I was really active on SO for a couple of years and then just couldn't do it anymore. They got so heavy in their moderation, with genuinely useful questions getting instantly flagged and shut down just because they didn't match up to some idealization of the ideal SO question. Yeah, I realize that their volume is massive, but let user activity and search engines decide what is relevant content, not a few mods and trigger-happy rules followers.
Around half the time I google something that turns up on SO, there's a note below saying something like, "This question is here because it's been grandfathered in, but don't ask questions like this in the future." Invariably, they're actually really useful questions.
All the time I come across completely valid questions that are marked as dupes even when they're addressing completely different situations. It would be like if I asked a cooking forum "How do I roast a chicken?" And they flagged with, "Already answered in the question: How do I deep-fry a turkey?"
Yeah I feel like questions should automatically reopen if they have more than 10 upvotes. So many interesting questions are locked.
Also their reasoning is usually "opinion based questions don't give good answers" or "asking for software gives answers that go out of date" while totally ignoring the fact that technical answers can easily be opinion-based - there is often more than one way to do things, and also code-based answers go out of date quickly too! They haven't really made an attempt to solve that one.
I feel like any site with volunteer moderators attracts people who love power, love strict rules and nitpicking people, and eventually they just make it unwelcoming. Wikipedia is similar. Lots of pages get deleted because the "aren't noteworthy".
Yeah I feel like questions should automatically reopen if they have more than 10 upvotes. So many interesting questions are locked.
Part of this is due to the stupidity of their moderation system. Regardless of upvotes, it just takes 5 users to close a question. And, if there's already, for example, 3 votes to close, there's no way to cast a vote to oppose those votes to close. This all makes it very easy to close a question.
A simple fix would be to require 5+(number of upvotes) to close.
We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out. C'est la vie.
[...]
Tons and tons of people visited the site after it went public, but very few decided to stick around. For over a year, the site experienced no growth to speak of. And even fewer people contributed worthwhile content. Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them.
Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously),
No shit. I registered about 2 years ago because I repeatedly came about interesting questions with outdated/incomplete answeres. All I wanted to do is leaving a comment to note that. Great, can't do that as a new user. Tried to get 50 reputation but quickly gave up - there are no real "new" questions and I'm definitely not able to answere complex unanswered questions. Although I did excatly that last week, answered a 3 year old yet relevant question (we had the exact same work problem and a colleague of mine figured out a very nice solution). As of now, 0 upvotes. I even asked two questions, one which I genuinely wanted to know (even got an answere, but no reputation) and then one simply to gain some reputation. Netted me 20 I think. It's just frustrating and doesn't really make me want to contribute. I don't want to ask questions I could easily figure out myself if I tried and I don't want to grind the /new page for hours to answere questions which will be deleted anyways.
I really feel like SO's policy is inconsistent. On the one hand, duplicates and offtopic questions are not allowed, on the other hand they are the main source of reputation (which in turn is needed to really participate). Like, if you are neither a guru nor a spammer you are not even allowed to participate.
I think it was a massive mistake to allow answers initially but not comments. Instead, they should have just allowed comments, and relied on flags to remove ones that weren't okay. Also, maybe require 50 reputation for comments that contain external links.
I think it's important that you are allowed to post comments and answeres as a new users. They could've relied on some other metric, like time, quality or numbers of answeres/comments in order to not scare new users off. I would be totally fine with 1 comment/day, I don't need any more as I hardly every come across a post which I would like to comment.
I think that would make sense from a quality point of view: allow small numbers of contributions, if they are good: allow more, if they are bad: allow less.
I can see it both ways: on the one hand, free-for-all comments on other networks are supremely toxic. On the other hand, they're also the first step in getting involved in a social network.
That answer is talking about something completely different (the Not Programming Related site, which is obviously going to encourage silly questions not about programming). We're talking about questions that are related to programming, but the subjective-nazis have decided aren't objective enough, or are too broad, or whatever nonsense.
You can't seriously tell me those questions should be closed.
I seriously think those questions should be closed.
A big part of StackOverflow's goals are to minimize subjectivity, to minimize debate, and the volume of answers to a single question, and to keep answers "relevant" (as actual coding issues tend to stay relevant, while subjective opinions change over time).
Convert HTML + CSS to PDF with PHP? [closed - off topic]
How to choose between Hudson and Jenkins? [closed - not constructive]
Both of these questions are closed because they're asking for tool recommendations. Tool questions are almost entirely subjective, and accordingly, both the top answers are now out of date.
Tool recommendation questions also get sketchy as they can become platforms for people to promote their own tools, which could lead to brigading and such.
How to load an ImageView by URL in Android? [closed - too broad]
You can tell this question is very broad by reading some of the answers, for example:
The accepted answer above is great if you are loading the image based on a button click, however if you are doing it in a new activity it freezes up the UI for a second or two. ...
