6 ms·

Put on hold as too broad by rene, davidism, vaultah, Sam, iCodez 2 hours ago There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long

by nkurz 12y ago

Put on hold as too broad by rene, davidism, vaultah, Sam, iCodez 2 hours ago There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question or leave a comment. Meta: It's interesting that 5 users thought that it would benefit the SO community to put this question on hold, while 100+ thought it was an interesting question. In one way, SO does keep the noise down pretty well, but this doesn't feel to me like noise. Does avoiding questions like these actually make SO a better place? Is there a reworded version of this question that would actually elicit better responses? Or is this just the joy of playing the enforcer?

digikata 12y ago
I think SO is starting the get the same problem that Wikipedia has been wrestling with - editor/moderator cliques. It may be a classic bureaucracy issue - on one hand they raise the quality bar by providing a higher level of consistency. On the other hand, they may drift from what might be considered reasonable from the point of view of more and more people outside the circle...
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  The theory of universal deletionism states that sites with extensive volunteer moderators will invariably tend towards bureaucracy and deletionism regardless of what regular users want as mods get bored and want to feel important You should see how excited the moderators get when they decide there's a new rule against some new kind of question
- sp332 12y ago
  SO was supposed to mitigate this effect by making people earn their mod rights. So you only get to call other people's questions off-topic if you have a track record of contributing to the site content yourself.
Liru 12y ago
I would say it's the latter. A majority of questions that I've found on SO that helped me solve a problem or answer a question have been marked as non-constructive. I don't know why people would do that from a logical perspective, but I can see how having the ability to moderate discussion would make one overzealous with this sort of thing.
mattmanser 12y ago
It's not 5 v 100, you have to be at a certain threshold of points to vote to close a question. I don't agree with closing questions like this either, but there are rules, those rules work most of the time and the question is broad. SO is not a Quora, it's not a discussion site, even though it would be nice to use the brain trust of SO in that way.
mirkules 12y ago
I'm not a moderator, but I agree that the question is not really constructive in the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems. The question itself is interesting as are the answers, and the whole discussion around it is great, but it doesn't belong on that site. Why is python not as fast as JavaScript is a completely different question than "An internal error occurred during updating maven project". The later seeks a solution to a problem while the former only encourages discussion but is impossible to solve (because it's not a solvable question). So, I feel this question was appropriately tagged, or perhaps even not aggressively enough.
- ProAm 12y ago
  > the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems Honestly people should read the manual then. That will give you the specific answer to your question. Stackoverflow wanted to replace other message/discussion boards in regards to programming. It's veered away from that purpose and IMHO has become cumbersome to use. If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there?
  - riffraff 12y ago
    > If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there? well, you are supposed to ask a question after you have researched the solution, so the extra worry wouldn't actually be relevant.
    - ProAm 12y ago
      The manual answers all questions related to programming.
  - baddox 12y ago
    The way I've always thought about and used StackOverflow is as a replacement for manuals, tutorials, and bug fixes—not at all a replacement for message boards or forums.
est 12y ago
> SO does keep the noise down pretty well SO also keeps jQuery signals loudest.
- tracker1 12y ago
  I think that comes from the sheer number of developers who don't understand, and haven't taken the time to actually read up on, or learn JS, using jQuery to hack together a usually working solution and then asking on SO when they hit a wall. It speaks more to the popularity of jQuery and the use of JS by those inexperienced with it than a specific signal/noise issue.

by nkurz 12y ago

digikata 12y ago

I think SO is starting the get the same problem that Wikipedia has been wrestling with - editor/moderator cliques. It may be a classic bureaucracy issue - on one hand they raise the quality bar by providing a higher level of consistency. On the other hand, they may drift from what might be considered reasonable from the point of view of more and more people outside the circle...

nerfhammer 12y ago
The theory of universal deletionism states that sites with extensive volunteer moderators will invariably tend towards bureaucracy and deletionism regardless of what regular users want as mods get bored and want to feel important You should see how excited the moderators get when they decide there's a new rule against some new kind of question
sp332 12y ago
SO was supposed to mitigate this effect by making people earn their mod rights. So you only get to call other people's questions off-topic if you have a track record of contributing to the site content yourself.

Liru 12y ago

I would say it's the latter. A majority of questions that I've found on SO that helped me solve a problem or answer a question have been marked as non-constructive. I don't know why people would do that from a logical perspective, but I can see how having the ability to moderate discussion would make one overzealous with this sort of thing.

mattmanser 12y ago

It's not 5 v 100, you have to be at a certain threshold of points to vote to close a question. I don't agree with closing questions like this either, but there are rules, those rules work most of the time and the question is broad. SO is not a Quora, it's not a discussion site, even though it would be nice to use the brain trust of SO in that way.

mirkules 12y ago

I'm not a moderator, but I agree that the question is not really constructive in the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems. The question itself is interesting as are the answers, and the whole discussion around it is great, but it doesn't belong on that site. Why is python not as fast as JavaScript is a completely different question than "An internal error occurred during updating maven project". The later seeks a solution to a problem while the former only encourages discussion but is impossible to solve (because it's not a solvable question). So, I feel this question was appropriately tagged, or perhaps even not aggressively enough.

ProAm 12y ago
> the scope of what stack overflow is supposed to do: answer questions to specific problems Honestly people should read the manual then. That will give you the specific answer to your question. Stackoverflow wanted to replace other message/discussion boards in regards to programming. It's veered away from that purpose and IMHO has become cumbersome to use. If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there?
- riffraff 12y ago
  > If you have to worry more about how you word your question than the question itself is it worth asking there? well, you are supposed to ask a question after you have researched the solution, so the extra worry wouldn't actually be relevant.
  - ProAm 12y ago
    The manual answers all questions related to programming.
- baddox 12y ago
  The way I've always thought about and used StackOverflow is as a replacement for manuals, tutorials, and bug fixes—not at all a replacement for message boards or forums.

est 12y ago

> SO does keep the noise down pretty well SO also keeps jQuery signals loudest.

tracker1 12y ago
I think that comes from the sheer number of developers who don't understand, and haven't taken the time to actually read up on, or learn JS, using jQuery to hack together a usually working solution and then asking on SO when they hit a wall. It speaks more to the popularity of jQuery and the use of JS by those inexperienced with it than a specific signal/noise issue.