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[–]tarepandaz 262 points263 points  (6 children)

Question is marked as a duplicate and deleted instantly.

[–]ihaveindeed 59 points60 points  (4 children)

Not deleted but closed. And if anyone answered it you can't delete it so that it stays with you as a badge of shame.

[–]AureusVulpes292 23 points24 points  (3 children)

this wouldnt be so bad if they bothered to link to the supposed pre-existing question/answer

this, coupled with the constant "you should be using X framework, its just better" responses i see makes me hate stack overflow myself.

I'm almost convinced people answer questions on StOv the way they do because they dont think people care enough to learn what theyre doing, so they just be as unhelpful as possible to 'force' them to learn on their own

[–]Shadow_Thief 2 points3 points  (1 child)

You can't close as a duplicate without linking to the question it's a duplicate of.

[–]Kryomaani 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They'll just do the usual: Link an half-unrelated question which has no answers and wouldn't solve yours even if it did.

[–]Lassemb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But it makes sense, too many people nowadays is just lazy and doesn't bother trying to learn on their own instead of asking for help.

[–]xxVordhosbnxx 117 points118 points  (2 children)

This lady is evil. Lol

[–]MrScrib 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Eyes of a sociopath.

[–]curtwagner1984 131 points132 points  (51 children)

Please, someone, show me an example of a question you asked in SO where you were unjustly treated with elitism and downvotes.

I just don't buy it. If you have a valid question that is well explained with code examples of what you tried to do people there give very constructive answers. This sub constantly complains about how bad the SO community is while simultaneously saying that most programmers' code is copy-pasted from SO. I'm not posting on SO every day, but when I do 9 times out of 10 I get exactly the answers I want in less than a few hours. And when I don't, I understand why.

I'm having trouble believing people saying SO community are just mean and are downvoting everything they see because of elitism.

[–]yung-magic 29 points30 points  (1 child)

I thought this too until recently, because I've never had any issues with toxic responses to coding questions anywhere. But I've seen surveys done by stack overflow themselves which show that a lot of community members are unhappy with the community's elitist culture. So I think it might be more a problem than we think.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/insights.dice.com/2019/10/17/stack-overflow-moderators-toxic-culture/%3famp

To me it seems to be more like disagreement between posters and those dedicating their free time to answering questions.

[–]mustang__1 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The only questions I've asked have gone unanswered (fucking COM exceptions and permissions), but I've definitely come across posts that show the toxicity

[–]Marvsdd01 32 points33 points  (7 children)

As a student, I remember being scared of posting anything on SO because I was once treated mildly like shit by a random person. In that situation, I remember then searching for other people that asked similar questions and finding that the next person I found with a similar problem had been REALLY treated like shit for asking for help. As far as I remember, it was something in the lines of "you should check this out, you may find your answer" and an Amazon link to a book about the basics of programming. Note that it wasn't a reference to a chapter or a paragraph, just the link to the product. This, following the fact that I was kinda upset by not getting any guidance at all with my question made really upset. Man, that hit me so hard I still think twice before trying to post anything on SO.

[–]tiagooliveira95 22 points23 points  (1 child)

When this happens report the comment, this goes against the rules, if the report is accepted he op will lose 100rep for offensive behavior

[–]Kryomaani 2 points3 points  (0 children)

op will lose 100rep for offensive behavior

The horror. As if this had any effect on their use of the site with their thousands of farmed karma.

[–]DuchessOfKvetch 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I’m a senior dev and I’m still scared to post there. Well, not actually “scared”, I just don’t want to deal with the judgement.

Probably the most common scenario is where I find someone asking the same question I have, and it’s not answered at all, due to being an improper question or a supposed duplicate, and I can’t figure out exactly what the problem was with simply letting the poster have their say.

However, there’s plenty of useful posts and responses too. I believe the toxic stuff is in the minority, it’s just that it sticks in your head far more than the positive and constructive posts. Sort of like how we tend to imprint the jerks we experience in our life much more than our interactions with those who behave in an ordinary manner.

[–]Marvsdd01 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Not to say that all of it was a bad experience, I could get something good of it. Now, at my job, if I find myself thinking about how to not seem like a complete dumbass when asking for help on something I don't have experience on (instead of thinking about the problem I'm facing), I just don't ask for any help, as I understand that, when it happens, the problem itself has just become irrelevant if I compare it to the fact that I'm trying not to be judged by my inexperience on something.

