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Not to mention mods that come in and close your question without a word because it is "duplicate" or "unhelpful". Hopefully they got the mods under control but

Not to mention mods that come in and close your question without a word because it is "duplicate" or "unhelpful". Hopefully they got the mods under control but I think #4 should be "out of control mods". I think all 4 can be applied on almost all public forums and #4 is the most killer because of how impactful it is.

ceejayoz 4y ago
SO mods are uninvolved in the vast majority of closed questions; it’s a community vote mostly by non-mods. When something is closed as a dupe, another question has to be nominated as the answer, and this is shown in the close note. In my experience, these are typically quite accurate. I’ve seen a small percentage get reopened upon clarification, but people often whine about the dupe closings because their question is “how do I calculate 2+2?” and the linked answer is “how do I calculate 3+3”. Add in "I am getting an error" (without providing the actual error) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem posts, times a couple hundred thousand instances, and fairly strict community moderation becomes the only thing permitting a little signal in amongst the noise. SO's original intent was never to be a free-for-all Q&A with repeated similar questions; it was intended to also be a big reference of existing answered questions. (See https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/; "Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit." That "meets wikipedia" bit is key.)
- mjw1007 4y ago
  But that last reason makes the behaviours described in the question even worse. If I land on a page with the question "What does the blue button on the back of a Mark 3 defrobulator do?" at the top in large friendly letters, I am likely to be interested in that question, and I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?".
  - shagie 4y ago
    That's why comments and discussions are second class citizens and comments get collapsed. A well written answer doesn't have any of "the conversation that follows" in it. One of the challenges with users unfamiliar to the Q&A format is that they treat SO like a forum and try to force in doing replies and back and forth into questions and answers (collectively posts) when the site's design is actively and intentionally hostile to such.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?". Sometimes that conversation nets out as "you will kill someone if you press the blue button in certain circumstances", and that's an important clarifier to have access to.
    - mjw1007 4y ago
      Surely in cases like that you don't want to be having the "why?" conversation: the answerer should put that information in big bold letters at the top of their answer, whether or not it turns out that the person who happened to ask the question is in those certain circumstances.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Sure, but what about when it's a little less clear, and the stakes lower? "How do I increase the PHP memory limit? I'm getting a memory error when I foreach through lots of rows." is likely best answerable not by increasing the memory limit (and running into the same problem with a few more rows), but by chunking the rows to avoid the memory leak. I don't see a downside to "there's probably a better way of doing this you should at least consider, here's why" as an answer to a question. SO permits multiple answers; someone'll likely be along shortly and give the php.ini answer, but it's not the best approach.
        mjw1007 4y ago
        I think adding helpful information like that is great. But it's much better if it comes after answering the actual question, not instead of it, because (as you say), SO was intended to be a big reference of answered questions.
jrumbut 4y ago
I joined an old school forum during the pandemic and have really enjoyed it. You are able to "like" posts but if you want to express disapproval you have to jump into the discussion and air your arguments. The moderators are not perfectly consistent but they tend to err on the side of leaving a discussion open even if it's a bit of a train wreck. I've noticed that not being able to silently disagree/disapprove results in a community where people who genuinely and fundamentally disagree with each other end up interacting a lot and often become friends. I don't think any particular format is right, just adding my experience.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  I think the 'downvote' is neither useful nor healthy, indeed. Very often it is also implemented in conjunction with other UI features which make downvoted comments disappear, which ends up creating an echo-chamber and dissuades dissenting comments.
  - madamelic 4y ago
    Downvote is tricky. It is useful when used correctly but as can be seen on Reddit (and somewhat on HN but it typically balances out) it is used as "I disagree" / "I don't like this" vs being used more like a moderation tool "this has nothing to do with the conversation". I like how HN restricts the downvote for a while but I think with Reddit being so popular there should be an opt-in where you have to acknowledge the statement "The downvote is a moderation tool and isn't used to express disagreement" (I feel like that near exact verbage is somewhere like in the guidelines but I am meaning making it required acknowledgement).
    - dahart 4y ago
      I agree, but struggle with the assumption that downvote should be for moderation. That was (and partly is) my own assumption here on HN, but after being here for a while I started wondering why we don’t treat it symmetrically. Upvote is widely used for “I agree” and “I like this” and lots of other reasons, why shouldn’t downvote do the same thing? It also makes getting downvoted feel less painful to realize people do use it like this, for a wide variety of whimsical reasons (just like with upvote), it’s not always suggesting you’re wrong or breaking the rules. On HN before I had access to the downvote, getting one felt so strongly negative I decided I wouldn’t use it, and have stuck to that ever since. But in the mean time, I started to see real utility in it’s effects as a soft moderation tool. Downvoting someone who’s relevant but wrong or making invalid assumptions wouldn’t meet your strict moderation requirement, but downvotes do tend to sort the conversation correctly helping keep the good stuff at the top, and also being a signal (albeit imperfect) for readers. Using upvotes also helps with the sort, but doesn’t change the color of comments (maybe it should!). So I’ve questioned myself whether I should stick to not downvoting, and I only keep avoiding it out of some sort of ritual or pride or something, I dunno. It’s interesting because upvotes here are used far more frequently than downvotes, and downvotes are strictly limited, but we still have disproportionately strong reactions to downvotes. It’s also worth noticing how because downvotes change a comment’s color, it often prevents people from piling on; many comments stay at 1 or 2 downvotes and people leave it alone after that, even when many many people notice it’s wrong or breaking guidelines.
znpy 4y ago
Or mods that will reword your questions, making it sound way different than you intended it to be. I guess it’s a strategy to increase their counters/stats or something? Anyway, that really unacceptable.

