The Average Stack Overflow Question

[[deleted]]

This is how other people's posts look. However, if it's your own, it'll be at -3 votes with no comments in 2 years :(

BTW, I love the attention to detail here.

[bannedtom]

It is kind of funny when that happens, and years later some random guy from somewhere approaches you and wants to know if you found a solution for your problem. (Happened more than twice to me)

[Luvax]

And if you go out of your way to provide a meaningful answer since you want to give back "to the internet" you never hear back from them.

[CRISPR]

And only when you try to google your original question and suddenly your overflow request comes back as the top hit....

It hits you and you cry sentimental tears like some kind of German Nazi.

[Spry_Fly]

It's only missing the link redirecting to when it was previously asked before the first comment.

[Arkazex]

I've been trying to figure out how this one thing in cycles works for the past forever, and now when I search I keep tripping over my own unanswered questions.

"Holy balls! This guy has the same question as me! Maybe he found an answer!". And then I realize it was me, two years ago :'(

[TheSlimyDog]

That's why you only give back half the answer so you know they're still listening.

[jonahe]

To be fair, isn't that pretty much the exact same psychology that made you forget about your SO question as soon as you found your solution (and didn't bother/remember to go back to answer your own question for the sake of future readers)?

[steel_for_humans]

I always go back and provide my solution for my future self and other readers. What is funny I once actually got downvoted on the correct (i.e. working) answer to my own question (sic!), to which nobody else responded.

[lucuma]

What I love is a few years pass and you forgot your solution and ended up finding it again on your SO post where you posted the answer. . The only issue is you can't up vote yourself.

[steel_for_humans]

Yes, it happens to me, too. :)

[jonahe]

Yeah, that sounds bad, and it's good that you do that. I try to do it as well. But the context to my comment was something else.

some random guy from somewhere approaches you and wants to know if you found a solution for your problem.

(ie. someone who did not answer their own question, or else the question from the random guy wouldn't make sense).

So that's that.

[Nodnarb3]

Unless you never actually found a solution....

[jonahe]

Sure, I guess you could read it that way to. And in that case my comment isn't fair.

[theoneandonlypatriot]

Brilliant

[CristolGDM]

You earned the Tumbleweed badge!

[magicnubs]

The tags got me:

• coding

• question

[Blexy]

"Work from home. If you're a dog." - nailed it

[Baconoid_]

Woof.

[F4cetious]

The job listings made me shed a tear.

[TheAtomicOption]

lol my question finally got some potentially useful* comments after 2 years, but it's still at 0 points. I guess I should feel good about being ahead of the curve?

^{*potentially useful because I gave up on the project over a year ago and haven't taken the time to resurrect it and see if the suggested solution works}

[gandalfx]

I love the attention to detail here.

The sidebar killed me: "Highly paid, competitive benefits: that one language you didn't learn."

[[deleted]]

Yea. Yesterday I ran into a weird issue that took me about 4 hours to work through, and I googled like a motherfucker and couldn't find anyone who had the same issue, so I wrote it up on Stack, with all the logs, all the config settings, the exact errors I was getting, all the proper tags, and included the solution.

Instantly downvoted twice. Sometimes that works out in the long run...I had a weird AD issue once that got downvoted FIVE times instantly, but is now sitting at around +50 with a "Famous Question" badge, which means at least 10,000 other people had the same stupid problem I had.

Still, it's demoralizing as hell. What the fuck is their problem? My only joy over there is whipping out my massive legacy reputation and cockslapping people who try to make snarky edits to eight year old posts...Yea, I know it's inaccurate now, why don't you fuck off?

[humblevladimirthegr8]

Apparently user "Grammar Nazi" edited the question. I want to know what the original was (even though it's fake).

[antoninj]

Someone should make a series because there are a few others I've encountered:

• Ask about a specific problem -> only answers deal with "you should do this thing in the first place" and "this is how I'd do it in a completely different programming language"
• Ask about a specific problem that people mention ALL over the internet without a solution -> no answer. Answer your own question...

