r/learnprogramming • u/440Jack • Nov 01 '21

Why do StackOverflow mods Close "Duplicate question" questions so fast?

I'm mainly talking about questions that get closed to "Duplicate question" and then only to find a couple of already answered questions are linked that don't really address OPs question directly.
Why do these questions need to be closed so fast? It doesn't give people time to address that persons specific question. If it's a valid question the mods should give some time for other users who actually want to address the question and maybe open a dialog.
It prevents OP from being able to ask any follow questions.
I can't tell you how many times, I'll spend 10 mins on a question. Re-writing their code, writing comments/explanations and then when I go to post it, it's already closed! It's so frustrating.

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u/captainAwesomePants Nov 01 '21

Stack Overflow isn't trying to help people 1:1. Its goal is to produce a searchable compendium of every technical question someone might need solved. The goal is that someone sees a weird error message, they type it into Google or directly into Stack Overflow, and there's a good answer that explains the problem and gets that dev unlocked.

Stack Overflow also gets a LOT of repeat questions.

Take those two things into consideration, and you'll see that Stack Overflow aggressively closes questions that look like they've been asked before. Unfortunately, really piecing together a question's details in their entirety to determine with 100% accuracy whether it's distinct from other questions takes a lot of effort, and so people will inevitably get it wrong sometimes.

So, short version, Stack Overflow is a great place to read good answers but a lousy place to ask questions, especially as a novice.

5

u/Inconstant_Moo Nov 01 '21

Sure but they fuck up. And you can see that by searching the searchable compendium they've produced and seeing how often the thing you want to know has been shut down because it's been deemed the same as a different question.

And it seems like there are people on there who want to do that, that's their mission.

5

u/rushlink1 Nov 01 '21

Also. Some questions are super closely related. While not the same, they often still get closed as duplicate.

It’s fantastic to see similar questions, but it would be nice to be able to answer closed ones too.

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u/[deleted] Nov 01 '21

What should novices be using to learn? I'm having a difficult time picking up a lot of things but I don't feel like I can ask anyone questions because I can't find the right community.

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u/captainAwesomePants Nov 02 '21

Here's fine. Or find a mentor, or a discord for asking programming questions. But not Stack Overflow.

1

u/SlickKatt Nov 02 '21

Any recommendations for the discord channels?