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The moderation on programmers.stackexchange.com is completely overbearing. How can a question about analysis paralysis be closed for off-topic? If stackoverflo
by frankc 14y ago
The moderation on programmers.stackexchange.com is completely overbearing. How can a question about analysis paralysis be closed for off-topic? If stackoverflow is for technical question/answer, what is the point the linked stackexchange if not for discussion of a common programmer problem like this? I see stuff like this closed all time time and it's really annoying.
- droithomme 14y agoAgree completely. If that is "off topic for software development", then everything is off topic for software development.
- benjaminwootton 14y agoAgreed. If any StackExchange people read this please do something about this. It's a great site that fills a necessary niche but the moderation is killing it!
- noobiscus 14y agoIndeed; it seems every interesting question on there is removed as off-topic. Sounds like a key indicator that S-O is ripe for displacement...
- antidoh 14y agoAt this point it can't be done. StackExchange is the way it is by preference of the older controlling users.
- wpietri 14y agoNah. The company controls the software, which gives them plenty of ability to change the game dynamics. The only problem is a lack of will.
- antidoh 14y agoI think they've already given over control to their volunteers. Yes they could wrest it back, but I think their profit depends on not too much paid involvement. So it is what the senior members want it to be.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoDitto for StackOverflow itself? I just can't understand why so often a really valuable topic that collects insightful answers gets closed up because of not fitting some template. Also, I don't get the idea of "protected questions" - the ones marked by: "This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site." What does this even mean? Is the assumption that a new user will always say "thanks!" / "me too", while older user won't, in any way correct? Do statistics suggest something like that? It always struck me as offensive to new users.
- marcusf 14y agoProbably based on experience, it wasn't like that initially if I remember correctly.
- recursive 14y agoAs a stack overflow old-timer, I can tell you that questions that get a lot of hits from outside, (e.g. popular searches, blog post links) tend to get more visitors that are not familiar with how the site works. Many of them assume it's like a discussion board and post "answers" thanking another poster or asking a different question. I've seen this many times. It's not really offensive to claim that people new to the site are likely to be less familiar with how its intended to work.
- bp_ 14y agoMost of the time protection kicks in _because_ the question has received many "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. Indeed, the third deleted answer on any question automatically triggers protection.
- JohnMcG 14y agoThanks! Me too! :)
- TeMPOraL 14y agorecursive, marcusf, bp_: thanks for clearing that out for me.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoIt might be off-topic for StackOverflow,but how on earth is this off-topic on programmers.stackexchange?! If such discussions are off-topic, then why did they create programmers.stackexchange in the first place?
- phalasz 14y agoMy thoughts exactly. And as other pointed out earlier, this happens all the time.
- frankc 14y agoThat's exactly my point. I understand why this is not right for stackoverflow; that is for technical question and answer. But isn't this kind of question exactly the point of programmers stackexchange? How to overcome analysis paralysis is not relevant to programmers? Insanity.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoWOW! I looked it up now[1] and it seems that this kind of questions are supposed to be asked on programmers.etackexchange.com! This is what FAQ says. 2nd, 4th, 7th and 8th are exactly what this question is about! """ Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about... """ 1 - algorithm and data structure concepts 2 - design patterns <------ 3 - developer testing 4 - development methodologies <------ 5 - freelancing and business concerns 6 - quality assurance 7 - software architecture <------ 8 - software engineering <------ 9 - software licensing So, Jarrod Roberson, GrandmasterB, gnat, Walter and ChrisF♦, you are all bozos, you shouldn't have closed this question. [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq
- sklivvz1971 14y agoYou pick on people here, where they won't see/answer? And _they_ are bozos? Get real.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoDon't take it so seriously; I said it half-jokingly (well, actually, completely jokingly!). I like how Steve Jobs called everyone he disagreed with a 'bozo', and I imitated him here :-) BTW, as that discussion is closed now, we can't directly (and publicly) communicate with those mods there; so here is the only place we can rant (that is, unless there is a meta-programmers.stackexchange.com for meta discussions).
- sklivvz1971 14y agoI can assure you they read you (now!)
- yrizos 14y agohttp://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ Also, four of the close voters are regular users, only ChrisF is a moderator (notice the ♦), but it doesn't really matter, as it takes 5 close votes to close a question and his otherwise supercharged close vote was a regular user vote here (being the fifth).
- breckinloggins 14y agoThe sad part is it's predictable. Upon seeing the link on HN, my thought process went like this: "Ahh, an interesting and thought-provoking discussion on a StackExchange site? It will be closed." click sigh So, a question to our StackExchange overlords: you clearly do not believe that the popular StackExchange sites are the appropriate place for this content. With that in mind, what alternative would you recommend?
- angdis 14y agoWhile I agree that very often interesting topics get closed, they DO HAVE a good reason for doing so. The intent of all the stack-exchange sites is to provide a high-quality resource of _answers_ for specific _questions_. If "the answer" to a question ends up being a divergent discussion, then not closing responses invites more of these types of questions. Over time that will subvert the intent of stack-exchange. The POV of the stack-exchange folks is that there are plenty of forums for discussion, and that is NOT what they want to do. Hacker-news, however, is more free-form and definitely much better for "need advice" type questions with highly subjective answers. That said, it is true that moderators sometimes get persnickety about what they close. I wish that at least they would be less smug and judgmental about how they do that. But oh well, it is still an awesome resource.