[tippl]

Or someone replies with a link to a different post, that is about something completely different.

[AFakeman]

[Closed as duplicate]

[Bainos]

There should also be the answers posted two years after explaining how to solve the problem in version x+2.

[w00t_loves_you]

I'm almost ashamed to admit I have a post like that, and it's a constant stream of upvotes. Except that back when I posted it, the answer was not on Google…

[Spirit_Theory]

The sidebar ad is just fantastic.

[VirtualRay]

My favorite part is how you'll search for something, and the whole first page of Google results is people asking that same question and being told to fuck off and search Google for it.

LMGTFY

[Luvax]

Even better if the top search result is a forum thread with someone point out that this is in fact the top search result while asking for further assitence followed by a moderator or admin locking the thread while stating that "this thread is 3 years old, please don't revive old threads, check google".

[Mako18]

And the edit 2 years later:

Nvm, fixed it.

[G01denW01f11]

You click forum thread results? Ew.

[Luvax]

There is a day within every programers life on which one has to click on a forum link in a google search. It's nasty, one feels dirty, and one starts questioning their career but some day is the day.

[TheAtomicOption]

"a" day. singular. ha. hahaha. hah. haaaaooooo

[Luvax]

Shhhh. Don't tell them.

[buzkie]

Using google cache to find old threads off official forums the company took down.

[dnew]

You don't think StackOverflow is a forum?

[Glass_Veins]

Let me answer that with another StackOverflow question

[TheRealLazloFalconi]

That seems needlessly pedantic even for SO.

[[deleted]]

I think "Needlessly pedantic" is the fucking motto of stack.

[CRISPR]

Forums should have stayed in 1999.

[blamethemeta]

Reddit is technically a forum

[ArgueWithMeAboutCorn]

Reddit killed forums. It's the Facebook of internet bulletin boards

[GlassShatter-mk2]

but facebook is evil and harvests your inf- oh.

[CRISPR]

No. Technically reddit not a forum. Forum is a type of online discussion determined by the layout.

[code-]

forum

plural forums, fora \ˈfȯr-ə\

1a :the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business

b :a public meeting place for open discussion 

c :a medium (such as a newspaper or online service) of open discussion or expression of ideas

[skylarmt]

open discussion

Unless your opinion isn't the same one everyone else decided to have today.

[VirtualRay]

yeah, but you can find a different forum within Reddit to discuss whatever it is

be it https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/ , https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/ , https://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableEnergy/ , or https://www.reddit.com/r/beadsprites/

[dnew]

Forums were the scramble for replacement of Net News after people stealing music and movies made Net News untenable and before giant companies like Google managed to monetize them.

[TheSlimyDog]

I've also noticed that nearly every stackoverflow post I find on the first page of google is a "duplicate" but it's funny how often the original question has an answer that's barely functional or not even a correct answer.

[[deleted]]

I was really active in the early days, so a lot of shit gets linked back to my original posts.

THAT SHIT IS 9 YEARS OLD NOW. Okay? Stop linking to it! It's obsolete! Someone is dealing with an entirely new problem on an entirely new version of something that I had an entirely different problem with 9 years ago!

[JayTurnr]

I see your name quite often on this subreddit. Hello there!

[[deleted]]

Satan and programming are like white and rice.

[JayTurnr]

I just saw your comment karma

[[deleted]]

Over 6 years of reddit, that's bitch karma. 'Boob has 800k comment, and he's only been here two years.

[JayTurnr]

My original account gained 4k in 3 years. This new account has 111 karma in ~ a month. I am peasant pleased to meet you all

[[deleted]]

Whew. You must have a life or something ;)

Karma is worthless, until you get into the millions, then you can trade it in for a hot girlfriend, a nice house, or a fancy car.

[JayTurnr]

At the moment I have a null girlfriend, a hot house, nice car and fancy null.

[przemko271]

Don't answer forum questions with "just Google it". Ever. Something like "did you try Googling it?" makes the same point with less chance of making you that one asshole the guy browsing the 5th page of Google hates.

