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StackOverflow has been overrun by anal people. Internet power attracts this kind of douchebags like moths to light. If you write 'Hello,' in questions the syste

StackOverflow has been overrun by anal people. Internet power attracts this kind of douchebags like moths to light. If you write 'Hello,' in questions the system will automatically delete it, if you - god forbid - write 'Thanks!' other users will edit your question to remove it. I can't explain how fucking weird it is that people take time to remove the word 'Thanks' from a website they don't even own. StackOverflow is a crazy good system for Q&A. Just like in Wikipedia, the problem is no longer trolls - but bureaucracy and pedanticism of the moderators. People are assholes who like power, and I don't think any q&a software can solve this.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
franzus 14y ago
The best thing was a post by John Carmack. It had a "edited by <some SO poweruser>" next to it ...
- sysop073 14y ago
  You mean this one? http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167 It wasn't on SO, but in any case, all the edits did were fix spelling/capitalization; why would that be bad?
  - franzus 14y ago
    Disclaimer: I stopped using SO a while ago because of the uber pedantic mods and the overall unfriendly atmosphere there. > why would that be bad? Because I don't want some bozo messing around with something I wrote. If he wants to add something he should write a comment but not change my original contribution. I see this as a personal attack.
    - solutionyogi 14y ago
      If someone re-writes an entire sentence, I can see how you may feel it as a personal attack. If someone is fixing spelling and grammar and other things like formatting for linking to keywords etc., I think it is very useful. I don't know why you would think that such edits are personal attack. This is the Internet, you need to relax a bit.
      - shurane 14y ago
        Yeah, franzus is certainly taking it a bit too personal. SO is interested in the preservation of knowledge for future visitors. I don't know why this isn't in your best interest, but it is certainly what SO focuses on and gets, to a good degree. SO is mostly information-based. They are not so interested in friendly civilities, greeting each other, asking "how do you do", and so on. Neither is SO a substitute for regular conversation, where topics meander, talk goes in all directions, and new ideas spark, among so many other qualities/possibilities. It is question, answer, and building up respect. So I don't see the problem with removing the personal component. If you really wanted to, you can just contact another SO-er for thanking them. Now that you've stopped using SO, what do you use instead, franzus? SO is a really impressive site, pedantic mods be damned. Same with Wikipedia. You'll be hard-pressed to find alternatives that try to maintain the same level of quality across as wide a berth of topics (anything, really) as SO.
    - gizzlon 14y ago
      Then you're right to stay off SO: "All contributions are licensed under Creative Commons and this site is collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia. If you see something that needs improvement, click edit and help us make it so! [..] If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you" http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing
    - Cyranix 14y ago
      Pull requests for edits, perhaps?
      - manojlds 14y ago
        It is actually like that. Any new comer cand edit and "submit a pull request" that people with more rep can accept.
        cruise02 14y ago
        And the original poster can always roll back the edit too. There's a standing order to respect the original poster's edit if it comes down to an edit war, even if it sucks.
- unwind 14y ago
  This is (probably) the answer in question: http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167. It was edited (not by me, just to be clear) to fix some minor typos, not for content. Here is the diff: http://superuser.com/posts/419167/revisions http://superuser.com/posts/419167/revisions. I guess having "hz" edited into "Hz" might strike some people as being "anal", but I think it's a very decent improvement. Of course, I'm not trying to imply anything about Mr Carmack's knowledge about unit symbols, I just think he wrote his answer too quickly to care. I consider it a feature that someone else can step in and clean it up a bit.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    The funny thing is that you can't just fix typos like hz to Hz because it's under the update character count, so people end up making other changes just to get around the rule. A bit silly, that.
gizzlon 14y ago
Actually, that makes sense to me.. SO tries very hard not to be a forum and therefore everything that resembles footers, signatures etc. should be left out. On SO you thank people by up-voting and accepting answers, not commenting. Questions should be as "clean" as possible, they are not emails or letters. They should be free of that type of "social etiquette". Or, actually, when I think about it, the social etiquette on SO is to leave all those niceties out. Thanks
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  But does that really qualify as social etiquette or is it just mindless rule following? Honest question.
  - gizzlon 14y ago
    I think it is.. Remember reading about it (lost the link) and thinking that it made a lot of sense. Also, it seems like mindless rule-following is the definition of etiquette :D "Etiquette: noun a set of rules for behaving correctly in social situations"
    - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
      No etiquette is not mindless there are reasons that go beyond, "StackOverflow founder said and it was so."
steve8918 14y ago
I absolutely LOVE stackoverflow. I've been working on my own for about 9 months, and without SO, there would have been zero chance I would be able to make any progress. But I do agree about the criticism of the moderators. I also think that there is almost a "Stanford Prison Experiment" level of power-wielding amongst some of the mods. There are examples of someone/me asking a question, and then someone closing it as a dupe, when in fact the question isn't a dupe. It might be superficially similar, but the mods don't take enough time to actually read the question and see if it's a dupe or not. And the rest of us are powerless to do anything about it. But this is the minority of cases for me. For the most part, SO is a completely invaluable tool, and I love it immensely. I think removing "Thanks" is a bit too abrasive. Maybe 10+ years ago, the NYC subway system tried getting ticketing agents to stop saying "Thanks" because they thought it would make things more efficient, and all it did was piss off the passengers. It's trivial, but there has to be a base level of civility between participants. I get that upvoting is "Thanks", but we're still humans (at this point), and trying to make communication more "efficient" by removing natural human responses makes it too terse, and almost insulting sometimes. It's a small thing, and I think it's better to just leave it in, because it's nice to say "thanks".
- cruise02 14y ago
  > There are examples... Where are these examples? This is the internet. Please provide links. > And the rest of us are powerless to do anything about it. That's simply not true. Stack Exchange provides a Meta site where you can take up issues with the entire community. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ You can also email the company. They do read your emails. As for removing "thanks," we really don't recommend doing that if it's the only thing you're going to change. However, it's not supposed to be included, so removing it while making other edits is encouraged.
  - yarrel 14y ago
    Enforced rudeness is weird.
    - 14y ago
dionidium 14y ago
I can't explain how fucking weird it is that people take time to remove the word 'Thanks' from a website they don't even own. And I can't explain how fucking weird it is that some people collect thimbles or attend dog shows.
balakk 14y ago
> pedanticism of the moderators. pedantry.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

