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(2009), by Jeff Atwood. I would have been very surprised to hear today's Stack Overflow staff talking about the value of downvoting. Atwood's experience with d

(2009), by Jeff Atwood. I would have been very surprised to hear today's Stack Overflow staff talking about the value of downvoting. Atwood's experience with downvoting on Hacker News is definitely a bit dated as well: > (update: Apparently it is possible to downvote comments, which I never realized. It is buried in the faq) > (I apologize for my misunderstanding, but there’s no visible UI for downvoting, and I can’t recall ever seeing a single negative voted comment in all the times I’ve visited Hacker News! Also, I put these comments in parens to make them extra-LISPy so Paul Graham would see my corrections.)

seba_dos1 6y ago
> there’s no visible UI for downvoting For you. I see two arrows - one for upvoting and one for downvoting - next to every comment in this thread. [edit] Haha, somehow missed that this was a quote from the article, sorry :D
- zests 6y ago
  Except this one :)
Macha 6y ago
You might be surprised: https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve... There's been a couple of blog posts from the SE staff trying to move the needle on how close/downvote happy the community is.
- NobodyNada 6y ago
  Sorry for the confusion, I was referencing how it would be unusual to hear SE staff today talking about why downvoting is an important quality-control feature and how it can be made more useful and more helpful for new users, rather than just condemning downvotes as hostile. In fact, the blog post you linked was at the forefront of my mind as an example of SE staff not "getting it." Stack Overflow's moderation system has not scaled very well; it's unhelpful for new users, and frustrating for power users and volunteer moderators. The company has largely refused to address these issues since about ~2015, when they promised a series of grandiose moderation overhauls and...never implemented any of it. Since then, their usual strategy for dealing with moderation failures is to throw the community under the bus. The article you linked caused a lot of drama within the community, because it accused volunteers of "judging users for not knowing things" for performing basic moderation tasks like marking questions as duplicates -- a feature that's supposed to help users by pointing them to an authoritative answer. The duplicate feature has a lot of warts; it does not adequately explain how users can nominate their question for reopening by clarifying why it's not a duplicate, and even if it was discoverable the reopen process is horribly broken anyway. But instead of addressing the obvious issues with the moderation system, they just wrote a blog post about how hostile their volunteers are. A longtime SE power user explained it better than I could: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/258777 https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/258777 > For years, you have been working on cleaning up an oil drip out of a beautiful lake with a spoon, but the small spoon you have is actually a fork. You've spent years asking for at least a spoon to work with, but have gotten nothing. For some reason, though, you keep at it with the fork, for different reasons - some are the people next to you also working with forks, some are the occasional diamond that you can clean and set and make nice - all for free and out of your own time. > Then, one day [...] the lake starts shouting at you about how the fork you're using is being unfair to the oil - that you're being too unwelcoming to the oil and not treating it properly, completely ignoring the fact that you've been using a fork and have been asking for better tools for years. The lake slaps you anyway. In fairness: within the last year or two they finally seem to have hired some staff members who finally get it and are taking steps towards actually fixing the site's moderation problems. However, I haven't been on the site for a while and so I couldn't tell you whether they are actually having a meaningful impact or just making more empty promises.
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    > "In fairness: within the last year or two they finally seem to have hired some staff members who finally get it and are taking steps towards actually fixing the site's moderation problems." That is such a time frame to choose; right in the middle of it, 1 year 6 months ago, the Monica incident happened[1]. Do you mean before that or after that? In summary, StackOverflow said they were discussing a code of conduct that would mandate volunteer moderators use someone's preferred pronouns. Monica, a widely respected moderator, asked if she could continue using gender-neutral language under the proposed code of conduct. They kicked her out alledging (incorrectly) that this was a statement of intent to break the rules they hadn't brought in yet. Then 50+ other moderators stood down in protest[2]. Then the company doubled down on their decision and their following silences. This unravelled into a lot of people voicing their discontent with the way the StackExchange company interacts with the volunteer mods and the community, and builds on the back of the ~2019 one-sided changes to try and make the community more welcoming to new users by being harder on the people who are already the community, and how badly that went down, and company employee leaks saying the company is not engaging with the community, and an apparent increase in pushing for money to return to investors rather than any other mission. Right about the same time, they retrospectively relicensed all questions, answers and comments ever submitted, possibly illegally, and then refused for a long time to comment on it.[3] [1] https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-... and a related post covering other things the company has done fairly badly ~1 year ago - https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342950/ https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342950/ [2] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-... [3] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchange-and-stack-overflow-have-moved-to-cc-by-sa-4-0 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...
    - NobodyNada 6y ago
      Yeah, I’m referring to after all of that. 2020 felt so much longer than a year, so my time interval was way off. I was referencing stuff like the closure changes [1], review queue redesign [2], and the updates to the “ask” page [3]. Again, I haven’t been on SO much lately so I don’t now how well that’s been working out or how receptive they’ve been to Meta feedback, but it’s reassuring to see they’re finally focusing on parts of the site that have needed it desperately for so many years. Additionally, they seem to be doing better about listening to Meta (at least compared to the “0.015%” reign of terror). [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/394871/upcoming-feature-new-question-close-experience https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/394871/upcoming-fea... [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/346901/improving-the-review-queues-project-overview https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/346901/improving-th... [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344513/the-new-ask-page-is-now-live-on-the-network https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344513/the-new-ask-...