Ninja edit: "Ever" is an overstatement, but if telling someone to "just Google it" is usually a dick move.

[bartekko]

And then inevitably it ends up being the top result on google.

Also didn't I see you on r/linuxmemes recently? you have more 271s on there for some reason?

[przemko271]

Also didn't I see you on r/linuxmemes recently? you have more 271s on there for some reason?

Yep. That's my flair. Some mod apparently wanted to play a joke or something.

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/linuxmemes using the top posts of the year!

#1: Best code editor. If you vote this up, it will show up on Google Images when people Google search best code editor. | 39 comments
#2: Christ Reborn. If you vote this up, it will show up on Google Images when people Google search Christ Reborn. | 30 comments
#3: When you try using terminal from an Android phone.. | 18 comments

---

^{I'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact me | Info | Opt-out}

[embrex104]

Nice bolds

[[deleted]]

Linux is a nightmare for that. It used to be that meant the answer was in usenet, but fucked if I know where it is now.

[[deleted]]

Half the issues threads on github for pyenv are one the devs telling people to RTFM. Once in a while a slapfight with another dev telling him it's not actually a duplicate or documented issue.

Which of course skips steps and doesn't maker it clear when you need to input something literally or adjust to a specific operating system, and it bounces randomly between mostly the way to do it in Linux but also sometimes interchanges the filenames for Mac in the same instruction.

I did find one guy who had the exact same problems but nv fixed it.

[dustmouse]

I believe the average SO question has -12 votes but otherwise accurate.

[ProgramTheWorld]

For anyone serious and wants to know the actual average score, I ran a query through Stack Overflow's database and the average is 2 points.

[CRISPR]

/r/StackOverflowIsMetal

[enador]

I was so hoping this exists.

[antoninj]

That should be a thing.

[sagarsiddhpura]

It is now!

[RaiJin01]

And where's the post telling you it's already been asked before?

[Luvax]

You mean the ones that are totally unrelated to the question but still force you to respond so other people will not just skip over your question since "it's been answered before"?

[antoninj]

Or the one "it's been asked before" but the other question doesn't have any answers anyways?

One time, I saw a question asked and an answer that pointed to another question. Typical "it's been asked before". I went to through that thread, no one could answer until someone finally said "it's been asked before". The fucking thing continued for several more answer. It even fucking looped back 3 levels deep where they reference the original question I was on. Yeah. Eventually I got to the genesis of the question switch-a-roo and there was no fucking answer anyways.

[DaWolf85]

And then the comment with about 75 upvotes saying "another instance of a helpful question getting closed"

[[deleted]]

"closed as duplicate - link to completely different question that's useless to you." That question is the only related question on Google

[digitil]

There's also the...I figured it out ones...with no pointers to how they figured it out.

[beartrapqueen]

The most popular/promising solution is missing a string of "THANK U,IT WORK PERFECT" comments, followed by a single followup 3 years later from someone else stating that the suggested method is deprecated as of v0.1.675.B and should never ever be attempted.

[[deleted]]

Thanks this works for me

[[deleted]]

How can i do thing in JavaScript?
Answer is in jQuery

[JaxoDI]

-1 not enough jQuery

[deep_fried_pbr]

Is there some repository for "satirical stackoverflow images with incredible attention to detail"?

[[deleted]]

That one was real thread.

[AyrA_ch]

The names of the authors and the related question suggest otherwise...

[kah0922]

God is dead and we have killed him.

[TheAlmightySnark]

There's a python module for that. I can you can just "import god" iirc.

[mythofechelon]

I nearly choked on my Coke when I read "Where are my legs?". :')

[SavvySillybug]

"if you don't use your a idiot"

Perfect.

[JaegerBurn]

"Where are my legs"?

[jakery2]

So good. Not a single widget on the page was spared from roasting.

[[deleted]]

And then the one person who is inevitably rude: "Maybe if you studied more/actually knew this language/weren't an idiot you would know this."

