4 ms·

"How to do A?" Comment: "You shouldn't do A, it's better to do B" Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". Yeah sure, in the beginning, there were many more basic

"How to do A?" Comment: "You shouldn't do A, it's better to do B" Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". Yeah sure, in the beginning, there were many more basic questions (how to increase number by 1, how to get division remainder, how to check if file exists,...), and if you're coding in Perl, you can still find all the answers... if you're working in python, you'll find answers for python2, some for python3, some specific to python2.6, etc... if you ask again, it'll be closed as a duplicate. I know it's anecdotal, but after a few bad experiences, people just decide not to use that specific site anymore.

grecy 3y ago
Echos my experience perfectly. It's actually impossible to ask a question and get an answer, also impossible to ask a clarifying question on an existing question/answer. That makes it much, much less useful than it otherwise could be.
morkalork 3y ago
Perl is a good example because it's stagnant. Googling Python or Java? If the result is up to date, it's a low quality content farm. If it isn't from a content farm, it's a page from 2008 that is no longer relevant at all!
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  > stagnant I would call that "stable" :) Or "good enough, that it doesn't need constant fixing" :)
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Fair enough!
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I'd suggest 'mature'.
      - morkalork 3y ago
        In its mid-thirties and settled down?
- labster 3y ago
  Perl has TIMTOWTDI as a core principle so most of its users are not going to complain about doing things the “wrong” way.
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    "There Is More Than One Way To Do It"?
jrumbut 3y ago
This is just another anecdote. But here goes. My experience was that there was a long period where your complaint was quite true. I believe that they have heard this complaint enough and have lightened up a little. There are still more and stricter rules than most sites, but the obsession with pruning duplicates seems to have cooled.
- franciscop 3y ago
  And my opinion as someone with high reputation is that letting in silly questions has ruined the site and made me stop using it. SO is not a support forum, it's not your teacher, it's a place for interesting knowledge sharing and if the knowledge is drowned in noise, well it's just noise then.
  - Const-me 3y ago
    Moderation has ruined the site for me. Stupid people don't realize they are stupid. When they can't understand a question they conclude there's something wrong with the question, not with them. And since they believe the question is silly, they happily close-vote the question. This way they close questions which require specialized knowledge, experience, or deep understanding of the subject. Precisely the kind of questions I consider interesting to answer. Sometimes I managed to undelete such questions, but SO made it easy to delete and hard to undelete. Examples of the questions where I succeeded: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57064879/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57064879/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57323981/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57323981/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/65025858/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/65025858/revisions In many more cases I haven't bothered. Sometimes, moderators killed questions so fast that I discovered that while trying to post my answer.
    - franciscop 3y ago
      The first question for example is what would be a low-quality question in SO, and could easily have been a homework assignment. It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question and expect other people to answer it fully, without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck, etc.
38 3y ago
> Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". ouch. as a former user of 10 years, I felt that. so true.
dhosek 3y ago
I found the people who took on Rust questions to be actively hostile on SO when I started learning Rust. The Reddit community was much better, so I’ve tended to hang out there for Rust q&a. Most of my time in the Stack Overflow world these days is mostly in the more specialized StackExchange sites. tex.se tends to be pretty good, as does latin.se japanese.se seems dedicated to stomping out anything that is remotely a translation question.
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  Reminds me of being on IRC in 97 asking questions about Assembly. When someone did finally respond it was "Did you read the manual yet"? It's ironic that SO became what it was replacing.
  - nurettin 3y ago
    I was on IRC circa 2002 asking C++ questions. Next year I was the one answering. Weirdly best time of my life.
  - andirk 3y ago
    But did you even _try_ to read the manual? Did you lift a finger to figure out what the issue is? Some of the best answers are ones that directly quote the manual and then add clarity since manual language can be terse.
    - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
      Yes I showed him the exact page that talked about my issue and he never responded. Still a silly response. He could have answered it in 30 seconds and saved me 10 hours. I think ChatGPT is amazing foe this because you will rarely have to deal with anyone who has this type of attitude when you need help in the future
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Bravo. This is the reason I deleted my account. My last post even specified "I am not asking about B,C, or D."
stemlord 3y ago
Honestly still much better than asking a forum. The hostility from forum regulars always seems more intense--less masked as a "terse down to brass tacks" attitude and more-so blatant laziness, misplaced frustration, etc. Also, forum posters tend to waste much more time as every other post is likely to be a joke or a tangent idea, as if it were casual dialogue in a chatroom. The same mechanisms that make SO kind of brutal have also helped revolutionize asynchronous online Q&A.
newshorts 3y ago
I was equating this to the rise of chatgpt

grecy 3y ago

Echos my experience perfectly. It's actually impossible to ask a question and get an answer, also impossible to ask a clarifying question on an existing question/answer. That makes it much, much less useful than it otherwise could be.