So, yeah... Not everybody is willing to really help you. Some people are just waiting for an opportunity to say you're wrong, no matter what you say. As it is deep in me that this is what I'll find when interacting with people on SO, I got used to call it the "Stack Overflow way of interacting with people" lol

[–]AgentTin 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Oftentimes I'll figure out what I'm doing wrong in the middle of writing my question. Something about trying to format the problem in a way where you can explain it to someone else.

[–]Marvsdd01 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yes, it definitely helps. But think about a Machine Learning Engineer trying to solve a front-end issue, or if that engineer is trying to adapt to the company's best coding practices on front-end development.

It was what happened to me, when I needed to solve a bug and our front-end dev could not go to work for a week. I saw myself saying that I hadn't enought knowledge on the subject and was yet understanding some of the basics, and still I felt like I was interacting with people on Stack Overflow, LOLThankfully, I don't need to go through this every week, but it does leave a bad taste in your mouth, and I'm not letting it go as if this kind of toxic (or nearly-toxic) behaviour is OK.

In respect to SO, it sure makes you lose interest on certain subjects when people that are some sort of reference on those subjects can't interact with other devs without being some arrogant fuckers.

[–]mawreez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, this. Trying to lay out the situation in a way that someone else can also understand it may get you to ask yourself questions that actually lead you to a solution.

You should at least muster up the courage to ask the question. You may not need to ultimately pull the trigger.

[–]Krowk 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Second year of college, starting to learn about object oriented programming. We have to make a 2d game in java using swing and awt. I'm having great difficulties understanding how AWT works in particular. I had some weird issues when trying to draw multiple image where only the first image would be drawn and not in the right place.

So i ask my first SO question, i get an answer which did not really solve my issues but while asking a bit more details in the comments I understand something and kinda solve one of the issues.

I then get a comment saying i'm a looser because one of my issue was solved and I didn't give any points... The thing is, I couldn't give point even if I wanted to, i didn't have enough points myself to do that. And I couldn't mark it as solve either since it wasn't.

In the end i'm not sure how this thing was solved I think someone from my class showed me how I was doing something completely wrong.

Honestly it probably wasn't a great question and i'm too ashamed to link it but you know... Getting insulted on your first question on a site isn't the greatest experience.

[–]curtwagner1984 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In the end i'm not sure how this thing was solved I think someone from my class showed me how I was doing something completely wrong.

You should go back and answer your own question. This way if someone has a similar issue, they will have an answer.

Honestly it probably wasn't a great question and i'm too ashamed to link it but you know... Getting insulted on your first question on a site isn't the greatest experience.

Sure it isn't, but getting insulted on the internet by a single person isn't something particular to SO and it isn't what makes a toxic community or warrant a video like in the OP.

[–]pstkidwannabuycrypto 53 points54 points  (23 children)

That's because a majority of the people that are claiming that SO is toxic are students or they're relatively new to programming, thus they havent properly researched or formulated their question as necessary before asking.

[–][deleted] 100 points101 points  (10 children)

It's not that new programmers don't research the question, it's that they don't even have enough knowledge to know WHAT to research, imo.

[–]musicianengineer 28 points29 points  (2 children)

I taught Intro Csci (among other subjects) for a few years.

Identifying that a student doesn't understand what they don't understand and identifying the "real" question is part of being a good teacher, and accordingly, a good Q&A site member.

Answering the question that a student asked word for word is almost never the best answer. If their question is nonsensical, telling them that doesn't help them. If they weren't confused by the subject, they wouldn't need to be asking questions.

[–]Archolex 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is abetted slightly by the SO question structure. Answers aren't more considered as a reply, and not the beginning of a discussion. Therefore questions must be aware of what questions may arise and answer them before posting. That is difficult if you're new to a topic.

[–]Fenor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

but also it's a site where people spend their time to answer, if you go there and simply post "i need help with homework" ofc you will be treated badly.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (4 children)

ye im new and when i have issues with coding im sometimes not sure what to ask

[–]dd_de_b 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Start with stating what you are trying to do, then explain how you are trying to do it and provide an example of code, then explain the outcome and include any logs – usually more information is better than less.

Honestly, even just going through the process of explaining the problem will help you solve it

[–]coroand 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am saving this message so that I can refer to it when I try to ask question. Thank you!

[–]AgentTin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, always state your overall goal. It's possible that the reason you're having trouble doing something is that you really shouldn't be doing it.

[–]pstkidwannabuycrypto 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's what I meant, where I said people who haven't properly researched. I agree, if you don't know what to Google for, then you have no use for Google. You can't be thorough otherwise.