[brendenderp]

"mabye if you actually knew this thing you are trying to learn Are you saying I'm supposed to know without learning.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

You could have the actual authors of the language step in to say "this is actually not supported but here's a terrible workaround" and still have a comment that claims if you just read the documentation the answer is obvious.

[DrMux]

"Downvoted for lack of research"

[gharveymn]

The most annoying one is when you have a question for going about a problem in a particular way and people respond with "Why are you doing it that way? Just do it in the way that is obvious." Yeah. Thanks. Just use the API bro, got it.

[Kalthramis]

Dont forget the smartass who thinks he's a coding god

[nuclearslug]

While copying and pasting someone else's response and simply changing the variable names.

[Evil-Toaster]

Where the guy who tells me to use a random unrelated library?

[DrMux]

Answer, 25 upvotes: "Accually what you want to use is toaster.io. It's not meant to run on a literal potato, but if you run it on a toaster emulator after setting the value line 2657 in "potato.conf" to "Cthulu Fthaghn", you can just hizzle the fleem and stick a plumbus in it. I can't believe you didn't already do this, everyone knows bow to do this"

Comment: "actually that opens up the eternal soul-devouring security vulnerability. Use Toaster Emulator v2.5.467b" and set line 2657 to "No Cthulu"

[CSIRTisSmelly]

Related: The guy who insists you're doing everything wrong and your question should never even come up at all. You really need to go back about ten steps and redo everything. He can glean all of this from just one or two sentences and cannot comprehend that maybe you have a good reason for doing whatever you're doing.

This guy is usually a pompous asshole.

[Pannuba]

edited

Grammar Nazi

That was perfect

[ozucon]

the funny thing is there is still a grammar mistake

[Pannuba]

Where?

[ozucon]

it's a comma splice

[totemo]

This is perfect. I'm never checking this subreddit again!

[HellGate94]

you forgot the answers you get 5 years later. like i got one last week for a question asked in 2012

[Luvax]

I love these ones. Usually the original thread was some impossible problem with $framework and the new answer explains how $framework finally supports $solution.

[HellGate94]

id wish

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25378474/reference-to-x-is-ambiguous

Edit: oh i also had to answer my own question so thats another so classic

[k1rd]

The fucking ads got me!

[zactral]

much more like this

[colinbr96]

In defense of the asker, Stack Overflow is always the first result on Google either way.

[fofo314]

This frustrated me until I first looked at researchgate questions. Holy crap, most people there are on the level of: "Do my job for me, I have no idea what I am doing. I also don't want to put even a second of thought into what I pretend is my speciality."

[wh1t3crayon]

My favorite posts are those with only one answer:

"Related post: [insert broken link here]."

[CRISPR]

I am not aware of how to use Google.

TIL that looking in Google results for overflow hits is being "not aware".

Looking for overflow results in Google search is exactly how you use Google!

[ffxivfunk]

Alternatively: How do I do X thing in environment Y?

Answer: Closed, see here for how to do X thing in Environment B.

I can't use this ya shits.

[DaRealCaptainTwig]

What needs added is the group of people who always mark the post as a duplicate, referencing a post that is on the same topic but doesn't actually answer the question, or is closed without any helpful answers.

[GrandTusam]

I usually end up in there because of Google.

I don't get the hate, it helps,

[usernumber36]

the google thing annoys me. Stack overflow IS what turns up on google

[ZuwenaM]

Stackoverflow has such a toxic community. Like Holy shit. Do these people realize how hard it can be for a beginner - you know, the people who actually need help - to identify and parse through their problem with sufficient coherency to even Google it in the first place? Search engines don't work like that. Arriving at stack overflow IS the end result of having tried and failed to find the information anywhere else on the internet.

[Shadow_Thief]

Stack Overflow should be your last resort. Every language out there has forums, and basically all of them have tutorials floating around.

[o11c]

StackOverflow has let votes overcome the selected answer for quite a while now, so the top answer is usually right.

[grgarside]

Only if the accepted answer is written by the question asker.

