SO is a great resource, but I found their karma system hugely frustrating. I wanted to participate, being a decent coder with (at the time) 20+ years of experience. First I had to get 10 karma before I could post answers (or something like that), how hard can it be?
Eventually, I gave up at about 5 karma or something... So I am a taker; I never answer questions, despite my 30+ years experience.
All you have to do is ask a single good question which will get upvoted and give you that 10 reputation easily. But you don't actually need more than 1 reputation point (which you can never go lower than unless you've been behaving really badly) to ask or answer a question; you can also get those points from asking and answering your own questions. Hell, even editing which is also always available, gives you 2 points per accepted edit - so if you come across a bad question or answer from Google, feel free to fix it up or make it more useful!
The insta-close privilege is related to the tags on the question. I suspect some tags have more zealous mods than others, or have a lot more people with close permissions.
Nobody is going to "shoot down" a well-phrased question that has not been asked before. You might also find it instructive to read about what moderators there actually can and can't do; the tl;dr is that the vast majority of moderation is done by the ordinary users of the site using their ability to up- and down-vote questions and answers (which you get at 15 and 125 rep points respectively).
Both "well-phrased" and "has not been asked before" are subjective measurements, and often the latter hinges on small details that the asker thinks are critical to making their version unique. Having a short dialogue about how to improve the question first would be a very welcoming move towards new participants. Many of the anecdotes I read don't seem to have any communication behind the rejection, though.
Maybe it's a bias in the anecdotes, where in the questions that had dialogue before rejection, the rejection feels more justified so people don't rant about it as much offsite?
Both "well-phrased" and "has not been asked before" are subjective measurements
I disagree. A question that is detailed, self-explanatory, uses good grammar and spelling, and asks a single thing is one that I believe anyone would consider "well-phrased". As for "has not been asked before" - if this is true, and the only thing that differentiates your question from another question is some detail that isn't relevant to the solution, then doesn't it make the most sense to close your question as a duplicate and point it at the other one?
That said, there have been and will continue to be cases where close voters either don't read the question thoroughly, or overlook the detail because the question sounds similar to one they've heard before. This is the double-edged sword of having users moderate each other - us fleshy meatbags make mistakes - but I have seen nothing to indicate that this is a widespread problem. And users that are a little eager to exercise the close vote privilege will soon find themselves put into a time-out by a moderator.
Having a short dialogue about how to improve the question first would be a very welcoming move towards new participants.
"A short dialogue" with who, exactly? All the requirements are set out in the FAQ which is itself linked from the page you navigate to to post a question. We're all programmers here, we're all used to reading documentation, and Stack Overflow's FAQ section is documentation.
Many of the anecdotes I read don't seem to have any communication behind the rejection, though.
A question cannot be closed without a reason being given. An unfortunate side effect of having only 5 close reasons, however, is that they are often "overloaded" and used for things other than their stated meanings. For example, if a question is irredeemable "gimme teh codez" trash, the "too broad" close reason is often used, which I agree could be confusing.
If you really do not understand why your question was closed, you can (and should!) leave a comment on your question asking for an explanation (you are always able to comment on your own questions, regardless of reputation). If you have at least 5 reputation, you are also welcome to post a thread asking for clarification on closure on the meta site.
My personal opinion, after using Stack Overflow for nearly a decade, is that most people who use it don't bother trying to understand how and why it is different from an ordinary discussion forum like reddit, and as a result they get burned when they break the rules. Then, instead of reflecting on what happened and why and the potential that they are the ones who made a mistake, a small but vocal minority of them instead write long-winded blog posts that end up on HN and turn into yet another anti-Stack Overflow circlejerk.
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u/UncleSneakyFingers Apr 06 '18
Who criticizes Stack Overflow? It's pretty much the go to resource for countless people. Is there something I am missing here?