morkalork 3y ago

Perl is a good example because it's stagnant. Googling Python or Java? If the result is up to date, it's a low quality content farm. If it isn't from a content farm, it's a page from 2008 that is no longer relevant at all!

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
> stagnant I would call that "stable" :) Or "good enough, that it doesn't need constant fixing" :)
- morkalork 3y ago
  Fair enough!
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'd suggest 'mature'.
    - morkalork 3y ago
      In its mid-thirties and settled down?
labster 3y ago
Perl has TIMTOWTDI as a core principle so most of its users are not going to complain about doing things the “wrong” way.
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  "There Is More Than One Way To Do It"?

jrumbut 3y ago

This is just another anecdote. But here goes. My experience was that there was a long period where your complaint was quite true. I believe that they have heard this complaint enough and have lightened up a little. There are still more and stricter rules than most sites, but the obsession with pruning duplicates seems to have cooled.

franciscop 3y ago
And my opinion as someone with high reputation is that letting in silly questions has ruined the site and made me stop using it. SO is not a support forum, it's not your teacher, it's a place for interesting knowledge sharing and if the knowledge is drowned in noise, well it's just noise then.
- Const-me 3y ago
  Moderation has ruined the site for me. Stupid people don't realize they are stupid. When they can't understand a question they conclude there's something wrong with the question, not with them. And since they believe the question is silly, they happily close-vote the question. This way they close questions which require specialized knowledge, experience, or deep understanding of the subject. Precisely the kind of questions I consider interesting to answer. Sometimes I managed to undelete such questions, but SO made it easy to delete and hard to undelete. Examples of the questions where I succeeded: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57064879/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57064879/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57323981/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/57323981/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/65025858/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/65025858/revisions In many more cases I haven't bothered. Sometimes, moderators killed questions so fast that I discovered that while trying to post my answer.
  - franciscop 3y ago
    The first question for example is what would be a low-quality question in SO, and could easily have been a homework assignment. It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question and expect other people to answer it fully, without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck, etc.

38 3y ago

> Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". ouch. as a former user of 10 years, I felt that. so true.

dhosek 3y ago

I found the people who took on Rust questions to be actively hostile on SO when I started learning Rust. The Reddit community was much better, so I’ve tended to hang out there for Rust q&a. Most of my time in the Stack Overflow world these days is mostly in the more specialized StackExchange sites. tex.se tends to be pretty good, as does latin.se japanese.se seems dedicated to stomping out anything that is remotely a translation question.

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
Reminds me of being on IRC in 97 asking questions about Assembly. When someone did finally respond it was "Did you read the manual yet"? It's ironic that SO became what it was replacing.
- nurettin 3y ago
  I was on IRC circa 2002 asking C++ questions. Next year I was the one answering. Weirdly best time of my life.
- andirk 3y ago
  But did you even _try_ to read the manual? Did you lift a finger to figure out what the issue is? Some of the best answers are ones that directly quote the manual and then add clarity since manual language can be terse.
  - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    Yes I showed him the exact page that talked about my issue and he never responded. Still a silly response. He could have answered it in 30 seconds and saved me 10 hours. I think ChatGPT is amazing foe this because you will rarely have to deal with anyone who has this type of attitude when you need help in the future

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

Bravo. This is the reason I deleted my account. My last post even specified "I am not asking about B,C, or D."

stemlord 3y ago

Honestly still much better than asking a forum. The hostility from forum regulars always seems more intense--less masked as a "terse down to brass tacks" attitude and more-so blatant laziness, misplaced frustration, etc. Also, forum posters tend to waste much more time as every other post is likely to be a joke or a tangent idea, as if it were casual dialogue in a chatroom. The same mechanisms that make SO kind of brutal have also helped revolutionize asynchronous online Q&A.

newshorts 3y ago

I was equating this to the rise of chatgpt