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And people white knight for that behavior left and right. I refuse to interact with the platform after these encounters.

hardware2win 3y ago
How is it that I asked like 100 questions in last 5 years and hostile behaviour was visible in maybe 2 or 3, yet people act as if that was the most toxic place on the internet? All I was doing was just: putting effort into my questions
- pbowyer 3y ago
  Probably because your brain works in the same way as the mods think, and so you ask questions that fit the expected format. Or your questions are focused with one right answer, because IME SO hates any question which assumes - unintentionally or intentionally - there are grey areas or more than one way to do it.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  The answer here is that "putting effort into my questions" A lot of questions show people have not done that by either reading manuals or searching SO. Why should a answereer put effort into writing a good answer when the questioner has not shown any effort?
  - gilleain 3y ago
    A broader problem is that some people do not really want one answer to one question but basically some tech support to solve their problem. Either they then ask a series of separate questions (not always fun times) or try to engage in the comments (which then get deleted!).
gilleain 3y ago
I would not want to white knight for SO, but perhaps grey knight? My understanding of the reasoning behind some of the moderation - flawed as that often is - is to make the questions and answers 'general'. Which means a question that is very specific to one person may be voted to close or voted down. To take an example of another stack exchange site (chemistry.SE), they get a lot of 'homework questions'. Literally some questions are like "I have an exam in an hour PLEASE HELP". The stated policy is _not_ to just answer these questions, but to guide people towards a solution. Very frustrating for the person asking the question - who, you know, has an exam in an hour ... Ultimately there are policies and processes intended to improve the overall quality, and sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it leads to everyone getting annoyed with the whole thing.
- xnorswap 3y ago
  > a question that is very specific to one person may be voted to close or voted down That's the opposite of the guidance, or at least the guidance as it was back when I was active on SO. General questions "What's the best way to do X" are shut down. Questions should be specific and about actual problems you have rather than general problems. Solving real problems with real solutions builds up a strong data set, not questions about imagined problems and their answers
  - jalapenos 3y ago
    "The best way" type questions would still create a ballot with the best solution probably rising to the top, for use by others who encounter a similiar situation. People aren't always starting from a very specific problem, but from a vague general one. Ultimately though, Stack Overflow just faced the customer service curse: as volume rises, moderation gets blunter.
    - Arnt 3y ago
      SO doesn't have such ballots for a reason: SO doesn't want opinionated discussions. If you think that choice is wrong, SO is not going to be a good place for you. But there are very many other sites where you can have opinionated discussions. May I ask your SO id? It'll be a link like https://stackoverflow.com/users/1 https://stackoverflow.com/users/1, except with a different number.
  - gilleain 3y ago
    That's fair - maybe I expressed it badly or just that it's hard to come up with succinct rules for questions. Consider two scenarios : a) I have installed some software X but messed up one of the install steps and now there is this weird error. Or b) when installing this software, it always errors if library Y is on an old version. For b) it is clearly a 'general' problem that many people will face. For a) it could be seen as a user error and therefore not generally useful. From the point of view of the people facing a) though, it absolutely is a problem!
  - michaelt 3y ago

hardware2win 3y ago

How is it that I asked like 100 questions in last 5 years and hostile behaviour was visible in maybe 2 or 3, yet people act as if that was the most toxic place on the internet? All I was doing was just: putting effort into my questions

pbowyer 3y ago
Probably because your brain works in the same way as the mods think, and so you ask questions that fit the expected format. Or your questions are focused with one right answer, because IME SO hates any question which assumes - unintentionally or intentionally - there are grey areas or more than one way to do it.
pasc1878 3y ago
The answer here is that "putting effort into my questions" A lot of questions show people have not done that by either reading manuals or searching SO. Why should a answereer put effort into writing a good answer when the questioner has not shown any effort?
- gilleain 3y ago
  A broader problem is that some people do not really want one answer to one question but basically some tech support to solve their problem. Either they then ask a series of separate questions (not always fun times) or try to engage in the comments (which then get deleted!).

gilleain 3y ago

I would not want to white knight for SO, but perhaps grey knight? My understanding of the reasoning behind some of the moderation - flawed as that often is - is to make the questions and answers 'general'. Which means a question that is very specific to one person may be voted to close or voted down. To take an example of another stack exchange site (chemistry.SE), they get a lot of 'homework questions'. Literally some questions are like "I have an exam in an hour PLEASE HELP". The stated policy is _not_ to just answer these questions, but to guide people towards a solution. Very frustrating for the person asking the question - who, you know, has an exam in an hour ... Ultimately there are policies and processes intended to improve the overall quality, and sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it leads to everyone getting annoyed with the whole thing.

xnorswap 3y ago
> a question that is very specific to one person may be voted to close or voted down That's the opposite of the guidance, or at least the guidance as it was back when I was active on SO. General questions "What's the best way to do X" are shut down. Questions should be specific and about actual problems you have rather than general problems. Solving real problems with real solutions builds up a strong data set, not questions about imagined problems and their answers
- jalapenos 3y ago
  "The best way" type questions would still create a ballot with the best solution probably rising to the top, for use by others who encounter a similiar situation. People aren't always starting from a very specific problem, but from a vague general one. Ultimately though, Stack Overflow just faced the customer service curse: as volume rises, moderation gets blunter.
  - Arnt 3y ago
    SO doesn't have such ballots for a reason: SO doesn't want opinionated discussions. If you think that choice is wrong, SO is not going to be a good place for you. But there are very many other sites where you can have opinionated discussions. May I ask your SO id? It'll be a link like https://stackoverflow.com/users/1 https://stackoverflow.com/users/1, except with a different number.
- gilleain 3y ago
  That's fair - maybe I expressed it badly or just that it's hard to come up with succinct rules for questions. Consider two scenarios : a) I have installed some software X but messed up one of the install steps and now there is this weird error. Or b) when installing this software, it always errors if library Y is on an old version. For b) it is clearly a 'general' problem that many people will face. For a) it could be seen as a user error and therefore not generally useful. From the point of view of the people facing a) though, it absolutely is a problem!
- michaelt 3y ago