5 ms·

When Google lands me there, about 80-90% of the time a SO post contains the answer I was looking for, it has tons of votes, yet is closed as being off-topic or

by jrcii 11y ago

When Google lands me there, about 80-90% of the time a SO post contains the answer I was looking for, it has tons of votes, yet is closed as being off-topic or too broad. Useful yet puzzling.

scrollaway 11y ago
As a mere reader and non-user of SO, does it matter if the question was closed? The answer's still there, googlable, and it still gets updated regularly, no?
- christianmann 11y ago
  It suggests that this is not the ideal sort of question for the site, and that any future attempts at similar questions may be met with greater resistance. Additionally, if the relevant information ever changes, no new answers can be submitted.
  - Retra 11y ago
    There is a lot of linking to other SO answers, so if someone asks a question about new information, you can still refer to closed questions and expound on them. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it's an option.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    If SO really feels these questions are unworthy, they should add a noindex tag to the result and give up the Google juice. Something tells me that's never going to happen, though.
  - cardiffspaceman 11y ago
    I posted an answer to a question that had an accepted answer, and it gets upvotes once in a while. The accepted answer was correct at the time. My search for the answer later turned up the SO question and answer plus the new correct answer from the cmake site. So I posted my new information as a new answer. I think if a question is closed, that would mean no corrections or updates would be possible.
- DanBC 11y ago
  SO incentivises some stuff. You ask a question and you get points if other people upvote your question. You answer a question and you get points if someone upvotes your answer. You can't vote on closed questions or answers to closed questions. A question can't just be closed. There needs to be a reason to close it. "This question is a duplicate of this other question" is frequently used. Often the questions are similar but different enough to need a new question. You can't ask a broad question to capture all the variation - that'll get closed as too broad. You can't focus in on your exact problem -that'll get closed as too narrow. The gap in the middle is full of dupes. It's pretty demoralising to have people picking over your question and closing it for (seemingly bogus) reasons or asking for pointless clarification.
  - codinghorror 11y ago
    Incorrect, you can vote on closed questions. You just can't add new answers.
    - curiousjorge 11y ago
      I understand that SO is about building a knowledgebase but isn't it clear that a lot of people view SO as more of a Q&A + forum? When you close a question, it feels like censorship, which is frustrating because continued discussion and up to date answers are almost always expected. Anyhow, SO isn't the same site it was 5 years ago. It's actually pretty darn toxic for new userbase and seems to cater to the mods themselves.
      - mistermann 11y ago
        > continued discussion and up to date answers are almost always expected That's another frustrating gap in SO: the absolute ignorance of the notion of time and change. Both questions and answers often have a significant timeliness attribute (ex: what are the best online resources for learning <x> as of Jan 2015), and SO has no support for this. To be fair it's a hard problem, but I'm not even aware if it has even been discussed. I'd like to think that the platform is now mature and tuned enough that they could start to introduce some major new functionality rather than just keeping the lights on.
- ivanhoe 11y ago
  In programming (and many other fields) things change quickly, something that was a good idea 3-4 years ago may now be a really bad advice. Closed questions can't be updated with the improved answers, so IMHO they simply can't be trusted anymore
gnufied 11y ago
There is a tendency among the new mods to retroactively close questions which were asked and answered years ago. Honestly, I don't get it. Here is a question of mine for example (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-image-editing-tool-canvas-or-svg http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-...). Leaving aside the question if the question is indeed off-topic, I don't know why anyone will come 4 years later and question intelligence of person asking the question and person answering it. Are these mods suddenly wiser than participants 4 years ago or here to stroke their ago?
- mostlystatic 11y ago
  I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. There used to be a question about popular programming blogs. To me it looked like a good and popular question, so I asked a similar one - which was then closed, because by then the consensus among the mods had moved on to discourage that kind of question.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    > I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. Which brings us back to the original question: why isn't it welcome. Yes, I understand the very real requirement for SO to drift towards a forum, but I think they've drawn the line very far from the optimal place. Furthermore, the insane success of SO has largely killed off specialized forums where that type of very valuable conversation formerly took place. I wish SO would introduce a discussion forum site or "layer" (integrated into SO itself in some way). Jeff's motivation for SO was something along the lines of making the internet a better place - in my opinion, many of the current mod's actions are contrary to that initiative. SO is still a massive net benefit, but it could be better with a little common sense. "Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been reopened!" One would hope it would prompt some discussion and soul searching, but I expect not.
- cardiffspaceman 11y ago
  There is apparently a deep queue between the action of recommending that a question be closed, and when thwt recommendation is acted on. I have a question which admittedly, I put in the wrong section of the site. When I comolained about an anonymous, unexplained downvote, a helpful passerby left a comment that included useful advise, meta advice about where to post if I needed further help, and the observation that questions don't close as quickly as they should because the queue is too long.

