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Stackoverflow is mostly kind to newbie questions; Serverfault however however seems to be moderated by a bunch of stuck up assholes. I had a newbie question whe

Stackoverflow is mostly kind to newbie questions; Serverfault however however seems to be moderated by a bunch of stuck up assholes. I had a newbie question when I was setting up some dedicated servers for the first time: my newbie question, about networking/nas etc, got shutdown with bunch of snarky comment on the line of "hire a trained experienced networking guru". I have never gone back since then.

morbius 13y ago
Correlation != causation. I've seen many noob questions on StackOverflow that go either way, and many on SF that also do the same. Every moderator is different -- there are plenty of overzealous ones on StackOverflow and plenty on ServerFault. Same goes for any StackExchange site, really.
danbruc 13y ago
I obviously have no clue what your question was but I can understand this attitude to some degree. Let me explain. I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the early years. Most of the questions were interesting and not answered before. I almost stopped contributing in recent years because now there are so many trivial questions and questions that have been answered before. I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. And I never understood StackOverflow as having the goal to teach programming but to help solving non-trivial problems. Now there seems to be a ton of question like how do I open a file in Python. More and more people seem to just ask everything on StackOverflow instead of reading a manual, a book, a tutorial or at least look if there is already an answer that can be adapted to their problem. I can not quantify this, it is only my personal understanding of what questions should be on StackOverflow and what should better be looked up elsewhere, but I can to some extend understand that people get annoyed be some questions.
- rpedela 13y ago
  I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.
  - gum_ina_package 13y ago
    I think his point is that there should only be one "how do I open a file in Python" type of question/answer. Not 30 like there are today.
    - rpedela 13y ago
      Yeah I agree with that. However Google usually does a good job of finding the "best" version of a particular question and making that the first or second result.
    - reeses 13y ago
      Your comment is quite pythonic. There should be only one question about the only one right way to do something in python.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    So your using SO to have other people read documentation and regurgitate the contents for you. Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.
    - genwin 13y ago
      Useful, I say. It's documentation regurgitated into an efficient Q & A format.
  - danbruc 13y ago
    That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- jakejake 13y ago
  I agree 100% for duplication questions. I don't have a problem with the asker getting a little spanking if they didn't bother to do any research or put in any effort whatsoever. As for "simple" questions, to me it seems all just relative. Basically, as long as it isn't a dup then I don't mind it being there. In some ways stack exchange has evolved to become a code snippet library. I guess I can see why some people might not like it, but it has helped me many, many times.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  > I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? The user probably didn't understand how to use the answers for apples and oranges on peaches. This probably means that the answers could be improved by making it clear how to apply them. The problem might be that older questions are locked even when their answers are not perfect?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? Not necessarily. It could just mean that the person asking the question hasn't bothered to look at what has already been asked and answered.
- ColdHawaiian 13y ago
  I've been contributing a lot of answers to Stack Overflow lately myself[1], and I agree that, after a while, I'm tired of trivial questions popping up all the time, because frankly, they aren't interesting to solve. Not only that, but if you have too many of those on the site (which I think is currently the case on SO), then it makes it harder for contributors to actually find good, interesting problems to help solve. Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that. However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators). [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake
jakejake 13y ago
There is nothing more infuriating when you have (what you feel is) a good question that gets unceremoniously shut down. I do sometimes think they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater at times. But it's a pretty undeniable source of great info and I don't think I would be able to cut myself off from the site. I try to just not take anything too personally there - especially the actions of just one or two rude people.
lazyant 13y ago
Agree, look at the answers by one of the moderators: http://serverfault.com/users/126632/michael-hampton?tab=activity&sort=all&page=2 http://serverfault.com/users/126632/michael-hampton?tab=acti...
- danbruc 13y ago
  Can you point to any specific answer? I clicked through a couple of the highest voted and a couple of most recent answers and they all look fine to me.
  - lazyant 13y ago
    For ex somebody askign "Best way to optimize site speed for a large traffic website?" and the comments: - I took a look at the site before I commented. Dollars to donuts the code is a nightmare pile of spaghetti "written" by people who have never even heard of design patterns. - Probably to scrap the whole thing and start over with a decent CMS. Funny thing, besides the curtness, is that he's most likely not even technically correct, since performance issues on web sites are rarely due to the choice of CMS or in its code.
    - danbruc 13y ago
      large traffic website and 500-1000 visits minimum a day don't match to begin with. I am not sure if visits means request or visitors but neither one request every 90 seconds nor one visitor every 90 seconds should do any harm to any server. I did not look into the page but I have no problem to imagine that this comments actually reflect the best option. I don't even consider the wording especially impolite. Sometimes reality is tough.
      - lazyant 13y ago
        If we don't know what's really wrong with a website it's no good to answer "use another CMS", it can be wrong and it's not helpful at best, it would be better to give some pointers on where to start figuring out what's wrong. Also the pompous "design patterns" comment; a lot (30% ?) of web sites in the Internet run on spaghetti code (Wordpress, Drupal) and many are fine, if I had to I'd bet the CMS and its code is not the problem.
bachmeier 13y ago
> Stackoverflow is mostly kind to newbie questions Can you elaborate? It seems most newbie questions on stackoverflow are closed, they get scolded in the comments about asking their question wrong, or someone posts a vaguely related link and claims without explanation that it is a duplicate question. Whether or not the system is effective, I don't see how it can be described as "kind".
- EpicEng 13y ago
  I disagree. Newbie questions are answered as fast as they are posted because they are the ripest source of reputation. Of course, unintelligible and/or unanswerable (usually due to lack of information) questions are closed, but "Segfault in C Linked List" and "Why does x = x++ + ++x Give the Wrong Result?" questions are asked and answered every day (every hour?)
nulagrithom 13y ago
Server Fault isn't meant for newbie questions; it's meant for career sysadmins. It's the wrong place to ask for help setting up your first dedicated server. http://serverfault.com/tour http://serverfault.com/tour Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. Contrast this with... Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers.
- bashcoder 13y ago
  But visit each site without being logged in, and they both lead with "Anyone can ask a question." Regardless, the heavy-handed moderation and negative feedback cycle actually means that Server Fault is only meant for seasoned career sysadmins who shouldn't need a Server Fault.
  - nulagrithom 13y ago
    Because seasoned professionals never have any questions? I find this hard to believe.
    - bashcoder 13y ago
      Not because that was the intent of Stack Exchange, but in my view that's the end result of the generally hostile culture at Server Fault. Don't get me wrong - striving for excellence requires high standards. But in Meta, their best answer to the question, "How do I ask better questions?" is 1,780 words long.

