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> in tension with "I want to ask whatever questions I want." As I said, I strongly disagree with the idea that my questions were unfit for StackOverflow. Every

by palata 2y ago

> in tension with "I want to ask whatever questions I want." As I said, I strongly disagree with the idea that my questions were unfit for StackOverflow. Every single time their reason was "duplication", it was not AT ALL a duplicate. Two different questions (sometimes obviously very different) with two different answers. Hell, they closed some of those as duplicate even though I posted both the question and the answer, and the answer was completely different from the one they were pointing to. This is not "I want to ask whatever questions I want". It's bad moderation.

zahlman 2y ago
> Every single time their reason was "duplication", it was not AT ALL a duplicate. Two different questions (sometimes obviously very different) with two different answers. Please feel free to show concrete examples, and I'd be happy to try to explain the reasoning.
- palata 2y ago
  Deal. Say I ask "How to do X in settings.gradle?" and it is closed as a duplicate to "How to do X in build.gradle?". I know how to do X in build.gradle, I know it is not the same as doing X in settings.gradle (even if it's is twice the same X), and I know how to do X in settings.gradle (because I just had a need and found a solution without the help of StackOverflow). So I post an answer right away. Can you explain the reasoning, or do you need it more concrete because you're absolutely sure you know better? Because what's clear to me is that those (because it required multiple votes) who closed it as duplicate have no clue how it works. They obviously stopped at "X == X, it's a duplicate". At some point I got into the habit of adding notes like "Note: it is not a duplicate of A because [...] and it is not a duplicate of B because [...]", which honestly made the question worse for those who actually understand it (just for the sake of pleasing those who would close it as duplicate). Spoiler: they closed it as a duplicate of A. But stay happy in your world where you know everything, I'm not coming back anyway.
  - zahlman 2y ago
    To "show a concrete example" I would need a question ID. (As I've explained in other posts, deletion is probably not a problem; deletion on Stack Overflow is normally "soft", and I have the reputation needed to see those posts.) I'm not familiar with Gradle (I think that's a Java build system?), but if I saw what actually happened, I could probably understand well enough.
    - palata 2y ago
      > I'm not familiar with [...] but if I saw what actually happened, I could probably understand well enough. That's probably exactly what those who closed it thought: "I'm not familiar with it, but I'm certainly a better judge than the person who is working with it". Do you realise that you are going around telling everybody who complains about the StackOverflow moderation that they were certainly wrong, and StackOverflow was certainly right, and if they showed you the specific question you could certainly teach them why they are wrong? That would be the first step to understanding why people don't really enjoy your behaviour.
      - zahlman 2y ago
        >Do you realise that you are going around telling everybody who complains about the StackOverflow moderation that they were certainly wrong, and StackOverflow was certainly right, and if they showed you the specific question you could certainly teach them why they are wrong? No. s/certainly/probably/g. And I say this because I have a large amount of evidence - from cases where I was a subject matter expert - that the overwhelming majority of these cases turn out to be ones in which the proposed duplicate was very obviously a duplicate. People really will go up to you and tell you straight faced that no, this is a completely different situation because of a detail that is in fact completely irrelevant to the problem. And that the answers on the duplicate won't work, when they haven't tried. And I've had it happen that I can show these people directly that the answers actually do work in their case.
        palata 2y ago

by palata 2y ago

zahlman 2y ago

> Every single time their reason was "duplication", it was not AT ALL a duplicate. Two different questions (sometimes obviously very different) with two different answers. Please feel free to show concrete examples, and I'd be happy to try to explain the reasoning.

palata 2y ago
Deal. Say I ask "How to do X in settings.gradle?" and it is closed as a duplicate to "How to do X in build.gradle?". I know how to do X in build.gradle, I know it is not the same as doing X in settings.gradle (even if it's is twice the same X), and I know how to do X in settings.gradle (because I just had a need and found a solution without the help of StackOverflow). So I post an answer right away. Can you explain the reasoning, or do you need it more concrete because you're absolutely sure you know better? Because what's clear to me is that those (because it required multiple votes) who closed it as duplicate have no clue how it works. They obviously stopped at "X == X, it's a duplicate". At some point I got into the habit of adding notes like "Note: it is not a duplicate of A because [...] and it is not a duplicate of B because [...]", which honestly made the question worse for those who actually understand it (just for the sake of pleasing those who would close it as duplicate). Spoiler: they closed it as a duplicate of A. But stay happy in your world where you know everything, I'm not coming back anyway.
- zahlman 2y ago
  To "show a concrete example" I would need a question ID. (As I've explained in other posts, deletion is probably not a problem; deletion on Stack Overflow is normally "soft", and I have the reputation needed to see those posts.) I'm not familiar with Gradle (I think that's a Java build system?), but if I saw what actually happened, I could probably understand well enough.
  - palata 2y ago
    > I'm not familiar with [...] but if I saw what actually happened, I could probably understand well enough. That's probably exactly what those who closed it thought: "I'm not familiar with it, but I'm certainly a better judge than the person who is working with it". Do you realise that you are going around telling everybody who complains about the StackOverflow moderation that they were certainly wrong, and StackOverflow was certainly right, and if they showed you the specific question you could certainly teach them why they are wrong? That would be the first step to understanding why people don't really enjoy your behaviour.
    - zahlman 2y ago
      >Do you realise that you are going around telling everybody who complains about the StackOverflow moderation that they were certainly wrong, and StackOverflow was certainly right, and if they showed you the specific question you could certainly teach them why they are wrong? No. s/certainly/probably/g. And I say this because I have a large amount of evidence - from cases where I was a subject matter expert - that the overwhelming majority of these cases turn out to be ones in which the proposed duplicate was very obviously a duplicate. People really will go up to you and tell you straight faced that no, this is a completely different situation because of a detail that is in fact completely irrelevant to the problem. And that the answers on the duplicate won't work, when they haven't tried. And I've had it happen that I can show these people directly that the answers actually do work in their case.
      - palata 2y ago