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Welcome to stack overflow! Censorship here is just as bad, if not worse, than Wikipedia. As much as I despise this, it probably does make it a better resource.

Welcome to stack overflow! Censorship here is just as bad, if not worse, than Wikipedia. As much as I despise this, it probably does make it a better resource. Still, I wish they would MOVE these to meta exchange, rather than deleting content outright.

shokwave 14y ago
Yes! Even a "Trash Exchange" where all moderated posts are dumped instead of deleted would be an improvement.
27182818284 14y ago
Wow! Could you elaborate by chance? I mean this genuinely, this is my first ever dead link for StackExchange content. The others in this comment thread act as if this is the norm, which is disheartening. Is this a recent phenomenon or something that I've just been luck/naive enough to miss this whole time?
- anonymous 14y ago
  There isn't much to elaborate on. Anything that doesn't fit completely within their strict no-fun-allowed guidelines gets removed. This leads to two things: 1. Any result on google from StackOverflow is guaranteed to be of the highest quality. 2. I am never ever posting there.
  - aneth4 14y ago
    Sounds like a win win. There are hundreds of places for humor on the Internet. I'm pretty happy SO sticks with business. Humor would be distracting and irritating.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
      Why not Humor Overflow, where people can discuss what is funny and why, or why something isn't funny. Maybe why something is no longer funny -- or is funny in one language or culture, but not another.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    Perhaps it is just the front-end issues I use SO for, but generally the top Google results aren't the most helpful for me; they're just the oldest and had, at one time, the most traction. Given the rate at which things change or other methods fare better, I've started sorting my results by date instead of relevancy and hoping Random Dude's Blog has the right answer. Sometimes you'll get lucky and someone will have posted an updated response, but it's still sitting at the bottom of the page with 0 votes, and my account doesn't have the reputation (due in part to not wanting my posts removed) to upvote them. Quite a cycle.
- ygra 14y ago
  It's not a dead link per se. Users with high enough reputation can still see it. But for the web at large, it is dead, indeed. Many questions from the early days of SO were closed because they were too humourous or didn't fit the “needs an objectively correct answer” – this included a lot of such “poll” questions like “What is your favourite ...?”.
Joeri 14y ago
I doubt that it makes SO a better resource. I've seen the CV patrols in action. These are teenage kids hanging out in chatrooms, gaining enough rep to close-vote (which is easier than you think) and then throwing themselves like hungry mobs on interesting questions to shut them down. The moderation system on stackoverflow is broken because an unskilled user can gain high reputation by getting upvotes from other unskilled users (I've seen a lot of wrong answers getting up-votes). This means that over time the average level of skill in the people moderating the site drops and you end up with a lower quality of moderation.
- aerique 14y ago
  Just an anecdote that probably says more about me than about the internet: Recently I had work on a shell script that used "sed" to make changes in config files. At some point a change only had to happen once a line with a certain string had been seen, so I googled for this situation. Multiple StackOverflow answers were at the the top of the results as well a several other sites all of them containing incomprehesible examples of line noise. Half the time, the comments on the pages with the aformentioned examples also indicated the solutions didn't work. So I did a "man sed" looking for examples but it was a pretty short man page which told me to peruse "info sed". Not expecting much I fired up info (which I generally try to avoid: just put your docs in the man page) and to my surprise there was very good and clear documentation on sed which got me to fix my initial problem in 5 minutes in a clear way (well, it did need a comment in the code). The next time I need to know anything about sed I will check the manual first.
  - johncoltrane 14y ago
    RTFM is always the first thing to do. It's not always sufficient but it often is.
alphadogg 14y ago
+1 I continuously bump into valid (if not about specific lines of code) programming questions closed by some CasperOne grognard.

shokwave 14y ago

Yes! Even a "Trash Exchange" where all moderated posts are dumped instead of deleted would be an improvement.

27182818284 14y ago

Wow! Could you elaborate by chance? I mean this genuinely, this is my first ever dead link for StackExchange content. The others in this comment thread act as if this is the norm, which is disheartening. Is this a recent phenomenon or something that I've just been luck/naive enough to miss this whole time?

anonymous 14y ago
There isn't much to elaborate on. Anything that doesn't fit completely within their strict no-fun-allowed guidelines gets removed. This leads to two things: 1. Any result on google from StackOverflow is guaranteed to be of the highest quality. 2. I am never ever posting there.
- aneth4 14y ago
  Sounds like a win win. There are hundreds of places for humor on the Internet. I'm pretty happy SO sticks with business. Humor would be distracting and irritating.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    Why not Humor Overflow, where people can discuss what is funny and why, or why something isn't funny. Maybe why something is no longer funny -- or is funny in one language or culture, but not another.
- mnicole 14y ago
  Perhaps it is just the front-end issues I use SO for, but generally the top Google results aren't the most helpful for me; they're just the oldest and had, at one time, the most traction. Given the rate at which things change or other methods fare better, I've started sorting my results by date instead of relevancy and hoping Random Dude's Blog has the right answer. Sometimes you'll get lucky and someone will have posted an updated response, but it's still sitting at the bottom of the page with 0 votes, and my account doesn't have the reputation (due in part to not wanting my posts removed) to upvote them. Quite a cycle.
ygra 14y ago
It's not a dead link per se. Users with high enough reputation can still see it. But for the web at large, it is dead, indeed. Many questions from the early days of SO were closed because they were too humourous or didn't fit the “needs an objectively correct answer” – this included a lot of such “poll” questions like “What is your favourite ...?”.

Joeri 14y ago

I doubt that it makes SO a better resource. I've seen the CV patrols in action. These are teenage kids hanging out in chatrooms, gaining enough rep to close-vote (which is easier than you think) and then throwing themselves like hungry mobs on interesting questions to shut them down. The moderation system on stackoverflow is broken because an unskilled user can gain high reputation by getting upvotes from other unskilled users (I've seen a lot of wrong answers getting up-votes). This means that over time the average level of skill in the people moderating the site drops and you end up with a lower quality of moderation.

aerique 14y ago
Just an anecdote that probably says more about me than about the internet: Recently I had work on a shell script that used "sed" to make changes in config files. At some point a change only had to happen once a line with a certain string had been seen, so I googled for this situation. Multiple StackOverflow answers were at the the top of the results as well a several other sites all of them containing incomprehesible examples of line noise. Half the time, the comments on the pages with the aformentioned examples also indicated the solutions didn't work. So I did a "man sed" looking for examples but it was a pretty short man page which told me to peruse "info sed". Not expecting much I fired up info (which I generally try to avoid: just put your docs in the man page) and to my surprise there was very good and clear documentation on sed which got me to fix my initial problem in 5 minutes in a clear way (well, it did need a comment in the code). The next time I need to know anything about sed I will check the manual first.
- johncoltrane 14y ago
  RTFM is always the first thing to do. It's not always sufficient but it often is.

alphadogg 14y ago

+1 I continuously bump into valid (if not about specific lines of code) programming questions closed by some CasperOne grognard.