franzus 14y ago

The best thing was a post by John Carmack. It had a "edited by <some SO poweruser>" next to it ...

sysop073 14y ago
You mean this one? http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167 It wasn't on SO, but in any case, all the edits did were fix spelling/capitalization; why would that be bad?
- franzus 14y ago
  Disclaimer: I stopped using SO a while ago because of the uber pedantic mods and the overall unfriendly atmosphere there. > why would that be bad? Because I don't want some bozo messing around with something I wrote. If he wants to add something he should write a comment but not change my original contribution. I see this as a personal attack.
  - solutionyogi 14y ago
    If someone re-writes an entire sentence, I can see how you may feel it as a personal attack. If someone is fixing spelling and grammar and other things like formatting for linking to keywords etc., I think it is very useful. I don't know why you would think that such edits are personal attack. This is the Internet, you need to relax a bit.
    - shurane 14y ago
      Yeah, franzus is certainly taking it a bit too personal. SO is interested in the preservation of knowledge for future visitors. I don't know why this isn't in your best interest, but it is certainly what SO focuses on and gets, to a good degree. SO is mostly information-based. They are not so interested in friendly civilities, greeting each other, asking "how do you do", and so on. Neither is SO a substitute for regular conversation, where topics meander, talk goes in all directions, and new ideas spark, among so many other qualities/possibilities. It is question, answer, and building up respect. So I don't see the problem with removing the personal component. If you really wanted to, you can just contact another SO-er for thanking them. Now that you've stopped using SO, what do you use instead, franzus? SO is a really impressive site, pedantic mods be damned. Same with Wikipedia. You'll be hard-pressed to find alternatives that try to maintain the same level of quality across as wide a berth of topics (anything, really) as SO.
  - gizzlon 14y ago
    Then you're right to stay off SO: "All contributions are licensed under Creative Commons and this site is collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia. If you see something that needs improvement, click edit and help us make it so! [..] If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you" http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing
  - Cyranix 14y ago
    Pull requests for edits, perhaps?
    - manojlds 14y ago
      It is actually like that. Any new comer cand edit and "submit a pull request" that people with more rep can accept.
      - cruise02 14y ago
        And the original poster can always roll back the edit too. There's a standing order to respect the original poster's edit if it comes down to an edit war, even if it sucks.
unwind 14y ago
This is (probably) the answer in question: http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167. It was edited (not by me, just to be clear) to fix some minor typos, not for content. Here is the diff: http://superuser.com/posts/419167/revisions http://superuser.com/posts/419167/revisions. I guess having "hz" edited into "Hz" might strike some people as being "anal", but I think it's a very decent improvement. Of course, I'm not trying to imply anything about Mr Carmack's knowledge about unit symbols, I just think he wrote his answer too quickly to care. I consider it a feature that someone else can step in and clean it up a bit.
- smackfu 14y ago
  The funny thing is that you can't just fix typos like hz to Hz because it's under the update character count, so people end up making other changes just to get around the rule. A bit silly, that.

