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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 - i

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
  My impression of stack overflow is they were looking for questions in a Goldilocks zone. "How do I sort a list of US States in Python 3.10?" Too specific. "How do I sort a list of strings in Python?" About right. "How do I sort a list with my computer?" Too general.
Arnt 3y ago
"General" isn't right, "searchable" is. A great SO question ① is about programming, ② has a factual answer and ③ if other people need that answer, then their search terms match the wording in the question. It's that simple. Answering that kind of question is worthwhile for people like me, because many people will later search, find the question and benefit from the answers. Spread the knowledge!
- oezi 3y ago
  The issue is that power tripping mods prevent many questions from becoming great ones. And I disagree that questions need to have one factual answer. Great questions often have many highly ranked answers showing different ways to solve issues or emphasizing different aspects of solving the question. A great question is one which others also have.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Arnt 3y ago
    1. I didn't write "one" and I didn't write "a single". 2. It sounds as if you think the moderators and the answerers are disjoint sets. They're not, at least not in the tags that I follow. The power tripping mods are the same people who contribute a majority of the answers. The decision of whether to answer or close is one decision, not two decisions made by different groups of people.
    - oezi 3y ago
      Okay, you wrote 'a'. Mostly, moderators and answers feel like disjoint sets because the majority of answers come from the long tail of people (at least it feels to me). But likely it is similar like with Wikipedia where the moderators feel like that they do most of the work when in reality they really don't and others would be happy to do the work if the moderators wouldn't hamper them.
      - Arnt 3y ago

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
My impression of stack overflow is they were looking for questions in a Goldilocks zone. "How do I sort a list of US States in Python 3.10?" Too specific. "How do I sort a list of strings in Python?" About right. "How do I sort a list with my computer?" Too general.

Arnt 3y ago

"General" isn't right, "searchable" is. A great SO question ① is about programming, ② has a factual answer and ③ if other people need that answer, then their search terms match the wording in the question. It's that simple. Answering that kind of question is worthwhile for people like me, because many people will later search, find the question and benefit from the answers. Spread the knowledge!

oezi 3y ago
The issue is that power tripping mods prevent many questions from becoming great ones. And I disagree that questions need to have one factual answer. Great questions often have many highly ranked answers showing different ways to solve issues or emphasizing different aspects of solving the question. A great question is one which others also have.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Arnt 3y ago
  1. I didn't write "one" and I didn't write "a single". 2. It sounds as if you think the moderators and the answerers are disjoint sets. They're not, at least not in the tags that I follow. The power tripping mods are the same people who contribute a majority of the answers. The decision of whether to answer or close is one decision, not two decisions made by different groups of people.
  - oezi 3y ago
    Okay, you wrote 'a'. Mostly, moderators and answers feel like disjoint sets because the majority of answers come from the long tail of people (at least it feels to me). But likely it is similar like with Wikipedia where the moderators feel like that they do most of the work when in reality they really don't and others would be happy to do the work if the moderators wouldn't hamper them.
    - Arnt 3y ago