by jrcii 11y ago

When Google lands me there, about 80-90% of the time a SO post contains the answer I was looking for, it has tons of votes, yet is closed as being off-topic or too broad. Useful yet puzzling.

scrollaway 11y ago

As a mere reader and non-user of SO, does it matter if the question was closed? The answer's still there, googlable, and it still gets updated regularly, no?

christianmann 11y ago
It suggests that this is not the ideal sort of question for the site, and that any future attempts at similar questions may be met with greater resistance. Additionally, if the relevant information ever changes, no new answers can be submitted.
- Retra 11y ago
  There is a lot of linking to other SO answers, so if someone asks a question about new information, you can still refer to closed questions and expound on them. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it's an option.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  If SO really feels these questions are unworthy, they should add a noindex tag to the result and give up the Google juice. Something tells me that's never going to happen, though.
- cardiffspaceman 11y ago
  I posted an answer to a question that had an accepted answer, and it gets upvotes once in a while. The accepted answer was correct at the time. My search for the answer later turned up the SO question and answer plus the new correct answer from the cmake site. So I posted my new information as a new answer. I think if a question is closed, that would mean no corrections or updates would be possible.
DanBC 11y ago
SO incentivises some stuff. You ask a question and you get points if other people upvote your question. You answer a question and you get points if someone upvotes your answer. You can't vote on closed questions or answers to closed questions. A question can't just be closed. There needs to be a reason to close it. "This question is a duplicate of this other question" is frequently used. Often the questions are similar but different enough to need a new question. You can't ask a broad question to capture all the variation - that'll get closed as too broad. You can't focus in on your exact problem -that'll get closed as too narrow. The gap in the middle is full of dupes. It's pretty demoralising to have people picking over your question and closing it for (seemingly bogus) reasons or asking for pointless clarification.
- codinghorror 11y ago
  Incorrect, you can vote on closed questions. You just can't add new answers.
  - curiousjorge 11y ago
    I understand that SO is about building a knowledgebase but isn't it clear that a lot of people view SO as more of a Q&A + forum? When you close a question, it feels like censorship, which is frustrating because continued discussion and up to date answers are almost always expected. Anyhow, SO isn't the same site it was 5 years ago. It's actually pretty darn toxic for new userbase and seems to cater to the mods themselves.
    - mistermann 11y ago
      > continued discussion and up to date answers are almost always expected That's another frustrating gap in SO: the absolute ignorance of the notion of time and change. Both questions and answers often have a significant timeliness attribute (ex: what are the best online resources for learning <x> as of Jan 2015), and SO has no support for this. To be fair it's a hard problem, but I'm not even aware if it has even been discussed. I'd like to think that the platform is now mature and tuned enough that they could start to introduce some major new functionality rather than just keeping the lights on.
ivanhoe 11y ago
In programming (and many other fields) things change quickly, something that was a good idea 3-4 years ago may now be a really bad advice. Closed questions can't be updated with the improved answers, so IMHO they simply can't be trusted anymore

gnufied 11y ago

There is a tendency among the new mods to retroactively close questions which were asked and answered years ago. Honestly, I don't get it. Here is a question of mine for example (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-image-editing-tool-canvas-or-svg http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-...). Leaving aside the question if the question is indeed off-topic, I don't know why anyone will come 4 years later and question intelligence of person asking the question and person answering it. Are these mods suddenly wiser than participants 4 years ago or here to stroke their ago?

mostlystatic 11y ago
I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. There used to be a question about popular programming blogs. To me it looked like a good and popular question, so I asked a similar one - which was then closed, because by then the consensus among the mods had moved on to discourage that kind of question.
- mistermann 11y ago
  > I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. Which brings us back to the original question: why isn't it welcome. Yes, I understand the very real requirement for SO to drift towards a forum, but I think they've drawn the line very far from the optimal place. Furthermore, the insane success of SO has largely killed off specialized forums where that type of very valuable conversation formerly took place. I wish SO would introduce a discussion forum site or "layer" (integrated into SO itself in some way). Jeff's motivation for SO was something along the lines of making the internet a better place - in my opinion, many of the current mod's actions are contrary to that initiative. SO is still a massive net benefit, but it could be better with a little common sense. "Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been reopened!" One would hope it would prompt some discussion and soul searching, but I expect not.
cardiffspaceman 11y ago
There is apparently a deep queue between the action of recommending that a question be closed, and when thwt recommendation is acted on. I have a question which admittedly, I put in the wrong section of the site. When I comolained about an anonymous, unexplained downvote, a helpful passerby left a comment that included useful advise, meta advice about where to post if I needed further help, and the observation that questions don't close as quickly as they should because the queue is too long.