4 ms·

Lastly, I have seen some answers deleted by Quora mods for their personal reasons. There is no way such thing can happen on Stack Overflow. First, there is no

Lastly, I have seen some answers deleted by Quora mods for their personal reasons. There is no way such thing can happen on Stack Overflow. First, there is no way that there is "no way such a thing can happen" on SO. SO has moderators who are human. They have guarded themselves against becoming paywalled by putting a CC license on everything they make, but there's no technical solution that can solve moderators being human. Second, there are people who complained specifically about the pettiness of the mods. Google for complains about Stack Overflow and you'll find them, including on HN. EDIT: it now occurs to me your specific complaint may have been "mods deleting answers." But mods on SO can delete questions, answers, and comments. You can find people talking about this in meta.stackoverflow.com, among other places.

lambda 12y ago
Note that high-reputation users can see deleted questions and answers on SO, and petition for them to be undeleted. So there is at least a check on the ability of the moderators to delete things for personal reasons. Most of the complaints about deletion or closing on SO are not about it for petty personal reasons, but instead a general community mindset that is a bit too quick to jump to closing imperfect questions, questions that are close to duplicates but not quite, questions that are somewhat subjective but still have a lot of users interested in them, and so on.
- slantyyz 12y ago
  >> Note that high-reputation users can see deleted questions and answers on SO, and petition for them to be undeleted. While overall, SO's a great place to get questions answered, the problem, in my mind, is that there might be a disconnect between the high-reputation users and newbies who asked and the newbies come to SO to find answers to the questions that do flagged down or deleted. While I don't think that any of the high rep users are newbie haters, I do think it can be challenging for them to see things from a newbie's point of view.
  - sosborn 12y ago
    In my experience, the standard newbie questions have all been answered. A quick search is all it takes to find the answer. The problem, of course, is that newbies rarely know the right questions to ask (read: search), which is to be expected because they don't posses the right amount of domain knowledge.
    - slantyyz 12y ago
      >> The problem, of course, is that newbies rarely know the right questions to ask (read: search) When I'm "learning a new tech" -- let's use switching from Rails to Node as an example, I usually go to Google first. Ask a question like "why would I choose Framework X over Y" in Google's searchbox, and your top results will have the same question on SO, except that it has been closed because the answer is opinion-based. The few answers to the closed question are usually fairly objective and insightful and leave me wishing that more people were able to add their 2 cents. Sometimes newbies ask a broad question to get a big picture perspective (from multiple people answering) that can't be provided by a couple of blog entries found in Google results. And yes, those questions might elicit opinionated responses, but I would argue that the responses add more value to SO than they take away.
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        >Ask a question like "why would I choose Framework X over Y" in Google's searchbox, and your top results will have the same question on SO, except that it has been closed because the answer is opinion-based. The few answers to the closed question are usually fairly objective and insightful and leave me wishing that more people were able to add their 2 cents. They are often very outdated too - some were closed 3, 4, 5 years ago and never updated.
        slantyyz 12y ago
        >> They are often very outdated too - some were closed 3, 4, 5 years ago and never updated. This is true, but closing a question pretty much guarantees that it won't ever be updated.
SwellJoe 12y ago
As much as I love the Stack Exchange sites, I also have occasional complaints about moderation. Our stuff (Webmin and Virtualmin; which whether one likes GUIs for sysadmin tasks or not, is downloaded 3 million and several hundred thousand times a year, respectively, and so is a very real part of sysadmin infrastructure in a lot of places) gets asked about occasionally, and no matter where it is asked, including on Server Fault (about system administration) there will often be a mod saying it is off-topic. Not sure what their bone to pick there is, but I don't really hold a grudge. I'd just as soon folks come to our sites or mailing lists to ask questions, anyway. It's just an odd thing some mods do.
avinassh 12y ago
> First, there is no way that there is "no way such a thing can happen" on SO. SO has moderators who are human. I agree. It may be possible, but highly unlikely. However I am yet to witness such thing happen on SO or read someone's experience on the same. I agree, SO has different problems with moderation, but mostly they are related to community, not personal level. Regarding edit, yes mods also delete questions/answers on SO. But they are still visible to high rep users and you can still talk about it on meta to reinstate. No such system on Quora, afaik.

lambda 12y ago

Note that high-reputation users can see deleted questions and answers on SO, and petition for them to be undeleted. So there is at least a check on the ability of the moderators to delete things for personal reasons. Most of the complaints about deletion or closing on SO are not about it for petty personal reasons, but instead a general community mindset that is a bit too quick to jump to closing imperfect questions, questions that are close to duplicates but not quite, questions that are somewhat subjective but still have a lot of users interested in them, and so on.

slantyyz 12y ago
>> Note that high-reputation users can see deleted questions and answers on SO, and petition for them to be undeleted. While overall, SO's a great place to get questions answered, the problem, in my mind, is that there might be a disconnect between the high-reputation users and newbies who asked and the newbies come to SO to find answers to the questions that do flagged down or deleted. While I don't think that any of the high rep users are newbie haters, I do think it can be challenging for them to see things from a newbie's point of view.
- sosborn 12y ago
  In my experience, the standard newbie questions have all been answered. A quick search is all it takes to find the answer. The problem, of course, is that newbies rarely know the right questions to ask (read: search), which is to be expected because they don't posses the right amount of domain knowledge.
  - slantyyz 12y ago
    >> The problem, of course, is that newbies rarely know the right questions to ask (read: search) When I'm "learning a new tech" -- let's use switching from Rails to Node as an example, I usually go to Google first. Ask a question like "why would I choose Framework X over Y" in Google's searchbox, and your top results will have the same question on SO, except that it has been closed because the answer is opinion-based. The few answers to the closed question are usually fairly objective and insightful and leave me wishing that more people were able to add their 2 cents. Sometimes newbies ask a broad question to get a big picture perspective (from multiple people answering) that can't be provided by a couple of blog entries found in Google results. And yes, those questions might elicit opinionated responses, but I would argue that the responses add more value to SO than they take away.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      >Ask a question like "why would I choose Framework X over Y" in Google's searchbox, and your top results will have the same question on SO, except that it has been closed because the answer is opinion-based. The few answers to the closed question are usually fairly objective and insightful and leave me wishing that more people were able to add their 2 cents. They are often very outdated too - some were closed 3, 4, 5 years ago and never updated.
      - slantyyz 12y ago
        >> They are often very outdated too - some were closed 3, 4, 5 years ago and never updated. This is true, but closing a question pretty much guarantees that it won't ever be updated.

SwellJoe 12y ago

As much as I love the Stack Exchange sites, I also have occasional complaints about moderation. Our stuff (Webmin and Virtualmin; which whether one likes GUIs for sysadmin tasks or not, is downloaded 3 million and several hundred thousand times a year, respectively, and so is a very real part of sysadmin infrastructure in a lot of places) gets asked about occasionally, and no matter where it is asked, including on Server Fault (about system administration) there will often be a mod saying it is off-topic. Not sure what their bone to pick there is, but I don't really hold a grudge. I'd just as soon folks come to our sites or mailing lists to ask questions, anyway. It's just an odd thing some mods do.

avinassh 12y ago

> First, there is no way that there is "no way such a thing can happen" on SO. SO has moderators who are human. I agree. It may be possible, but highly unlikely. However I am yet to witness such thing happen on SO or read someone's experience on the same. I agree, SO has different problems with moderation, but mostly they are related to community, not personal level. Regarding edit, yes mods also delete questions/answers on SO. But they are still visible to high rep users and you can still talk about it on meta to reinstate. No such system on Quora, afaik.