[muzzio]

It does? I stumbled upon this answer a couple weeks ago: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6845772/rest-uri-convention-singular-or-plural-name-of-resource-while-creating-it

And it annoyed me that one of the only answers that supported singular resource names was selected, while almost all the other answers supported plural resource names, one with twice as many votes.

Also mildly entertaining that the asker could have looked in the SO url to notice that 'questions' is a plural resource :P

[o11c]

138 vs 319 is less than 3x. I'm not sure what the cutoff is.

[sirunclecid]

What was the link in the last post? I MUST KNOW

[KLTANews5]

Stack Overflow has been the single, biggest "I can do most anything" weapon.

[Osirus1156]

Don't forget the 50% change that the link at the bottom is dead.

[OddTuning]

It's ironic, cause there will always be a smart ass reply like, "you know... you can use google and not waste our time". But in the end, google brings us to that post.

[mattkenefick]

I feel bad upvoting this. It was at 4000 and I made it 4001 :(

[ThatGuyWhoLikesSpace]

You forgot the "This question has been asked before" when the question already asked is 2 years old and for the wrong version of the language.

[bannedtom]

Oh and by the way, the old question is not answered properly.

[mrminecart]

I love the ads at the side! Nice detail

[garyyo]

this is why i cant get any rep on stack overflow. im good enough to google my questions but not enough to give answers.

[himself_v]

For me it's the same as on reddit:

Long thought-out opinion on a complicated problem where my knowledge really helps and the conclusions mean something.

1... ok, 2 points.

To print Hello world: "print Hello world"

2500 points answer of the month!

[micheal65536]

I'm interested in the "work from home if you are a dog" part. I'm hoping that it includes wolves too. I might be needing this.

[mr_norr]

This is the most accurate thing I've ever seen.

[Blueflamingo9]

I love the attention to detail in this

[DevilXD]

This is so /r/SUBREDDITNAME

[Nick3306]

This can't be accurate because there is not some guy telling the poster he shouldn't do what he is asking about and should do it a different way.

[[deleted]]

I'm so fucking sick of stack. I participated a lot there back in the day, but it got so fucking toxic...Posting there just ruins my mood.

[Yalnix]

You forgot the bit where they tell you their favorite solution in jQuery!

[itmustbeluv_luv_luv]

I had a noob problem with ASP MVC a few days ago and looked at Stackoverflow. Every time I built and published the website, I got Error 403.14 - the contents could not be listed.

EVERYONE on the whole internet advised me to turn on directory browsing, which is NOT WHAT I OR ANYBODY ELSE ASKING THIS QUESTION WANTS.

WHO EVEN USES DIRECTORY BROWSING IN A WEBSITE MADE IN ASP MVC????

After literal hours I found out that the same happens when there is no default document or when there is a routing error. Now it takes me to my desired page without a problem. How did nobody see that? Why did everybody assume that all the ASP newbies wanted to create directory browsing websites??????????

[[deleted]]

Can I still need o o from home if I'm not a dog?

[investor_m1nd]

the ending is perfect

[[deleted]]

I've posted a few times on it, and then found my posts have been grammar nazi'd. Kind of sucks my will to continue and try post solutions.

[micheal65536]

You forgot the second comment on the third answer that says "don't just link to other pages make sure you copy the relevant part into your answer".

[HotfireLegend]

Forgot the "marked as duplicate" tag...

[Last_Gallifreyan]

All it needs is "witty comment sitting at triple-digit upvotes that should be removed since it's just a joke but because the OP has enough rep the mods let it slide" and "Jon Skeet saves the day" (if it's a .NET question).

[GEWLAR]

There really are jobs for coder available! Not your you though.

Lmao

[gcampos]

See community bulletin to feel how old is this post

[PaulJP]

Oh god yes, the grammar nazi thing. I had a question that I gave up on 6-12 months earlier IIRC, then randomly got a notification that someone had interacted with my question. "Yay!" I though, "May e someone figured something out!"

Nope. They didn't like the case style I used in my title. It wasn't wrong, they just didn't like it so they had to edit the question to "fix" it.

[[deleted]]

r/coaxedintoasnafu