seba_dos1 6y ago

> there’s no visible UI for downvoting For you. I see two arrows - one for upvoting and one for downvoting - next to every comment in this thread. [edit] Haha, somehow missed that this was a quote from the article, sorry :D

zests 6y ago
Except this one :)

Macha 6y ago

You might be surprised: https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve... There's been a couple of blog posts from the SE staff trying to move the needle on how close/downvote happy the community is.

NobodyNada 6y ago
Sorry for the confusion, I was referencing how it would be unusual to hear SE staff today talking about why downvoting is an important quality-control feature and how it can be made more useful and more helpful for new users, rather than just condemning downvotes as hostile. In fact, the blog post you linked was at the forefront of my mind as an example of SE staff not "getting it." Stack Overflow's moderation system has not scaled very well; it's unhelpful for new users, and frustrating for power users and volunteer moderators. The company has largely refused to address these issues since about ~2015, when they promised a series of grandiose moderation overhauls and...never implemented any of it. Since then, their usual strategy for dealing with moderation failures is to throw the community under the bus. The article you linked caused a lot of drama within the community, because it accused volunteers of "judging users for not knowing things" for performing basic moderation tasks like marking questions as duplicates -- a feature that's supposed to help users by pointing them to an authoritative answer. The duplicate feature has a lot of warts; it does not adequately explain how users can nominate their question for reopening by clarifying why it's not a duplicate, and even if it was discoverable the reopen process is horribly broken anyway. But instead of addressing the obvious issues with the moderation system, they just wrote a blog post about how hostile their volunteers are. A longtime SE power user explained it better than I could: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/258777 https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/258777 > For years, you have been working on cleaning up an oil drip out of a beautiful lake with a spoon, but the small spoon you have is actually a fork. You've spent years asking for at least a spoon to work with, but have gotten nothing. For some reason, though, you keep at it with the fork, for different reasons - some are the people next to you also working with forks, some are the occasional diamond that you can clean and set and make nice - all for free and out of your own time. > Then, one day [...] the lake starts shouting at you about how the fork you're using is being unfair to the oil - that you're being too unwelcoming to the oil and not treating it properly, completely ignoring the fact that you've been using a fork and have been asking for better tools for years. The lake slaps you anyway. In fairness: within the last year or two they finally seem to have hired some staff members who finally get it and are taking steps towards actually fixing the site's moderation problems. However, I haven't been on the site for a while and so I couldn't tell you whether they are actually having a meaningful impact or just making more empty promises.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "In fairness: within the last year or two they finally seem to have hired some staff members who finally get it and are taking steps towards actually fixing the site's moderation problems." That is such a time frame to choose; right in the middle of it, 1 year 6 months ago, the Monica incident happened[1]. Do you mean before that or after that? In summary, StackOverflow said they were discussing a code of conduct that would mandate volunteer moderators use someone's preferred pronouns. Monica, a widely respected moderator, asked if she could continue using gender-neutral language under the proposed code of conduct. They kicked her out alledging (incorrectly) that this was a statement of intent to break the rules they hadn't brought in yet. Then 50+ other moderators stood down in protest[2]. Then the company doubled down on their decision and their following silences. This unravelled into a lot of people voicing their discontent with the way the StackExchange company interacts with the volunteer mods and the community, and builds on the back of the ~2019 one-sided changes to try and make the community more welcoming to new users by being harder on the people who are already the community, and how badly that went down, and company employee leaks saying the company is not engaging with the community, and an apparent increase in pushing for money to return to investors rather than any other mission. Right about the same time, they retrospectively relicensed all questions, answers and comments ever submitted, possibly illegally, and then refused for a long time to comment on it.[3] [1] https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-... and a related post covering other things the company has done fairly badly ~1 year ago - https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342950/ https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342950/ [2] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-... [3] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchange-and-stack-overflow-have-moved-to-cc-by-sa-4-0 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...
  - NobodyNada 6y ago
    Yeah, I’m referring to after all of that. 2020 felt so much longer than a year, so my time interval was way off. I was referencing stuff like the closure changes [1], review queue redesign [2], and the updates to the “ask” page [3]. Again, I haven’t been on SO much lately so I don’t now how well that’s been working out or how receptive they’ve been to Meta feedback, but it’s reassuring to see they’re finally focusing on parts of the site that have needed it desperately for so many years. Additionally, they seem to be doing better about listening to Meta (at least compared to the “0.015%” reign of terror). [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/394871/upcoming-feature-new-question-close-experience https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/394871/upcoming-fea... [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/346901/improving-the-review-queues-project-overview https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/346901/improving-th... [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344513/the-new-ask-page-is-now-live-on-the-network https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344513/the-new-ask-...