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> I remember that half the time the top result was someone asking the question I had, only for it to be duped to a different question that didn’t answer the ori

by Permit 9mo ago

> I remember that half the time the top result was someone asking the question I had, only for it to be duped to a different question that didn’t answer the original. This is an entirely different problem than toxicity is it not? Like, if the moderators are bad at their job that seems uniquely different than the moderators were mean to me while doing their job.

kstrauser 9mo ago
Not OP but I think it’s the same problem. Mods got a pat on the back for “curating” (i.e. quickly closing) incoming questions, so they leaned far too far toward closing them ASAP for specious reasons because it rewarded themselves. Sure, there was a whole appeals process you could go through if you had infinite time and patience to beg the same cohort for permission, pretty please, to ask the question on the ask-the-question website, but the graph of people willing to do so over time looks a lot like their traffic graph.
- fabian2k 9mo ago
  There is no reward for closing questions. The gamification is mostly via reputation, and only asking, answering (and very limited editing) grant reputation.
  - kstrauser 9mo ago
    I disagree. Look at the moderator election threads[0] and a good chunk of the would-be mods’ stories are demonstrating how good they are at deleting and flagging and downvoting content. And that stuff is important, but when it becomes a metric to optimize and brag about… [0]https://stackoverflow.com/election/16 https://stackoverflow.com/election/16
falcor84 9mo ago
It's not an entirely different problem because the main method through which moderators are mean is in closing new questions as dupes. A more positive q&a community might "steel-man" the question and try to find what's different about it, but SO's culture leaned heavily towards essentially telling people "go away, you don't have anything new and worthwhile for us".
- Permit 9mo ago
  > It's not an entirely different problem because the main method through which moderators are mean is in closing new questions as dupes This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then. Elsewhere in this thread I see: > I disagree with this. You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk. Or you can tell them that there needs to be more information in a question without being a jerk. I do not think being mean is a prerequisite for successful curation of information. So we're all speaking about different things it appears.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    > This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then. When I wrote about the issue on MSE (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477) a couple years ago I explicitly called out that the terminology is not productive. It generally seems to describe dissatisfaction with the user experience that results from a failure to meet the user's expectations; but the entire reason for the conflict is that the user's expectations are not aligned with what the existing community seeks to provide. And yes, the ambiguity you note has been spammed all over the Internet (everywhere Stack Overflow is discussed) the entire time. Some people are upset about how things are done; others consider what is done to be inherently problematic. And you can't even clearly communicate about this. For example, someone who writes "You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk." might have in mind "don't point people at the policy document as if they should have known better, and don't give specific interpretation as if their reading comprehension is lacking"; but might also have in mind "point people at the policy document, and give specific interpretation, because otherwise there's no way for them to know". Or it might be "say something nice, but don't close the question because that sends the wrong message inherently" (this interpretation is fundamentally misguided and fundamentally misunderstands both the purpose and consequences of question closure). And yes, every now and then, the person making the complaint actually encountered someone who said something unambiguously nasty. For those cases, there is a flagging system and a Code of Conduct. (But most Code of Conduct violations come from new users complaining when they find out that they aren't entitled to an open, answered question. And that's bad enough that many people don't comment to explain closures specifically to avoid de-anonymizing themselves.)

by Permit 9mo ago

kstrauser 9mo ago

Not OP but I think it’s the same problem. Mods got a pat on the back for “curating” (i.e. quickly closing) incoming questions, so they leaned far too far toward closing them ASAP for specious reasons because it rewarded themselves. Sure, there was a whole appeals process you could go through if you had infinite time and patience to beg the same cohort for permission, pretty please, to ask the question on the ask-the-question website, but the graph of people willing to do so over time looks a lot like their traffic graph.

fabian2k 9mo ago
There is no reward for closing questions. The gamification is mostly via reputation, and only asking, answering (and very limited editing) grant reputation.
- kstrauser 9mo ago
  I disagree. Look at the moderator election threads[0] and a good chunk of the would-be mods’ stories are demonstrating how good they are at deleting and flagging and downvoting content. And that stuff is important, but when it becomes a metric to optimize and brag about… [0]https://stackoverflow.com/election/16 https://stackoverflow.com/election/16

falcor84 9mo ago

It's not an entirely different problem because the main method through which moderators are mean is in closing new questions as dupes. A more positive q&a community might "steel-man" the question and try to find what's different about it, but SO's culture leaned heavily towards essentially telling people "go away, you don't have anything new and worthwhile for us".

Permit 9mo ago
> It's not an entirely different problem because the main method through which moderators are mean is in closing new questions as dupes This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then. Elsewhere in this thread I see: > I disagree with this. You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk. Or you can tell them that there needs to be more information in a question without being a jerk. I do not think being mean is a prerequisite for successful curation of information. So we're all speaking about different things it appears.
- zahlman 9mo ago
  > This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then. When I wrote about the issue on MSE (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477) a couple years ago I explicitly called out that the terminology is not productive. It generally seems to describe dissatisfaction with the user experience that results from a failure to meet the user's expectations; but the entire reason for the conflict is that the user's expectations are not aligned with what the existing community seeks to provide. And yes, the ambiguity you note has been spammed all over the Internet (everywhere Stack Overflow is discussed) the entire time. Some people are upset about how things are done; others consider what is done to be inherently problematic. And you can't even clearly communicate about this. For example, someone who writes "You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk." might have in mind "don't point people at the policy document as if they should have known better, and don't give specific interpretation as if their reading comprehension is lacking"; but might also have in mind "point people at the policy document, and give specific interpretation, because otherwise there's no way for them to know". Or it might be "say something nice, but don't close the question because that sends the wrong message inherently" (this interpretation is fundamentally misguided and fundamentally misunderstands both the purpose and consequences of question closure). And yes, every now and then, the person making the complaint actually encountered someone who said something unambiguously nasty. For those cases, there is a flagging system and a Code of Conduct. (But most Code of Conduct violations come from new users complaining when they find out that they aren't entitled to an open, answered question. And that's bad enough that many people don't comment to explain closures specifically to avoid de-anonymizing themselves.)