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I don't understand this cry against moderators. These people are volunteerily giving their time to keep quality bar high without any payment. If these people we

I don't understand this cry against moderators. These people are volunteerily giving their time to keep quality bar high without any payment. If these people weren't there then SO will be full of duplicates, off-topic and opinion based Q&A just like Quora. A general tendency I have seen is just to ask (often poorly stated) questions without doing simple search to see if it is already answered. Someone needs to respect those people picking up garbage on the street.

ALittleLight 7y ago
I don't understand why people would volunteer to do work for a for profit entity. Especially one that will, apparently, fire you on a whim.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  You work as an unpaid content author for ycombinator.
  - lawfulcactus 7y ago
    The ratio of value (or entertainment) provided to oneself versus value provided to another entity clearly differs significantly between a user of a site and an (unpaid) moderator of it.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    That's such twisted logic. Are you saying I'm doing unpaid work for my social group when we have a conversation? Jesus Christ not everything needs a dollar symbol attached even if it benefits a company.
    - blt 7y ago
      I think that was the point - that answering questions on SO is like having a conversation, and feels pleasant to some people, not like work.
      - mcv 7y ago
        At least it feels pleasant until a moderator or community manager starts interfering with it.
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  Have you ever answered a question on stackoverflow? Or upvoted something? That's the same thing, just to a lesser degree.
wpietri 7y ago
I think SO is poorly designed as a system. It certainly does encourage people to ask not-so-great questions. It doesn't handle them particularly well. And then expects people to clean up the mess for free. Those people of course feel stressed and overwhelmed, so are inclined to be rude, aggressive, and hasty in their decisions. Like ldigas, I long ago gave up on SO because of bad moderation experiences. I'm grudgingly willing to respect those mods as humans, but I certainly won't as moderators. They do a poor job, needlessly offending and discouraging contributors. They could quit any time. They could go on strike at any time. But no, they just kept on. I can definitely muster up some sympathy when people trapped in bad jobs are jerks. They are doing it to survive. But people who volunteer to be jerks? That's on them.
- greggman2 7y ago
  As someone who answers quite a few quesitons on SO I'd really like to see posts that were perceived as wrongfully closed to see if I agree (haha) and also to see how to fix the system. Of course I have no hope that S.O. will change anything. When they started their "be nice" campaign I suggested the "CLOSED: This is a duplicate" message should be changed to "CONGRATS: This appears to be a duplicates so you win! There is already an answer [here]!" In any case there are rules. One is "post the code you're having trouble with in the question, not a link offsite." The offsite link is useless if the code changes there or the offsite site goes offline. Some not insignificant percent of the time the question will just have a link to offsite code. I'll leave a comment saying effectively, "please add the code to the question" and then I vote to close, reason "missing code". The person never adds the code. Are they like you claiming S.O. is rude and unreasonable? Did they get their answer somewhere else and never come back to follow up? I have no idea. Actually the rule is even more specific. "Make a minimal repo and post it the question itself". Almost no one makes a remotely minimal repo which is fine, but in general lots of people fail at the "repo" part period. In order to help them we'd need to download code, setup dev environments, make up test data, etc...." What I do know is I often spend 30 to 240 minutes writing working examples for a single answer. I do that volunteerily for reasonable questions. When someone barfs out a "give me teh codez" question it can be very angering. They're basically asking for free labor. If that's not rude I don't know what is. Here's a recent "give me free labor" question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58206647/removing-the-background-on-this-webgl-animation https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58206647/removing-the-ba... Here's a recent "teach me an entire CS course" question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58165198/how-to-process-model-data-in-unit8array-in-webgl https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58165198/how-to-process-... And here's an answer I spent over 150 minutes on, trying to understand their code, trying to make a working sample, running into bugs, when I looked up 2.5 hours had passed. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58101753/drawing-a-torus-in-webgl https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58101753/drawing-a-torus... And another more typical 30 minutes on this one https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58111380/in-webgl-the-perspective-cameras-are-added-to-the-canvas-or-to-the-3d-model-its https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58111380/in-webgl-the-pe... note I'm not trying to brag. I hear your complaint often. I just don't run into it myself. Instead I see lots of volunteers answering questions and only voting to close the bad ones and they are bad ones.
alkonaut 7y ago
But my experience of the site (as an experienced long time user) is much more negatively affected by the “active moderation” than it is positively affected by it. I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question, than a race to ninja-downvote or close anything that is tangentially related to an existing question. The struggle to maintain quality in the content of the site appears to be destroying the quality of the experience of the site. In the end, if the experience is not good, nor will the content be if people stop visiting. I’m sure 99% of the negativity is coming from non-admins. The ninja downvotes and closevotes are coming from regular users. I still visit but I basically stopped asking and answering because it’s just not worth the stress of having to defend my question or answer. I have a 10k rep account and I’m an experienced dev with a decent grip of English as a second language but I still never felt once that my answer was welcome or my question was good enough for the site. I can only imagine what a novice must feel when using SO.
- sytelus 7y ago
  > I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question Sure, unless it really happens. I'd been burned by over-moderation as well but when I look at the process I think it's not arbitrary. There are controls and voting by more than one person. Remember, there is nothing a moderator gains by doing any of this.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    Yes, I think moderators aren't to blame for the poor quality of the experience (mostly). But I think this recipe is a disaster: users downvote and close-vote. Moderators look at votes and clean up accordingly. I think the problem is that the algorithms allow a small group of drive-by downvoters to destroy the experience. I'd be more than willing to accept a somewhat lower content quality for a more friendly experience.
  - gregmac 7y ago
    Well, what is the downside to having duplicate* questions? I would guess the vast majority of traffic to any specific question page is search, followed by specific links people have posted (on or offsite), and relatively little will come from browsing through lists of questions (tags pages) or something like that. Search is going to surface the most up-voted and linked questions. Links people have posted are obviously very specific (no chance of confusion following the link). I would say the upsides are that you end up with more opportunities to have nuanced differences in question handled, give more people a chance to answer questions, naturally refresh questions/answers over the years (eg: "How do I minify CSS in <stack>?" will have very different answers in 2019 than it did in 2009). * I'm not necessarily suggesting exact duplicates, but allowing for questions to be re-asked after a year or two, and allowing any subtle difference in the situation, stack, etc.
ldigas 7y ago
So are the users (giving their time), both more and less experienced ones. But I would rather have a forum with a duplicate or two, than a forum where you cannot ask (a different question) because it is constantly closed off as a duplicate - sometimes in the time while you are writing an explanation of how it is different than the other one - by a mod who hasn't taken the time to understand the difference. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And while I agree that some amount of moderation is necessary, it has long ago crossed that limit. Mods should moderate in moderation, not to the extreme. Just the other day I asked a question regarding Windows and Android around 12h (midday), and spend until 23h that day discussing with a mod, whether it should be moved to a site that deals exclusively with Android questions (and where it would be closed/offtopic because of the Windows part), or closed on the site where it was asked for being offtopic, because of the Android part. That they - the mods - haven't understood the question became obvious only when we settled that discussion, and when they attempted to answer it themselves. This is just a trivial example. But it shows the current state of affairs.