- antidoh 14y ago"Hacker-news, however, is more free-form and definitely much better for "need advice" type questions with highly subjective answers." Assuming the question doesn't drop past the second page or so before someone who is interested in the question sees it. But yeah, is it is seen and kept alive for a few minutes, the discussion is potentially very useful.
- wpietri 14y agoHonestly, the original intent of a startup almost doesn't mater. What a business does is always an intersection of what the producers and the consumers want. If users want something divergent but reasonable, the answer shouldn't be, "Well, fuck you then." The right response is, "Boy, that's a a great opportunity." As proof, look at Friendster. They owned the social networking space before Facebook even existed. But it had started out as a dating site, and the founder stubbornly insisted that it stay a dating site no matter what the users wanted. At this point they're not even a punchline; MySpace has now taken over the spot of best-known failure. I've stopped contributing to StackOverflow because I'm tired of them killing good discussions. Why take the risk that yet another good answer will get eaten?
- LnxPrgr3 14y agoThe original intent of a startup doesn't matter much if your real goal is just to get a lot of users and sell them to advertisers. Then, who cares what you build, as long as it attracts users? The original intent matters a lot more if your goal is to build something you want to see exist. I, for one, am glad Stack Overflow is the site that it is today. There are plenty of other places on the Web for more open discussion… like here, for instance.
- Zarathust 14y ago7.5k views _today_. But they know what we want so why bother?
- chmike 14y ago86 people upvoted the question and 5 votes is all it takes to close the question ? So 5 people hold the truth on the validity an pertinence of a question ? How many people does it take to undesrstand that this moderation system is broken ?
- pooriaazimi 14y agoA few more stats: - When I linked to it, it had 3,000+ visits. Now, it has 12,406. - The question had 61 up-votes, and now has 90. - It was fav-ed by 17 people, now it's fav-ed by 26.
- sklivvz1971 14y agoIt takes 5 people to reopen it too. It's exactly balanced.
- michael_fine 14y agoIt's really frustrating how they keep doing this. Their users are begging, literally fighting with the mods over this, and they still don't allow it. If they are opposed to diluting the technical questions there, why don't they just make an programmer opinion stack exchange site? This reminds me of the founding of Adobe, when Steve Jobs told them what he wanted, as did two other companied, and the refused, saying "We have this business plan, we raised $2.5 million, and this is what we said we're going to do." Thankfully, a man named QT Wiles explained to them that "You guys are nuts. Throw out your business plan. Your customers-or potential customers-are telling you what your business should be. The business plan was only used to get you the money. Why don't you rewrite a business plan that is focused just on providing what your customers want?" This is the same position. SE needs to focus on what the customers want.
- randomdata 14y agoI have never really used StackOverflow, so from just a casual observer's point of view: It seems that allowing discussions would deviate the site into another commodity forum (there are already hundreds on the topic of programming), at which point they've lost their marketplace edge. I suspect they are trying to protect against that.
- spolsky 14y agoThis is a rambling discussion, which Stack Exchange is not really intended for. There are lots of good places to have rambling discussions. We focus on answerable questions with specific answers, not long-winded, open-ended conversation starters. There are plenty of other sites for long-winded, open-ended conversation starters, including Reddit and Hacker News. After a decade or so of operating sites for programmers on the Internet, I've learned that, left by themselves, ALL programmer online sites will rapidly deteriorate into: * I hate my job, woe is me ("I hate my job too!") * I'm not productive any more, oh dear ("Oh my god you took the words right out of my mouth!") * And some nonsense about H1B visas. These kinds of conversations are endless because, I'm sad to say, they represent a common problem among programmers. Discussing it as a means of therapy is a wonderful thing, but DO IT SOMEWHERE ELSE, because Stack Exchange is 100% focused on questions with specific factual answers. This hard and fast rule is actually WHY you love stack overflow so much. It's WHY the network works. It's WHY you click on the stackoverflow.com link in the Google results even if it's third. If we weren't strict about this stuff we wouldn't have such consistently high quality ANSWERS. Just because "moderators" (actually, users) have deemed to close a question on Stack Exchange, doesn't mean it's a bad question, or that the person who asked it is bad. It just means that Stack Exchange is an edited, curated environment, not your livejournal. The very moderation that people complain about every time a popular question is closed is what has been making the site work so well.
- bozho 14y agoI don't think leaving the few doznes of fun questions hurts. Now some of the most linked funny "threads" are gone, and we hope someone has a backup. Apart from that, I agree - it's Q&A, not /r/funny, not a discussion forum. Though I haven't seen that many questions that aim to ignite such discussions.
- bp_ 14y ago"Fun" questions are bumped over and over again; thus, they accrue ALL the votes and farm ALL the badges. They're just constant noise on the homepage.
- yrizos 14y agoHey frankc! You're right Analysis paralysis is on topic on Programmers, the question however is not constructive, in the Stack Exchange sense. The close reason was a bit misleading (now changed), but at the end of the day closed means closed. As to why it is not constructive: We don't like discussions. Ok, that's a lie, we love discussions, especially heated flamewars, after all we are programmers. However we haven't yet found a good way of moderating and curating such questions on Stack Exchange, we have an array of excellent tools at our disposal, none of which was designed with free flowing open ended discussions in mind. This is more of a "it's not you, it's us" problem and it's a discussion we seem to be having at least once a week but the bottom line is, open ended free flowing discussions don't work on the platform, and unfortunately we have to close them. Feel free to bring up any issues you have with Programmers on Meta, especially when it's about closed questions. Sometimes all it takes is a small edit to make the question a bit more focused for it to be re-opened...