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SO has always been hostile to questioners by design. It's a natural consequence of requiring "high-quality" questions. Since most questions will not be "high-

SO has always been hostile to questioners by design. It's a natural consequence of requiring "high-quality" questions. Since most questions will not be "high-quality" (for any reasonable definition of "high-quality"), most new participants' experience will be of asking a question and being told "that's a bad question" either explicitly (downvotes) or implicitly (editing their question to "improve" it). It gets worse as time goes on because of the "no duplicates" policy; the more questions that are in the system, the harder it is to come up with a question that isn't marked (correctly or incorrectly) as a dupe. Banning all politeness words (hello/goodbye/please/thank you/you're welcome) from questions/answers because they're "noise" is just the cherry on top that makes people who aren't already immersed in SO culture think that everybody there is rude/mean, no matter how many times they put "be nice" in the CoC. Not saying these are _bad_ policies per se - SO has a stated goal of being a "curated resource of high quality questions and answers", and they need to separate the wheat from the chaff somehow, but the policies _will_ be perceived as hostile by most new users. Giving the questioners an extra +5 fake internet points will not fix any of that.

Bnshsysjab 7y ago
You just summarised how I feel whenever I ask a stackoverflow question. I wasn’t aware that politeness was banned but I avoid asking questions there even if it means joining free node channels and waiting hours in hopes that someone answers my question. S/O has some very high quality responses but I actively avoid asking questions there because it feels over policed.
a3n 7y ago
> It gets worse as time goes on because of the "no duplicates" policy; the more questions that are in the system, the harder it is to come up with a question that isn't marked (correctly or incorrectly) as a dupe. I'm curious why they don't have a no duplicate answers policy.
- greggman2 7y ago
  they do.
- wyattpeak 7y ago
  I can't speak to their reasoning, but I value having multiple similar answers. They often differ slightly in their assumptions or implementation, which can help in grokking the core concept of the answer and not getting distracted by implementation details, especially for languages and domains I'm not very familiar with.
joe_the_user 7y ago
Since most questions will not be "high-quality" (for any reasonable definition of "high-quality"), most new participants' experience will be of asking a question and being told "that's a bad question" either explicitly (downvotes) or implicitly (editing their question to "improve" it). This describes the problem with SO remarkably well - how it constantly trends towards being even less nice than it was two months beore. I've gotten SO points and even been congratulated over some questions and some answer. But I'm still angry, seven years on, over having one particular question being deleted - it was my question and it was a question I wanted an answer to it.

Bnshsysjab 7y ago

You just summarised how I feel whenever I ask a stackoverflow question. I wasn’t aware that politeness was banned but I avoid asking questions there even if it means joining free node channels and waiting hours in hopes that someone answers my question. S/O has some very high quality responses but I actively avoid asking questions there because it feels over policed.

a3n 7y ago

> It gets worse as time goes on because of the "no duplicates" policy; the more questions that are in the system, the harder it is to come up with a question that isn't marked (correctly or incorrectly) as a dupe. I'm curious why they don't have a no duplicate answers policy.

greggman2 7y ago
they do.
wyattpeak 7y ago
I can't speak to their reasoning, but I value having multiple similar answers. They often differ slightly in their assumptions or implementation, which can help in grokking the core concept of the answer and not getting distracted by implementation details, especially for languages and domains I'm not very familiar with.

joe_the_user 7y ago

Since most questions will not be "high-quality" (for any reasonable definition of "high-quality"), most new participants' experience will be of asking a question and being told "that's a bad question" either explicitly (downvotes) or implicitly (editing their question to "improve" it). This describes the problem with SO remarkably well - how it constantly trends towards being even less nice than it was two months beore. I've gotten SO points and even been congratulated over some questions and some answer. But I'm still angry, seven years on, over having one particular question being deleted - it was my question and it was a question I wanted an answer to it.