gizzlon 14y ago

Actually, that makes sense to me.. SO tries very hard not to be a forum and therefore everything that resembles footers, signatures etc. should be left out. On SO you thank people by up-voting and accepting answers, not commenting. Questions should be as "clean" as possible, they are not emails or letters. They should be free of that type of "social etiquette". Or, actually, when I think about it, the social etiquette on SO is to leave all those niceties out. Thanks

dinkumthinkum 14y ago
But does that really qualify as social etiquette or is it just mindless rule following? Honest question.
- gizzlon 14y ago
  I think it is.. Remember reading about it (lost the link) and thinking that it made a lot of sense. Also, it seems like mindless rule-following is the definition of etiquette :D "Etiquette: noun a set of rules for behaving correctly in social situations"
  - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
    No etiquette is not mindless there are reasons that go beyond, "StackOverflow founder said and it was so."

steve8918 14y ago

I absolutely LOVE stackoverflow. I've been working on my own for about 9 months, and without SO, there would have been zero chance I would be able to make any progress. But I do agree about the criticism of the moderators. I also think that there is almost a "Stanford Prison Experiment" level of power-wielding amongst some of the mods. There are examples of someone/me asking a question, and then someone closing it as a dupe, when in fact the question isn't a dupe. It might be superficially similar, but the mods don't take enough time to actually read the question and see if it's a dupe or not. And the rest of us are powerless to do anything about it. But this is the minority of cases for me. For the most part, SO is a completely invaluable tool, and I love it immensely. I think removing "Thanks" is a bit too abrasive. Maybe 10+ years ago, the NYC subway system tried getting ticketing agents to stop saying "Thanks" because they thought it would make things more efficient, and all it did was piss off the passengers. It's trivial, but there has to be a base level of civility between participants. I get that upvoting is "Thanks", but we're still humans (at this point), and trying to make communication more "efficient" by removing natural human responses makes it too terse, and almost insulting sometimes. It's a small thing, and I think it's better to just leave it in, because it's nice to say "thanks".

cruise02 14y ago
> There are examples... Where are these examples? This is the internet. Please provide links. > And the rest of us are powerless to do anything about it. That's simply not true. Stack Exchange provides a Meta site where you can take up issues with the entire community. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ You can also email the company. They do read your emails. As for removing "thanks," we really don't recommend doing that if it's the only thing you're going to change. However, it's not supposed to be included, so removing it while making other edits is encouraged.
- yarrel 14y ago
  Enforced rudeness is weird.
  - 14y ago

dionidium 14y ago

I can't explain how fucking weird it is that people take time to remove the word 'Thanks' from a website they don't even own. And I can't explain how fucking weird it is that some people collect thimbles or attend dog shows.

balakk 14y ago

> pedanticism of the moderators. pedantry.