ceejayoz 4y ago

SO mods are uninvolved in the vast majority of closed questions; it’s a community vote mostly by non-mods. When something is closed as a dupe, another question has to be nominated as the answer, and this is shown in the close note. In my experience, these are typically quite accurate. I’ve seen a small percentage get reopened upon clarification, but people often whine about the dupe closings because their question is “how do I calculate 2+2?” and the linked answer is “how do I calculate 3+3”. Add in "I am getting an error" (without providing the actual error) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem posts, times a couple hundred thousand instances, and fairly strict community moderation becomes the only thing permitting a little signal in amongst the noise. SO's original intent was never to be a free-for-all Q&A with repeated similar questions; it was intended to also be a big reference of existing answered questions. (See https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/; "Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit." That "meets wikipedia" bit is key.)

mjw1007 4y ago
But that last reason makes the behaviours described in the question even worse. If I land on a page with the question "What does the blue button on the back of a Mark 3 defrobulator do?" at the top in large friendly letters, I am likely to be interested in that question, and I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?".
- shagie 4y ago
  That's why comments and discussions are second class citizens and comments get collapsed. A well written answer doesn't have any of "the conversation that follows" in it. One of the challenges with users unfamiliar to the Q&A format is that they treat SO like a forum and try to force in doing replies and back and forth into questions and answers (collectively posts) when the site's design is actively and intentionally hostile to such.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > I'm unlikely to be interested in any of the conversation that follows on from "Why do you think you want to press the blue button?". Sometimes that conversation nets out as "you will kill someone if you press the blue button in certain circumstances", and that's an important clarifier to have access to.
  - mjw1007 4y ago
    Surely in cases like that you don't want to be having the "why?" conversation: the answerer should put that information in big bold letters at the top of their answer, whether or not it turns out that the person who happened to ask the question is in those certain circumstances.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Sure, but what about when it's a little less clear, and the stakes lower? "How do I increase the PHP memory limit? I'm getting a memory error when I foreach through lots of rows." is likely best answerable not by increasing the memory limit (and running into the same problem with a few more rows), but by chunking the rows to avoid the memory leak. I don't see a downside to "there's probably a better way of doing this you should at least consider, here's why" as an answer to a question. SO permits multiple answers; someone'll likely be along shortly and give the php.ini answer, but it's not the best approach.
      - mjw1007 4y ago
        I think adding helpful information like that is great. But it's much better if it comes after answering the actual question, not instead of it, because (as you say), SO was intended to be a big reference of answered questions.

jrumbut 4y ago

I joined an old school forum during the pandemic and have really enjoyed it. You are able to "like" posts but if you want to express disapproval you have to jump into the discussion and air your arguments. The moderators are not perfectly consistent but they tend to err on the side of leaving a discussion open even if it's a bit of a train wreck. I've noticed that not being able to silently disagree/disapprove results in a community where people who genuinely and fundamentally disagree with each other end up interacting a lot and often become friends. I don't think any particular format is right, just adding my experience.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
I think the 'downvote' is neither useful nor healthy, indeed. Very often it is also implemented in conjunction with other UI features which make downvoted comments disappear, which ends up creating an echo-chamber and dissuades dissenting comments.
- madamelic 4y ago
  Downvote is tricky. It is useful when used correctly but as can be seen on Reddit (and somewhat on HN but it typically balances out) it is used as "I disagree" / "I don't like this" vs being used more like a moderation tool "this has nothing to do with the conversation". I like how HN restricts the downvote for a while but I think with Reddit being so popular there should be an opt-in where you have to acknowledge the statement "The downvote is a moderation tool and isn't used to express disagreement" (I feel like that near exact verbage is somewhere like in the guidelines but I am meaning making it required acknowledgement).
  - dahart 4y ago
    I agree, but struggle with the assumption that downvote should be for moderation. That was (and partly is) my own assumption here on HN, but after being here for a while I started wondering why we don’t treat it symmetrically. Upvote is widely used for “I agree” and “I like this” and lots of other reasons, why shouldn’t downvote do the same thing? It also makes getting downvoted feel less painful to realize people do use it like this, for a wide variety of whimsical reasons (just like with upvote), it’s not always suggesting you’re wrong or breaking the rules. On HN before I had access to the downvote, getting one felt so strongly negative I decided I wouldn’t use it, and have stuck to that ever since. But in the mean time, I started to see real utility in it’s effects as a soft moderation tool. Downvoting someone who’s relevant but wrong or making invalid assumptions wouldn’t meet your strict moderation requirement, but downvotes do tend to sort the conversation correctly helping keep the good stuff at the top, and also being a signal (albeit imperfect) for readers. Using upvotes also helps with the sort, but doesn’t change the color of comments (maybe it should!). So I’ve questioned myself whether I should stick to not downvoting, and I only keep avoiding it out of some sort of ritual or pride or something, I dunno. It’s interesting because upvotes here are used far more frequently than downvotes, and downvotes are strictly limited, but we still have disproportionately strong reactions to downvotes. It’s also worth noticing how because downvotes change a comment’s color, it often prevents people from piling on; many comments stay at 1 or 2 downvotes and people leave it alone after that, even when many many people notice it’s wrong or breaking guidelines.

znpy 4y ago

Or mods that will reword your questions, making it sound way different than you intended it to be. I guess it’s a strategy to increase their counters/stats or something? Anyway, that really unacceptable.