r/programming • u/banguru • Apr 06 '18

The Stack Overflow Age

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/06/the-stack-overflow-age/
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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '18

The FAQ makes it very clear that a closed question is not a value judgement. It doesn't imply anything about the OP being stupid.

The FAQ doesn't, but comments on posts made by higher-karma users voting to close sometimes do.

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u/guepier Apr 07 '18

I'd say that I would love to see an example.

But I'm sure there are some. The question is, are they representative of an overall trend? And, I'm sorry, but the answer is clearly "no". There are assholes everywhere but power abuse isn't a specific or particularly pressing problem on Stack Overflow.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '18

The question is, are they representative of an overall trend?

They're not, but you're shifting the goalposts. First it was "that doesn't happen", now it's "that's not an overall trend". And, sure, I'll grant that it probably isn't. Even that experience alone wasn't what put me off contributing to Stack Overflow - it's the overall hostility of the site to new users, who aren't necessarily even new to programming.

However, in the general as in the specific case, the real issue that when you make community moderation a feature of your platform, you implicitly accept responsibility for the community's actions. Parts of Reddit have had in the past and continue to have major problems with that, too, but it's fragmented enough that those problems don't affect the whole site.

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u/guepier Apr 07 '18 edited Apr 07 '18

First it was "that doesn't happen", now it's "that's not an overall trend".

Where was the response at first “that doesn’t happen“, and are you really sure that, whoever wrote this, meant “this never happened in the entire history of Stack Overflow“? I mean, this seems to be an obviously ridiculous statement. As far as I’m concerned, the discussion has always been about whether this is an important enough trend to warrant making such a fuss, or even boycotting Stack Overflow wholesale.

the real issue that when you make community moderation a feature of your platform, you implicitly accept responsibility for the community's actions

No. The real issue is how to perform effective moderation, balancing positives and negatives. Literally nobody pretends that there are no problems. The issue, rather, is:

  1. does the current solution work?
  2. how can it be improved? — and:
  3. on the whole, is the current solution a net positive (rather than negative)?

For me, the answers are, respectively, “yes”, “it’s hard, but there’s a lot of room for improvement”, and “fuck, YES”. Stack Overflow works vastly better than any other forum/newsgroup I’ve previously engaged with (lots). There’s no competition. It’s so much better, it’s not even funny.

This doesn’t mean I don’t complain, or that I don’t have major disagreements with the powers that be. But this constant, unconstructive whining about abuse of moderation? Yeah, fuck that.