morbius 13y ago

Correlation != causation. I've seen many noob questions on StackOverflow that go either way, and many on SF that also do the same. Every moderator is different -- there are plenty of overzealous ones on StackOverflow and plenty on ServerFault. Same goes for any StackExchange site, really.

danbruc 13y ago

I obviously have no clue what your question was but I can understand this attitude to some degree. Let me explain. I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the early years. Most of the questions were interesting and not answered before. I almost stopped contributing in recent years because now there are so many trivial questions and questions that have been answered before. I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. And I never understood StackOverflow as having the goal to teach programming but to help solving non-trivial problems. Now there seems to be a ton of question like how do I open a file in Python. More and more people seem to just ask everything on StackOverflow instead of reading a manual, a book, a tutorial or at least look if there is already an answer that can be adapted to their problem. I can not quantify this, it is only my personal understanding of what questions should be on StackOverflow and what should better be looked up elsewhere, but I can to some extend understand that people get annoyed be some questions.

rpedela 13y ago
I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  I think his point is that there should only be one "how do I open a file in Python" type of question/answer. Not 30 like there are today.
  - rpedela 13y ago
    Yeah I agree with that. However Google usually does a good job of finding the "best" version of a particular question and making that the first or second result.
  - reeses 13y ago
    Your comment is quite pythonic. There should be only one question about the only one right way to do something in python.
- mhurron 13y ago
  So your using SO to have other people read documentation and regurgitate the contents for you. Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Useful, I say. It's documentation regurgitated into an efficient Q & A format.
- danbruc 13y ago
  That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
jakejake 13y ago
I agree 100% for duplication questions. I don't have a problem with the asker getting a little spanking if they didn't bother to do any research or put in any effort whatsoever. As for "simple" questions, to me it seems all just relative. Basically, as long as it isn't a dup then I don't mind it being there. In some ways stack exchange has evolved to become a code snippet library. I guess I can see why some people might not like it, but it has helped me many, many times.
RyanZAG 13y ago
> I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? The user probably didn't understand how to use the answers for apples and oranges on peaches. This probably means that the answers could be improved by making it clear how to apply them. The problem might be that older questions are locked even when their answers are not perfect?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? Not necessarily. It could just mean that the person asking the question hasn't bothered to look at what has already been asked and answered.
ColdHawaiian 13y ago
I've been contributing a lot of answers to Stack Overflow lately myself[1], and I agree that, after a while, I'm tired of trivial questions popping up all the time, because frankly, they aren't interesting to solve. Not only that, but if you have too many of those on the site (which I think is currently the case on SO), then it makes it harder for contributors to actually find good, interesting problems to help solve. Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that. However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators). [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake

jakejake 13y ago

There is nothing more infuriating when you have (what you feel is) a good question that gets unceremoniously shut down. I do sometimes think they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater at times. But it's a pretty undeniable source of great info and I don't think I would be able to cut myself off from the site. I try to just not take anything too personally there - especially the actions of just one or two rude people.

lazyant 13y ago

Agree, look at the answers by one of the moderators: http://serverfault.com/users/126632/michael-hampton?tab=activity&sort=all&page=2 http://serverfault.com/users/126632/michael-hampton?tab=acti...

danbruc 13y ago
Can you point to any specific answer? I clicked through a couple of the highest voted and a couple of most recent answers and they all look fine to me.
- lazyant 13y ago
  For ex somebody askign "Best way to optimize site speed for a large traffic website?" and the comments: - I took a look at the site before I commented. Dollars to donuts the code is a nightmare pile of spaghetti "written" by people who have never even heard of design patterns. - Probably to scrap the whole thing and start over with a decent CMS. Funny thing, besides the curtness, is that he's most likely not even technically correct, since performance issues on web sites are rarely due to the choice of CMS or in its code.
  - danbruc 13y ago
    large traffic website and 500-1000 visits minimum a day don't match to begin with. I am not sure if visits means request or visitors but neither one request every 90 seconds nor one visitor every 90 seconds should do any harm to any server. I did not look into the page but I have no problem to imagine that this comments actually reflect the best option. I don't even consider the wording especially impolite. Sometimes reality is tough.
    - lazyant 13y ago
      If we don't know what's really wrong with a website it's no good to answer "use another CMS", it can be wrong and it's not helpful at best, it would be better to give some pointers on where to start figuring out what's wrong. Also the pompous "design patterns" comment; a lot (30% ?) of web sites in the Internet run on spaghetti code (Wordpress, Drupal) and many are fine, if I had to I'd bet the CMS and its code is not the problem.

bachmeier 13y ago

> Stackoverflow is mostly kind to newbie questions Can you elaborate? It seems most newbie questions on stackoverflow are closed, they get scolded in the comments about asking their question wrong, or someone posts a vaguely related link and claims without explanation that it is a duplicate question. Whether or not the system is effective, I don't see how it can be described as "kind".

EpicEng 13y ago
I disagree. Newbie questions are answered as fast as they are posted because they are the ripest source of reputation. Of course, unintelligible and/or unanswerable (usually due to lack of information) questions are closed, but "Segfault in C Linked List" and "Why does x = x++ + ++x Give the Wrong Result?" questions are asked and answered every day (every hour?)

nulagrithom 13y ago

Server Fault isn't meant for newbie questions; it's meant for career sysadmins. It's the wrong place to ask for help setting up your first dedicated server. http://serverfault.com/tour http://serverfault.com/tour Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. Contrast this with... Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

bashcoder 13y ago
But visit each site without being logged in, and they both lead with "Anyone can ask a question." Regardless, the heavy-handed moderation and negative feedback cycle actually means that Server Fault is only meant for seasoned career sysadmins who shouldn't need a Server Fault.
- nulagrithom 13y ago
  Because seasoned professionals never have any questions? I find this hard to believe.
  - bashcoder 13y ago
    Not because that was the intent of Stack Exchange, but in my view that's the end result of the generally hostile culture at Server Fault. Don't get me wrong - striving for excellence requires high standards. But in Meta, their best answer to the question, "How do I ask better questions?" is 1,780 words long.