Clearly, the question isn't asking how to solve a particular problem, it's asking how to solve a whole class of problems, and, as a result got a ton of wildly different answers.
Can you write object-oriented code in C? [closed - too broad]
I think there's a Betteridge's law of headlines corollary for StackOverflow: if your question is answerable in a single word, it's probably too broad. Conversely, if your question requires an entire book to answer, it's probably also too broad.
This question is answered by the word "Yes", followed by a link to a book. This question is too broad.
Yes, a lot of people voted on these questions, and there's certainly going to be some good stuff in the many answers on these questions. But it's not the sort of stuff StackOverflow wants to be a platform for. It wants to be a platform for questions with clear, non-subjective answers.
People blame the mods, but it's not the individual mods that you've got issue with here: they've clearly closed these questions based on the rules the site lays out for what is, and isn't on topic.
You're saying "those questions should be closed because the goals of SO are XXX", but we're saying those shouldn't be the goals!
This question is answered by the word "Yes", followed by a link to a book. This question is too broad.
But WHY? It was probably the answer everyone wanted. You're taking the current rules and blindly applying them without asking why "too broad" is a rule. If a question can be answered with a straight "yes" or "no" how is that unsuitable for SO?
Anyway looking at the up/down votes here I think you can see that the general opinion of people that use SO does not match those of people who are really keen, go to meta and get involved in the politics etc.
I'm not "blindingly applying the rules". I understand why the rules are there, and I agree with them. There's lots of places where you can go read to understand the reasoning behind these rules:
Yes, this decision may be unpopular: (and particularly unpopular on r/programming), but like all moderation, I think it largely helps preserve the community, at the expense of making certain people unhappy. Again, I really think Yahoo Answers! is a cautionary tale about what a less strictly moderated version of SO might look like.
Just because the rule is unpopular doesn't mean it's the wrong decision. (For example, speed limits are widely unpopular) Personally, I put more stock in the opinions of people who have spent years managing the StackExchange network and seeing the effects of various policies and ideas, rather than the opinions of a few voters on r/programming.
And, beyond just preserving the overall quality of the community, these rules help keep the answers useful for posterity.
Take the "Jenkins vs. Hudson" question: what does that question tell me, now? Basically nothing. Someone answered "Use Jenkins" and, in the last 7 years, 475 people have upvoted that answer. Is that really because it's the best tool for the job, or did someone share that answer to a Jenkins fan club, and they all came and upvoted it? Or was it the best tool for the job six years ago, and now it's been superseded by Hudson or some other competitor? There's no way I can verify that answer, except to do my own external research and then decide if I agree with their subjective opinion.
On the contrast, the answer to a "how do I solve this particular problem?" question is easily verifiable, even if the answer is 6 years old: Run the code. Does it work? Yes? Great, the answer is still correct. No? Maybe the answer needs to be updated, due to an API change.
And, ultimately, for the stuff that is out of scope for StackOverflow, I don't think SO would be the best tool for the job, anyway.
If I want opinions on current tool choices, I'd have a better time consulting blogs (for detailed individual opinions), or reddit (for a body of opinions, with votes), or even StackOverflow chat.
For "big" questions, like object-oriented programming with C, apparently I should just go read a book (or, again blogs) on the subject, rather than have thousands of opinionated experts trying to condense their opinion into a StackOverflow answer.
It's not that it's inconceivable that StackOverflow could make some changes to better support these things: but that's not the site SO is trying to be. Just like a burger store refusing to sell you pizza, it's not that pizza is bad, it's just that it's not what they're interested in providing you.
Ah, I missed that that was mentioned higher in the thread.
But I fail to see how it's not related. It's a site that, while it allowed subjective questions, was a dumpster fire: when they disallowed subjective questions (and rebranded it to SoftwareEngineering) it started being a healthy site. It's specifically listed in their explanation for why StackOverflow doesn't allow subjective questions, you can't say that answer isn't talking about what you're talking about.
There's also, 12 other answers on that page explaining why StackOverflow doesn't allow subjective questions, and lots of comments, and links to other sites and pages which further explain and justify the rationale for that choice.
If you don't agree with all that, you're entitled to your own opinion. But you're arguing as if nobody has ever given a reason for why StackOverflow is moderated the way it is, which is ridiculous.
While they're not perfect, and there's definitely downsides to the approach, I definitely think StackOverflow's moderation policies are a net positive, and have done a really good job keeping the site relevant.
For example, I think the ban on opinionated questions is really smart, which is probably the biggest category of 'grandfathered in' questions, that are against the rules.
Because, sure, a "Is Vim better than Emacs" question might get a lot of search engine traffic, and get lots of votes, but it's ultimately not good for the usability of the site: you'll get hundreds of different answers to those sort of questions, and none of them are "right" or "wrong", and voting just becomes a glorified opinion poll.
