niche, I’ve seen a clear correlation between bad English asking and duplicates or lazy “solve my homework” questions). I don’t think those are helping the community to grow in quality. I don’t think downvoting those is oppression, it’s a demand to do better. I’ve mostly left Stack Overflow because of these people. (No, I don’t claim oppression!)
- fourthark 7y ago
  I agree that it can be exhausting. I just wonder if downvotes are the best solution. I put a lot of effort into editing questions to make them clear. More often than bad faith, I see people who don’t have the experience to know what a good question is, or who really struggle to express themselves in English. Often it’s only through interaction that I can tell if people are making the effort or not. Does SO need more people editing and doing triage? A different interface that bridges the gap between Q&A and wiki? I don’t know.

5 ms·

I think people don't want to feel like they're in some sort of social Darwin experiment where they have to compete to prove the worth of their questions. They j

by fourthark 7y ago

LeoNatan25 7y ago
That’s understandable. Anyone downvoting a question they don’t understand is wrong. But objectively, there is a very large daily volume of very low quality questions. People can’t be arsed to, or are unable to, perform even the most rudimentary search, and just dump their questions, often in terrible English (In my niche, I’ve seen a clear correlation between bad English asking and duplicates or lazy “solve my homework” questions). I don’t think those are helping the community to grow in quality. I don’t think downvoting those is oppression, it’s a demand to do better. I’ve mostly left Stack Overflow because of these people. (No, I don’t claim oppression!)
- fourthark 7y ago
  I agree that it can be exhausting. I just wonder if downvotes are the best solution. I put a lot of effort into editing questions to make them clear. More often than bad faith, I see people who don’t have the experience to know what a good question is, or who really struggle to express themselves in English. Often it’s only through interaction that I can tell if people are making the effort or not. Does SO need more people editing and doing triage? A different interface that bridges the gap between Q&A and wiki? I don’t know.