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I stopped participating in Stack Overflow and Server Fault a number of years ago. Something happened on the way to its popularity, especially on Server Fault.

by gregd 7y ago

I stopped participating in Stack Overflow and Server Fault a number of years ago. Something happened on the way to its popularity, especially on Server Fault. Questions were being asked and a number of highly rated users were closing them down as "not related to SysAdmin". I don't remember the exact nature of the questions, but one that I do remember was related to mobile phones. I argued that the question was valid because a lot of Sys Admins also had to manage phones in their environment. There was also a general lack of compassion on the part of many, many users. I get that the sites strive to be full of "high quality" content, but there were a lot of legitimate questions asked, in broken English, that got closed immediately, or got closed because it seemed like it as academic exercise they were asking. IT has a reputation for lacking in people skills (deservedly so) and in SO's and SF's early days, that certainly stood out as a major turnoff of the sites. Admittedly, I have no idea if it's gotten any better.

tormeh 7y ago
I remember trying to figure out how to run YARN jobs in discrete cgroups with memory limits. It took us at least three working days to compile all the options and eventually discover that Cloudera didn't have new enough software versions, so we couldn't do it. I decided to write what I'd learned in Q&A format on SF (or maybe another SO site) so that in the future someone might benefit. Expensive knowledge, freely given. Promptly closed.
- redler 7y ago
  I'm interested in this (closed) question/answer. Do you have a link to it?
- robocat 7y ago
  I’ve done this a few times on SO: ask a well posed question, wait a few days, then answer it (perhaps with some fluff talk about the journey). If you do not follow the Q & A format correctly, your “question” should be closed. More regularly I have answered my own question because the Q was hard and got zero answers, then I eventually discover a solution so I wrote an answer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mysticmode 7y ago
> There was also a general lack of compassion on the part of many, many users. Well put. This is what I've experienced with most of the stackoverflow communities. It WAS definitely better previously. But I'm experiencing some trouble asking questions in certain tags where moderators are easily closing down or downvoting the question. Even I saw the person who answered my question replied in the thread that he/she doesn't understand why is it getting downvoted. People just don't stay on point. Neither do they refrain from their cocksure way of replying. What the author says about the scope of the question is not there with answers or comments.
- mark-r 7y ago
  Sometimes I'll leave a comment saying I don't understand why something is getting votes, but it's not because I want to commiserate with the question asker - it's because I hope to get the people who are piling on to stop for a second and ask themselves if they're doing the right thing. It probably doesn't help but I hate standing by and watching injustice being served.
waydowntogo 7y ago
I know your feeling. I was there too and I left cause mods were more interested about my english than about my answer - mostly correct. SO beccame one big egoistic mess.
EvanAnderson 7y ago
I was the top-rated user on Server Fault from 2009 to 2014. I participated less and less in 2013, and eventually stopped nearly "cold turkey". The tenor of the questions changed in the last couple years I participated. Early questions were more of the the "I'm having this strange thing-- here's what I've tried already"-type. These were a lot of fun to research and answer. They ended up sending me down rabbit-holes that helped in my work later on. (There were also "explain xxx concept" questions, which were tremendous fun to write for but there are only so many of those that can be asked.) I was never one to "vote to close" because something wasn't "sysadmin-related". That's likely because I've been asked by Customers to "sysadmin" virtually anything electronic. A number of my answers ended up migrated over to "Super User" as a result. The migration of questions to other sites didn't bother me, because that wasn't killing the question out-right. The "community" closing legitimate questions, however, made me sad. I did "vote to close" on questions more of the "Can I get some free labor" vs. "I'm having a problem, here's what I tried". The former seemed a lot more common towards the end of my participation. I never saw closing these questions as lacking in compassion. Often there were plenty of existing questions the posters could've used as reference. It was clearly easier for them to ask another question rather than research. I hold myself to am unreasonably high standard w/ respect to researching before asking anybody a question (at least, anybody who I'm not paying for it). I tried to relax that standard when it came to answering Server Fault questions, but there was still a lower limit. It was hard for me to be "compassionate" in the face of such apparent laziness and disrespect for the donated time of others, particularly when there were so many good resources right at the poster's fingertips.
- gregd 7y ago
  I'm in the top 2% on ServerFault to this day. I remember interacting with you on numerous questions. I'm GregD on the Stack sites. I totally understand the limits that had to be set on the low bar for quality content. In those early days though, it seemed to me that when people asked questions about managing mobile phones for instance, because it was only newly related to being a sys admin, they'd get closed as not related. Granted, in those early days, there weren't as many process "rules" in place to guide users to ask better questions and perhaps that's still so. However, a quick perusal of the site indicate this has gotten better and more friendly towards new people.
AznHisoka 7y ago
That is one of my major pet peeves with SO. Moderators assuming you are asking a question for a school assignment. Most of the time I have to make my question sound like as general as possible with fake variables, so as not to expose proprietary information. So they may look like school assignment to the ignorant.
- non-entity 7y ago
  My favorite has always been me working on problems that have no practical application, but I'm working on them to gain understanding of how or why something works the way it does, only to get several "don't do that" replies
  - mark-r 7y ago
    There are a ton of people asking questions who genuinely don't know why what they're asking to do is a bad idea. If you assume that they just weren't aware of the better way, you'll be right about 99% of the time. It's not a reflection on you, it's a reflection of the cluelessness of the general population. If you really just want to know about the internal workings of something, perhaps stating so up front would get some sympathy - but no guarantees.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > Moderators assuming you are asking a question for a school assignment It's pretty obvious when that's the case. Ironically, using SO for work assignments is OK, but that's probably because the questions are more interesting, esoteric, or have longer term value than a question about while loops.
  - AznHisoka 7y ago
    Yes, it's pretty obvious when that's the case. It's not obvious when that's not the case though.Too many false assumptions.
OldGuyInTheClub 7y ago
I think it is Kat Nagel's "Natural Lifecycle of Mailing Lists" writ large: http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html I've been a Usenet user since 1987 and am reasonably aware of how to write questions to technical groups. My last two or three Stack posts regarding "I want to do x, I've tried a-e" were summarily closed with no responses to appeals even though there may have been useful although not conclusive suggestions. The claim was that the questions asked for product recommendations, even when I wrote "Not looking for product recommendations" in the posts. That's when I deleted my account. "Lack of compassion" is very accurate. I think the gatekeepers have gotten carried away.

