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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 hea

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.
    - Const-me 3y ago
      > It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question You probably assumed I asked that question? If so, the assumption was incorrect, I answered it. > without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck I don't think any of that is possible to do. The question, and my answer, are too simple to decompose into smaller parts. Not enough runway to start and get stuck. > expect other people to answer it fully My expectation was rather different. I wrote my answer on Jul 16, 2019, and expected it to stay there. Instead, on the next day some people have decided the question was bad, and closed it. Then on the next month, some other people have deleted it, along with my answer. To close it, 5 people clicked once/each. To undelete it, I spent quite a few hours. Sadly, that's not a rare exception: moderation on SO is horrible.
      - franciscop 3y ago
        Ah sorry, if you answered it it's totally different, sorry for assuming the question was yours! Some of my best answers are also on "simple questions". The question is asking about the best way of doing X, which has a clear substep of "any way of doing X". Not only that, it's asking about a code solution, not just maths/combinatronics. Not a single line of code in a question about finding the optimal (not any) solution for doing some algebra in code is, IMHO, reason enough to close it. Edit: for example, I'm not asking and so have no stakes on the question but can already try to think about brute-forcing it, which already shows more effort than the author SHOWS at attempting a solution.
        Const-me 3y ago
        > asking about the best way of doing X To be fair, English is not my native language. But when I see a question “what’s the best way of doing X”, when it doesn’t have any criteria for what’s the best would be, and no other ways of doing X in the question, I consider “what’s the best way” part a redundant figure of speech. I view such questions an equivalent of “what’s a good enough way of doing X”. > it's asking about a code solution, not just maths/combinatronics Please read this: https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic According to that article, questions about math which don’t imply a code solution are offtopic on stackoverflow.com. They should be closed, and possibly moved to other stachexchange sites. According to that article, the OP’s question is good. The question was about a specific programming problem, and is a practical, answerable problem unique to software development. > can already try to think about brute-forcing it I’m not sure that’s actually possible to do.
- jrumbut 3y ago
  > SO is not a support forum, it's not your teacher This, to me, is the mistake that SO made. Developers helping developers is the engine that runs the site, that's why people come. The body of interesting knowledge is an emergent property of the support forum/peer-to-peer teacher. Eventually they tried to put the cart before the horse and traffic has dropped. It's OK that you're done answering "how do I change font color with jQuery" for the thousandth time and are only interested in the occasional very interesting question, because there are people behind you who do want to answer that question. That will help them grow to get where you are. If we don't allow new generations of users to go through that process we went through, then StackOverflow has an expiration date.

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.
  - Const-me 3y ago
    > It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question You probably assumed I asked that question? If so, the assumption was incorrect, I answered it. > without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck I don't think any of that is possible to do. The question, and my answer, are too simple to decompose into smaller parts. Not enough runway to start and get stuck. > expect other people to answer it fully My expectation was rather different. I wrote my answer on Jul 16, 2019, and expected it to stay there. Instead, on the next day some people have decided the question was bad, and closed it. Then on the next month, some other people have deleted it, along with my answer. To close it, 5 people clicked once/each. To undelete it, I spent quite a few hours. Sadly, that's not a rare exception: moderation on SO is horrible.
    - franciscop 3y ago
      Ah sorry, if you answered it it's totally different, sorry for assuming the question was yours! Some of my best answers are also on "simple questions". The question is asking about the best way of doing X, which has a clear substep of "any way of doing X". Not only that, it's asking about a code solution, not just maths/combinatronics. Not a single line of code in a question about finding the optimal (not any) solution for doing some algebra in code is, IMHO, reason enough to close it. Edit: for example, I'm not asking and so have no stakes on the question but can already try to think about brute-forcing it, which already shows more effort than the author SHOWS at attempting a solution.
      - Const-me 3y ago
        > asking about the best way of doing X To be fair, English is not my native language. But when I see a question “what’s the best way of doing X”, when it doesn’t have any criteria for what’s the best would be, and no other ways of doing X in the question, I consider “what’s the best way” part a redundant figure of speech. I view such questions an equivalent of “what’s a good enough way of doing X”. > it's asking about a code solution, not just maths/combinatronics Please read this: https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic According to that article, questions about math which don’t imply a code solution are offtopic on stackoverflow.com. They should be closed, and possibly moved to other stachexchange sites. According to that article, the OP’s question is good. The question was about a specific programming problem, and is a practical, answerable problem unique to software development. > can already try to think about brute-forcing it I’m not sure that’s actually possible to do.
jrumbut 3y ago
> SO is not a support forum, it's not your teacher This, to me, is the mistake that SO made. Developers helping developers is the engine that runs the site, that's why people come. The body of interesting knowledge is an emergent property of the support forum/peer-to-peer teacher. Eventually they tried to put the cart before the horse and traffic has dropped. It's OK that you're done answering "how do I change font color with jQuery" for the thousandth time and are only interested in the occasional very interesting question, because there are people behind you who do want to answer that question. That will help them grow to get where you are. If we don't allow new generations of users to go through that process we went through, then StackOverflow has an expiration date.