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Stack Overflow isn't meant to be a special site where everybody is welcome. Joel Spolsky gave a talk[1] about how the most important function of their home page
by Permit 13y ago
Stack Overflow isn't meant to be a special site where everybody is welcome. Joel Spolsky gave a talk[1] about how the most important function of their home page is its ability to drive much of the traffic away.
You may not agree, but in the eyes of most StackOverflow members, a user who posts "I will change my name to Allah Akbar if you revert my question" is generally considered a negative for the community. It is a feature, not a bug, that people like this are driven away.
Also, you seem to really be twisting the facts when you claim the user wants to delete it because they thought it was a dumb question. I'm not sure if you didn't read the logs, but they cited their primary concern as "ok i got my answers, we can delete this post now, i am not helping google users.".
http://vimeo.com/68200924 http://vimeo.com/68200924
- itafroma 13y agoYou misunderstand the point of my post: it's not merely that this user was driven away, but that the community moderation has run amok on this post over a simple, and easily resolvable problem. There is no reason why: 1. two high-rep users should've engaged in a rapid-fire edit war with a new user 2. the question deserves a -35 score I'd also argue that there was no reason the user should've been given a 15-year ban (really, 15 years? Even if one concedes a warning or a short-term ban wasn't enough, a month or even a year wasn't enough either?), but I'll agree to disagree on that. This should be held as an example of what not to do, because this level of overreaction by the community in moderating a single bad post is what drives people nuts with Stack Exchange. It's not necessary, but because of the way moderation is structured on Stack Exchange, it's so damn easy to do.