by gregd 7y ago

tormeh 7y ago

I remember trying to figure out how to run YARN jobs in discrete cgroups with memory limits. It took us at least three working days to compile all the options and eventually discover that Cloudera didn't have new enough software versions, so we couldn't do it. I decided to write what I'd learned in Q&A format on SF (or maybe another SO site) so that in the future someone might benefit. Expensive knowledge, freely given. Promptly closed.

redler 7y ago
I'm interested in this (closed) question/answer. Do you have a link to it?
robocat 7y ago
I’ve done this a few times on SO: ask a well posed question, wait a few days, then answer it (perhaps with some fluff talk about the journey). If you do not follow the Q & A format correctly, your “question” should be closed. More regularly I have answered my own question because the Q was hard and got zero answers, then I eventually discover a solution so I wrote an answer.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mysticmode 7y ago

> There was also a general lack of compassion on the part of many, many users. Well put. This is what I've experienced with most of the stackoverflow communities. It WAS definitely better previously. But I'm experiencing some trouble asking questions in certain tags where moderators are easily closing down or downvoting the question. Even I saw the person who answered my question replied in the thread that he/she doesn't understand why is it getting downvoted. People just don't stay on point. Neither do they refrain from their cocksure way of replying. What the author says about the scope of the question is not there with answers or comments.

mark-r 7y ago
Sometimes I'll leave a comment saying I don't understand why something is getting votes, but it's not because I want to commiserate with the question asker - it's because I hope to get the people who are piling on to stop for a second and ask themselves if they're doing the right thing. It probably doesn't help but I hate standing by and watching injustice being served.

waydowntogo 7y ago

I know your feeling. I was there too and I left cause mods were more interested about my english than about my answer - mostly correct. SO beccame one big egoistic mess.