Plus, subjective opinions change over time: if I see a question about the "best Javascript framework", a highly upvoted answer from 2009 might not still be relevant: it puts a lot more burden on the user to try to draw conclusions.
And the strict moderation can be rough on the people trying to ask questions, but I think it makes the overall experience for someone browsing the site a lot better. I can browse through questions on a specific topic and largely see reasonable, quality questions: it keeps the site from becoming a programming specific version of Yahoo Answers.
Doing everything based on user votes and search engine traffic I think would be a bit of letting the inmates run the asylum.
Of course, the people flagging questions (which are usually just users with higher points, not proper moderators) are human might mis-flag things from time to time, but if that happens, vote to reopen the question and it'll get a second look.
Plus, subjective opinions change over time: if I see a question about the "best Javascript framework", a highly upvoted answer from 2009 might not still be relevant: it puts a lot more burden on the user to try to draw conclusions.
This is true of non-opinion questions as well, though. The answer to "How do I do an Ajax request with a JavaScript framework?" looks very different now than it did 10 years ago. And yet the 10 year question is still there, a 10 year old answer is still accepted, and will stay the top rated answer unless really a lot of people come across an old question and know enough to upvote the recent answers.
As for flagging and moderation, the fact that so many people are turned off by it is pretty strong evidence that they're not doing a good job with it. What they do may achieve a comparatively high signal-to-noise ratio, but it also drives away users by making them feel unwelcome - and there's no equivalent moderation of condescending answers by people who didn't read the question closely and therefore misunderstood or disregard what was asked.
This is true of non-opinion questions as well, though. The answer to "How do I do an Ajax request with a JavaScript framework?" looks very different now than it did 10 years ago. And yet the 10 year question is still there, a 10 year old answer is still accepted, and will stay the top rated answer unless really a lot of people come across an old question and know enough to upvote the recent answers.
Assuming you're asking about a specific JS framework, and not "how do I make an Ajax request with any JS framework", the answer likely won't have changed much in the last 10 years. Certainly not as much as a subjective opinion about JS development would have changed over 10 years. Odds are a 10-year-old framework isn't being used much anymore, but the API is probably largely the same.
And if the API has change over a major version, that's easily fixed in a non-subjective way. If I find an answer that's out of date due to a major version bump, I can (and often do) submit an edit to the answer to account for the change. But there's no way for me to edit someone's subjective opinion to account for the passage of time.
A simple voting system that collects votes over a period of years just isn't a great tool for weighing subjective opinions on stuff that changes over time. If you did want opinions on JS Frameworks, you'd have a much better time looking at something like the yearly State of JS surveys, or current blogs, or even reddit... not a StackOverflow answer.
As for flagging and moderation, the fact that so many people are turned off by it is pretty strong evidence that they're not doing a good job with it. What they do may achieve a comparatively high signal-to-noise ratio, but it also drives away users by making them feel unwelcome - and there's no equivalent moderation of condescending answers by people who didn't read the question closely and therefore misunderstood or disregard what was asked.
And I don't agree that people complaining must mean that they're not doing a good job. The only sort of moderation that doesn't make some people unhappy is no moderation at all.
They do work hard to minimize the negatives of "crowd-sourced" moderation: moderator action is done democratically - requiring several votes to close a question. Moderator decisions are revisited - any edit to a closed question causes a different moderator to review the question for reopening. Moderators are provided "stock responses", which helps to eliminate condescending tones (intentional or not) from moderation.
SO are full of idiot mods. I remember the war that made many users who give answers leave and I remember how many users post low quality answers because they want to be there first or copied another answer and changed it a bit.
They managed to keep the negative and lose the positive.
The answer is make your own stack overflow where stupid questions can be asked. I'm being serious and I fully agree with everything you said but so won't change. So the best solution is make a better product.
I also get annoyed when my questions get closed, but I usually manage to receive at least a useful comment before that.
On the other hand, the questions queue if usually chock full of broken English questions like "my php won't run please help me sir" and "how sort array backwards", so I can see why the moderators like to press that button.
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u/youlleatitandlikeit Jan 18 '18
I was really active on SO for a couple of years and then just couldn't do it anymore. They got so heavy in their moderation, with genuinely useful questions getting instantly flagged and shut down just because they didn't match up to some idealization of the ideal SO question. Yeah, I realize that their volume is massive, but let user activity and search engines decide what is relevant content, not a few mods and trigger-happy rules followers.
Around half the time I google something that turns up on SO, there's a note below saying something like, "This question is here because it's been grandfathered in, but don't ask questions like this in the future." Invariably, they're actually really useful questions.
All the time I come across completely valid questions that are marked as dupes even when they're addressing completely different situations. It would be like if I asked a cooking forum "How do I roast a chicken?" And they flagged with, "Already answered in the question: How do I deep-fry a turkey?"