ALittleLight 7y ago

I don't understand why people would volunteer to do work for a for profit entity. Especially one that will, apparently, fire you on a whim.

whatshisface 7y ago
You work as an unpaid content author for ycombinator.
- lawfulcactus 7y ago
  The ratio of value (or entertainment) provided to oneself versus value provided to another entity clearly differs significantly between a user of a site and an (unpaid) moderator of it.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  That's such twisted logic. Are you saying I'm doing unpaid work for my social group when we have a conversation? Jesus Christ not everything needs a dollar symbol attached even if it benefits a company.
  - blt 7y ago
    I think that was the point - that answering questions on SO is like having a conversation, and feels pleasant to some people, not like work.
    - mcv 7y ago
      At least it feels pleasant until a moderator or community manager starts interfering with it.
dwaltrip 7y ago
Have you ever answered a question on stackoverflow? Or upvoted something? That's the same thing, just to a lesser degree.

wpietri 7y ago

I think SO is poorly designed as a system. It certainly does encourage people to ask not-so-great questions. It doesn't handle them particularly well. And then expects people to clean up the mess for free. Those people of course feel stressed and overwhelmed, so are inclined to be rude, aggressive, and hasty in their decisions. Like ldigas, I long ago gave up on SO because of bad moderation experiences. I'm grudgingly willing to respect those mods as humans, but I certainly won't as moderators. They do a poor job, needlessly offending and discouraging contributors. They could quit any time. They could go on strike at any time. But no, they just kept on. I can definitely muster up some sympathy when people trapped in bad jobs are jerks. They are doing it to survive. But people who volunteer to be jerks? That's on them.

