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> "Yes, if you want to keep your points, you should maintain your answer as long as it exists" This is just one more example of the absolutely toxic culture wi

> "Yes, if you want to keep your points, you should maintain your answer as long as it exists" This is just one more example of the absolutely toxic culture within Stack Overflow itself. Everyone uses it, but we all get to it from Google. Nobody I know bothers answering questions, and I don't think more than a half-dozen people I know have even submitted questions. If you do, the gatekeepers are going to jump down your throat.

secondcoming 6y ago
Is it really 'absolutely toxic' or perhaps just 'unfortunate', or 'a flaw'?
NateEag 6y ago
I've answered a few questions casually on StackOverflow, when I ran into something that was unanswered and I knew what the answer was, but I've never invested seriously in it, as you can see from my profile: https://stackoverflow.com/users/1128957/nateeag https://stackoverflow.com/users/1128957/nateeag I've also never had a gatekeeper jump down my throat. I think you are overstating how bad SO's culture is. I have definitely seen problems there, but they aren't the whole of the story. (Though SO itself has entirely lost my goodwill due to the Monica Cellio incident: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-community-managers-stack-exchange-is-not-interested-in-cooperating-with/342950#342950 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-commu... )
root_axis 6y ago
How is it toxic? It seems pretty logical to me. If the answer is wrong in its current form then the answer's score should decay relative to others. It doesn't matter if individual users lose upvote points, a user's points are meaningless in aggregate, but on an individual answer they function as a signal for proximity to correctness. If the points are important to you then the burden should be on you to maintain the correctness, we should not enshrine wrong answers in perpetuity in order to appease individual upvote counts.

secondcoming 6y ago

Is it really 'absolutely toxic' or perhaps just 'unfortunate', or 'a flaw'?

NateEag 6y ago

I've answered a few questions casually on StackOverflow, when I ran into something that was unanswered and I knew what the answer was, but I've never invested seriously in it, as you can see from my profile: https://stackoverflow.com/users/1128957/nateeag https://stackoverflow.com/users/1128957/nateeag I've also never had a gatekeeper jump down my throat. I think you are overstating how bad SO's culture is. I have definitely seen problems there, but they aren't the whole of the story. (Though SO itself has entirely lost my goodwill due to the Monica Cellio incident: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-community-managers-stack-exchange-is-not-interested-in-cooperating-with/342950#342950 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-commu... )

root_axis 6y ago

How is it toxic? It seems pretty logical to me. If the answer is wrong in its current form then the answer's score should decay relative to others. It doesn't matter if individual users lose upvote points, a user's points are meaningless in aggregate, but on an individual answer they function as a signal for proximity to correctness. If the points are important to you then the burden should be on you to maintain the correctness, we should not enshrine wrong answers in perpetuity in order to appease individual upvote counts.