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My most upvoted answer on SO is a quote from a man page and a one liner explaining how to use a flag on a tool. My favorite answer I made on SO is explaining h

My most upvoted answer on SO is a quote from a man page and a one liner explaining how to use a flag on a tool. My favorite answer I made on SO is explaining how to fix using two python libraries that aren't often used together that break in a confusing way when both are loaded, along with a discussion on how I solved it. That one is the only answer for the question, but not marked as the accepted answer despite a comment from the asker saying "thanks! that fixed it!". It's currently at -2 for reasons I can't quite fathom. At some point answering SO became a game of seeing if I could answer questions before the third close vote would kill discussion, and I realized I'm just there to prove some point to someone, not actually help people. It's a pity too. I see great value in a website where people can ask questions and get help. SO isn't that, it's some RPG now, with perverse incentives.

pauljurczak 6y ago
Agree. I still see a lot of value in SO and I participate from time to time. When I post there, I approach it like an interaction with an alcoholic prone to violent outbursts. I'm not expecting rational behavior. I'm not bothered any more by an occasional swift deletion of my question deemed "duplicate" or "off-topic" by a bunch of power hungry fundamentalists, who often didn't bother to read it carefully. Crazy uncle had a bad day. Let's try another time.
GlennS 6y ago
My most upvoted answer on SO is explaining how to rectangle select in Notepad++ (hold alt while dragging, works similarly in lots of editors and IDEs). It's trivial, but I like to think I made some people a tiny bit more productive for the rest of their working lives. The original question asked for a regex.
XCSme 6y ago
Same, I have many answers that I spent hours thinking for the best solution and implementing clever snippets, yet my highest voted answer is also a quote from the docs: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32811548/407650 https://stackoverflow.com/a/32811548/407650 "Q: Mongoose findOneAndUpdate doesn't return updated document". Initially the answer was simple, but the more traction it got I added some more details to it and kept it up to date over time.

pauljurczak 6y ago

Agree. I still see a lot of value in SO and I participate from time to time. When I post there, I approach it like an interaction with an alcoholic prone to violent outbursts. I'm not expecting rational behavior. I'm not bothered any more by an occasional swift deletion of my question deemed "duplicate" or "off-topic" by a bunch of power hungry fundamentalists, who often didn't bother to read it carefully. Crazy uncle had a bad day. Let's try another time.

GlennS 6y ago

My most upvoted answer on SO is explaining how to rectangle select in Notepad++ (hold alt while dragging, works similarly in lots of editors and IDEs). It's trivial, but I like to think I made some people a tiny bit more productive for the rest of their working lives. The original question asked for a regex.

XCSme 6y ago

Same, I have many answers that I spent hours thinking for the best solution and implementing clever snippets, yet my highest voted answer is also a quote from the docs: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32811548/407650 https://stackoverflow.com/a/32811548/407650 "Q: Mongoose findOneAndUpdate doesn't return updated document". Initially the answer was simple, but the more traction it got I added some more details to it and kept it up to date over time.