5 ms·

I scrolled up the page and saw the following banner, which (in hindsight) couldn't be more wrong. > This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it i

by Rygian 3y ago

I scrolled up the page and saw the following banner, which (in hindsight) couldn't be more wrong. > This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, visit the help center.

enriquto 3y ago
It's a longtime trope of these "stack" sites: the best questions with the best answers are those that are marked as offtopic, closed, deleted, downvoted or otherwise rejected. It's a marker of good quality at this point.
- tux3 3y ago
  Marker of good quality would be too far (and biased), as the every growing mass of genuinely hard to salvage closed question certainly outnumbers the interesting ones But it sure looks to be bimodal. Marker of the really bad, and the so-good-it's-closed
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    I would guess that this bimodality correlates with one in the personalities of those who become moderators - on the one hand, those who are willing to put a lot of effort into keeping the community relevant, and on the other, those who abhor any perceived irregularity. On occasion, when I get invitations to participate in moderator elections, I look to see if I recognize any of the candidates. Once or twice, I have looked through the candidates' resumes, and one thing that struck me was that some of them did a lot more down-voting than up-voting. Make of that what you will.
- jimhefferon 3y ago
  I also have found that often the answers that make me reflect the most on SO are treated this way by the mods. Does this effect have a name?
  - enriquto 3y ago
    But even the mods acknowledge this! Here you have it, straight from the mouth of the beast: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ They explain why they deleted the most appreciated question ever in Stack Overflow, and how they magnanimously let you look at a few scraps of the answers (but not to all, these are DELETED!), and why we can't, after all, have nice things. > Does this effect have a name? If I wasn't against ad-hominems, and to avoid giving undue credit, I'd propose to call this effect "Jeff Atwooding". As in, the cool answer by Thurston on contributing to mathematics has been jeff atwooded recently.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      But it should be noted that the question in the blog post—share a bit of programming jargon you’ve made up—is not a good question for a Q/A site. It is a “fun to play with” social media engagement question, more suited for Reddit. The question on the original post seems more grey-area. It isn’t really a math question that can be answered in a math-y way, but it is the sort of thing that some folks might benefit from seeing anyway…
  - crispyambulance 3y ago
    > Does this effect have a name? That's a good question. It should have a name. We've seen it around for a long time on stackoverflow and all stackexchange-sites. I bet there's a very long German word for this kind of behavior? It's a combination of extreme persnicketiness mixed with smug arrogance and some amount of glee in punching-down.
    - mejutoco 3y ago
      Institutional schadenfreude?
    - Tainnor 3y ago
      Blockwarttum
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
- bee_rider 3y ago
  What’s the alternative? We already have quora and Reddit for less moderated questions. Stack Overflow remain the site that, when you are looking for an actual answer to a technical question, is worth clicking on at least.
  - _gabe_ 3y ago
    > Stack Overflow remain the site that, when you are looking for an actual answer to a technical question, is worth clicking on at least. These days I'm skipping Stack Overflow entirely and jumping straight to the docs, unless it's a common question that I can never remember properly (like some esoteric git-fu command). The answers on SO are outdated or crappy. When you can't ask questions about an evolving framework without it getting marked as duplicate, then the answers quickly lose all value. And the people that were answering because they wanted to give back (not because they want to farm karma) are leaving.
gwbas1c 3y ago
At least in the "default" stack overflow for software developers; it's supposed to be a question and answer format about narrowly-focused programming topics. More philosophical questions are technically off-topic. But, in the case of this post, it's pretty easy to see why Math Overflow would consider it in their best interest to make an exception! (And perhaps have a slightly different banner.) It's easy to forget the amount of moderation that a good internet message board needs. (Just take a look at Dang's hard work on Hacker News.) Unfortunately, there are many people who just don't have the maturity, or discipline, to ask good, topical, questions. Banners like that are a good compromise, IMO, between the need to focus on a particular topic, and allow flexibility for discussions that straddle the line between on and off topic. I think putting up a banner, but still letting the discussion continue, is a good compromise.

by Rygian 3y ago

enriquto 3y ago

It's a longtime trope of these "stack" sites: the best questions with the best answers are those that are marked as offtopic, closed, deleted, downvoted or otherwise rejected. It's a marker of good quality at this point.

tux3 3y ago
Marker of good quality would be too far (and biased), as the every growing mass of genuinely hard to salvage closed question certainly outnumbers the interesting ones But it sure looks to be bimodal. Marker of the really bad, and the so-good-it's-closed
- mannykannot 3y ago
  I would guess that this bimodality correlates with one in the personalities of those who become moderators - on the one hand, those who are willing to put a lot of effort into keeping the community relevant, and on the other, those who abhor any perceived irregularity. On occasion, when I get invitations to participate in moderator elections, I look to see if I recognize any of the candidates. Once or twice, I have looked through the candidates' resumes, and one thing that struck me was that some of them did a lot more down-voting than up-voting. Make of that what you will.
jimhefferon 3y ago
I also have found that often the answers that make me reflect the most on SO are treated this way by the mods. Does this effect have a name?
- enriquto 3y ago
  But even the mods acknowledge this! Here you have it, straight from the mouth of the beast: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ They explain why they deleted the most appreciated question ever in Stack Overflow, and how they magnanimously let you look at a few scraps of the answers (but not to all, these are DELETED!), and why we can't, after all, have nice things. > Does this effect have a name? If I wasn't against ad-hominems, and to avoid giving undue credit, I'd propose to call this effect "Jeff Atwooding". As in, the cool answer by Thurston on contributing to mathematics has been jeff atwooded recently.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    But it should be noted that the question in the blog post—share a bit of programming jargon you’ve made up—is not a good question for a Q/A site. It is a “fun to play with” social media engagement question, more suited for Reddit. The question on the original post seems more grey-area. It isn’t really a math question that can be answered in a math-y way, but it is the sort of thing that some folks might benefit from seeing anyway…
- crispyambulance 3y ago
  > Does this effect have a name? That's a good question. It should have a name. We've seen it around for a long time on stackoverflow and all stackexchange-sites. I bet there's a very long German word for this kind of behavior? It's a combination of extreme persnicketiness mixed with smug arrogance and some amount of glee in punching-down.
  - mejutoco 3y ago
    Institutional schadenfreude?
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    Blockwarttum
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
bee_rider 3y ago
What’s the alternative? We already have quora and Reddit for less moderated questions. Stack Overflow remain the site that, when you are looking for an actual answer to a technical question, is worth clicking on at least.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  > Stack Overflow remain the site that, when you are looking for an actual answer to a technical question, is worth clicking on at least. These days I'm skipping Stack Overflow entirely and jumping straight to the docs, unless it's a common question that I can never remember properly (like some esoteric git-fu command). The answers on SO are outdated or crappy. When you can't ask questions about an evolving framework without it getting marked as duplicate, then the answers quickly lose all value. And the people that were answering because they wanted to give back (not because they want to farm karma) are leaving.

gwbas1c 3y ago

At least in the "default" stack overflow for software developers; it's supposed to be a question and answer format about narrowly-focused programming topics. More philosophical questions are technically off-topic. But, in the case of this post, it's pretty easy to see why Math Overflow would consider it in their best interest to make an exception! (And perhaps have a slightly different banner.) It's easy to forget the amount of moderation that a good internet message board needs. (Just take a look at Dang's hard work on Hacker News.) Unfortunately, there are many people who just don't have the maturity, or discipline, to ask good, topical, questions. Banners like that are a good compromise, IMO, between the need to focus on a particular topic, and allow flexibility for discussions that straddle the line between on and off topic. I think putting up a banner, but still letting the discussion continue, is a good compromise.