greggman2 7y ago
As someone who answers quite a few quesitons on SO I'd really like to see posts that were perceived as wrongfully closed to see if I agree (haha) and also to see how to fix the system. Of course I have no hope that S.O. will change anything. When they started their "be nice" campaign I suggested the "CLOSED: This is a duplicate" message should be changed to "CONGRATS: This appears to be a duplicates so you win! There is already an answer [here]!" In any case there are rules. One is "post the code you're having trouble with in the question, not a link offsite." The offsite link is useless if the code changes there or the offsite site goes offline. Some not insignificant percent of the time the question will just have a link to offsite code. I'll leave a comment saying effectively, "please add the code to the question" and then I vote to close, reason "missing code". The person never adds the code. Are they like you claiming S.O. is rude and unreasonable? Did they get their answer somewhere else and never come back to follow up? I have no idea. Actually the rule is even more specific. "Make a minimal repo and post it the question itself". Almost no one makes a remotely minimal repo which is fine, but in general lots of people fail at the "repo" part period. In order to help them we'd need to download code, setup dev environments, make up test data, etc...." What I do know is I often spend 30 to 240 minutes writing working examples for a single answer. I do that volunteerily for reasonable questions. When someone barfs out a "give me teh codez" question it can be very angering. They're basically asking for free labor. If that's not rude I don't know what is. Here's a recent "give me free labor" question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58206647/removing-the-background-on-this-webgl-animation https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58206647/removing-the-ba... Here's a recent "teach me an entire CS course" question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58165198/how-to-process-model-data-in-unit8array-in-webgl https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58165198/how-to-process-... And here's an answer I spent over 150 minutes on, trying to understand their code, trying to make a working sample, running into bugs, when I looked up 2.5 hours had passed. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58101753/drawing-a-torus-in-webgl https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58101753/drawing-a-torus... And another more typical 30 minutes on this one https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58111380/in-webgl-the-perspective-cameras-are-added-to-the-canvas-or-to-the-3d-model-its https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58111380/in-webgl-the-pe... note I'm not trying to brag. I hear your complaint often. I just don't run into it myself. Instead I see lots of volunteers answering questions and only voting to close the bad ones and they are bad ones.

alkonaut 7y ago

But my experience of the site (as an experienced long time user) is much more negatively affected by the “active moderation” than it is positively affected by it. I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question, than a race to ninja-downvote or close anything that is tangentially related to an existing question. The struggle to maintain quality in the content of the site appears to be destroying the quality of the experience of the site. In the end, if the experience is not good, nor will the content be if people stop visiting. I’m sure 99% of the negativity is coming from non-admins. The ninja downvotes and closevotes are coming from regular users. I still visit but I basically stopped asking and answering because it’s just not worth the stress of having to defend my question or answer. I have a 10k rep account and I’m an experienced dev with a decent grip of English as a second language but I still never felt once that my answer was welcome or my question was good enough for the site. I can only imagine what a novice must feel when using SO.

sytelus 7y ago
> I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question Sure, unless it really happens. I'd been burned by over-moderation as well but when I look at the process I think it's not arbitrary. There are controls and voting by more than one person. Remember, there is nothing a moderator gains by doing any of this.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  Yes, I think moderators aren't to blame for the poor quality of the experience (mostly). But I think this recipe is a disaster: users downvote and close-vote. Moderators look at votes and clean up accordingly. I think the problem is that the algorithms allow a small group of drive-by downvoters to destroy the experience. I'd be more than willing to accept a somewhat lower content quality for a more friendly experience.
- gregmac 7y ago
  Well, what is the downside to having duplicate* questions? I would guess the vast majority of traffic to any specific question page is search, followed by specific links people have posted (on or offsite), and relatively little will come from browsing through lists of questions (tags pages) or something like that. Search is going to surface the most up-voted and linked questions. Links people have posted are obviously very specific (no chance of confusion following the link). I would say the upsides are that you end up with more opportunities to have nuanced differences in question handled, give more people a chance to answer questions, naturally refresh questions/answers over the years (eg: "How do I minify CSS in <stack>?" will have very different answers in 2019 than it did in 2009). * I'm not necessarily suggesting exact duplicates, but allowing for questions to be re-asked after a year or two, and allowing any subtle difference in the situation, stack, etc.

ldigas 7y ago

So are the users (giving their time), both more and less experienced ones. But I would rather have a forum with a duplicate or two, than a forum where you cannot ask (a different question) because it is constantly closed off as a duplicate - sometimes in the time while you are writing an explanation of how it is different than the other one - by a mod who hasn't taken the time to understand the difference. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And while I agree that some amount of moderation is necessary, it has long ago crossed that limit. Mods should moderate in moderation, not to the extreme. Just the other day I asked a question regarding Windows and Android around 12h (midday), and spend until 23h that day discussing with a mod, whether it should be moved to a site that deals exclusively with Android questions (and where it would be closed/offtopic because of the Windows part), or closed on the site where it was asked for being offtopic, because of the Android part. That they - the mods - haven't understood the question became obvious only when we settled that discussion, and when they attempted to answer it themselves. This is just a trivial example. But it shows the current state of affairs.