EvanAnderson 7y ago

I was the top-rated user on Server Fault from 2009 to 2014. I participated less and less in 2013, and eventually stopped nearly "cold turkey". The tenor of the questions changed in the last couple years I participated. Early questions were more of the the "I'm having this strange thing-- here's what I've tried already"-type. These were a lot of fun to research and answer. They ended up sending me down rabbit-holes that helped in my work later on. (There were also "explain xxx concept" questions, which were tremendous fun to write for but there are only so many of those that can be asked.) I was never one to "vote to close" because something wasn't "sysadmin-related". That's likely because I've been asked by Customers to "sysadmin" virtually anything electronic. A number of my answers ended up migrated over to "Super User" as a result. The migration of questions to other sites didn't bother me, because that wasn't killing the question out-right. The "community" closing legitimate questions, however, made me sad. I did "vote to close" on questions more of the "Can I get some free labor" vs. "I'm having a problem, here's what I tried". The former seemed a lot more common towards the end of my participation. I never saw closing these questions as lacking in compassion. Often there were plenty of existing questions the posters could've used as reference. It was clearly easier for them to ask another question rather than research. I hold myself to am unreasonably high standard w/ respect to researching before asking anybody a question (at least, anybody who I'm not paying for it). I tried to relax that standard when it came to answering Server Fault questions, but there was still a lower limit. It was hard for me to be "compassionate" in the face of such apparent laziness and disrespect for the donated time of others, particularly when there were so many good resources right at the poster's fingertips.

gregd 7y ago
I'm in the top 2% on ServerFault to this day. I remember interacting with you on numerous questions. I'm GregD on the Stack sites. I totally understand the limits that had to be set on the low bar for quality content. In those early days though, it seemed to me that when people asked questions about managing mobile phones for instance, because it was only newly related to being a sys admin, they'd get closed as not related. Granted, in those early days, there weren't as many process "rules" in place to guide users to ask better questions and perhaps that's still so. However, a quick perusal of the site indicate this has gotten better and more friendly towards new people.

AznHisoka 7y ago

That is one of my major pet peeves with SO. Moderators assuming you are asking a question for a school assignment. Most of the time I have to make my question sound like as general as possible with fake variables, so as not to expose proprietary information. So they may look like school assignment to the ignorant.

non-entity 7y ago
My favorite has always been me working on problems that have no practical application, but I'm working on them to gain understanding of how or why something works the way it does, only to get several "don't do that" replies
- mark-r 7y ago
  There are a ton of people asking questions who genuinely don't know why what they're asking to do is a bad idea. If you assume that they just weren't aware of the better way, you'll be right about 99% of the time. It's not a reflection on you, it's a reflection of the cluelessness of the general population. If you really just want to know about the internal workings of something, perhaps stating so up front would get some sympathy - but no guarantees.
dehrmann 7y ago
> Moderators assuming you are asking a question for a school assignment It's pretty obvious when that's the case. Ironically, using SO for work assignments is OK, but that's probably because the questions are more interesting, esoteric, or have longer term value than a question about while loops.
- AznHisoka 7y ago
  Yes, it's pretty obvious when that's the case. It's not obvious when that's not the case though.Too many false assumptions.

OldGuyInTheClub 7y ago

I think it is Kat Nagel's "Natural Lifecycle of Mailing Lists" writ large: http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html I've been a Usenet user since 1987 and am reasonably aware of how to write questions to technical groups. My last two or three Stack posts regarding "I want to do x, I've tried a-e" were summarily closed with no responses to appeals even though there may have been useful although not conclusive suggestions. The claim was that the questions asked for product recommendations, even when I wrote "Not looking for product recommendations" in the posts. That's when I deleted my account. "Lack of compassion" is very accurate. I think the gatekeepers have gotten carried away.