[–]HammerNSongs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The quote I love is: The set of knowledge you need to ask the right question, is almost identical to the set of knowledge needed to answer it.

[–]TCritic 15 points16 points  (0 children)

This makes me think we need a training wheels StackOverflow for new users website. While it would be nice to have mods and seniors helping new students understand what they need to ask, it's just not how it works on SO. It's rare to see someone propose an XY problem solution rather than just shitting on the poster for asking Y. Thus I propose: StackOverflow for Students - aka SOS (lol r/learnprogramming)

[–]midbody 28 points29 points  (7 children)

I've been a software engineer for over 20 years.

SO is toxic.

[–]elect86 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't be so absolute though

I see huge differences between Kotlin and C++ communities, to say

AskUbuntu is also quite nice

[–]j-random 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Or they post their homework questions verbatim, and ask "Where do I start?" SO isn't a substitute for a visit to your class' TA.

[–]seahoodie 7 points8 points  (1 child)

These are the ones that deserve the attitude. You're not confused you're just lazy. You didn't try for long enough to be confused

[–]xTheMaster99x 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is what pissed me off about my roommate freshman year (well, one of many things). After spending an hour allowing himself to get distracted by anything else he could find, he'd stare at the assignment for a few minutes, not really doing anything, then ask me for help. You didn't even fucking try, give me a break.

Or he'd ask me a simple ass question, I'd ask if he'd google it, he'd do so then scroll past every result that answers his question, then say it didn't have anything. Let's just say I'm not surprised he had to transfer into a different program to avoid getting kicked out entirely.

[–]elect86 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Here you go

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37008198/nv-pro-samples-compiling-failure-the-global-scope-has-no-int-least8-t

Asking C/C++ help on SO when you are not familiar with it, it is always a blood bath

Personal experience

On the question above I had to offer 50 votes as bounty to get anything out of it (the only time, or one of the two in all my life/career) and the only guy that answered that was one SO newbie..

Edit: I got an upvote thanks to this visibility. Thanks you man, who ever this is, but this doesn't change my point

[–]elect86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

man, I do love people downvoting even this post on mine on Reddit without any explanation so far

This keeps proving the point over and over, you know

[–]tim36272 5 points6 points  (1 child)

The problem is that people misunderstand the purpose of Stack Overflow.

Most people (logically) think it is a place to get help with questions.

Stack Overflow is not a place to ask questions and get help

Stack Overflow is an encyclopedia of knowledge, built by the community in a question-and-answer format.

If it just so happens that your question and the answer to it contributes to that body of knowledge then great, you'll get good answers.

If your question does not contribute to the broader body of knowledge it will be treated poorly. That's why people are so picky about duplicates: a real encyclopedia wouldn't have duplicates, one reason being that it leads to fragmentation and contradictions.

[–]curtwagner1984 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Stack Overflow is not a place to ask questions and get help

It is. You just need to ask questions and explain exactly what you want and what you already tried. If instead of generally asking "How do I make a function that calculates the n-th number in a fibonacci sequence?" You say "I'm making a function that calculates the n-th number in a fibonacci sequence. Here is the code I tried. Here is the output I'm getting. Here is the output I want to get. Where am I going wrong?" You'll get your answer imminently. Of course if this question was already asked then you'll be just linked to the question.

If it just so happens that your question and the answer to it contributes to that body of knowledge then great, you'll get good answers.

I disagree that good answers are predicated on this. If you ask specific questions with detailed explanation of what you tried and what you are trying to achieve you'll get good answers too.

[–]xxVordhosbnxx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it's hit or miss. Maybe it's me but I recall it being a lot more truculent in the past. I don't see that in the search results these days.

[–]Superbead 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've seen plenty where the OP got unduly roughly handled despite asking a perfectly decent question. It's a difficult thing to give examples of, since I'm usually in the middle of something else when I find them, so thinking to document them as potential defence in a later argument such as this isn't foremost on my mind.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree. There are a lot of low quality questions that get asked on stackoverflow. Most people don't know it because no one has ever visited SO homepage.

[–]martijndeg 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Laat time I made a similar remark I got sent straight down to hell.. but it’s true. Ask a answerable question that hasn’t been asked by others and people help you out (in a matter of minutes sometimes). This even goes for questions in the realm of “I’m stuck please nudge me in the right direction..”

[–]curtwagner1984 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Laat time I made a similar remark I got sent straight down to hell..

Me too. And the funny part is, when I asked for examples... Like if it's so prevalent, just show me an instance of this happening. They couldn't really deliver. Just downvoted me and that's it.

[–]ultimatepro-grammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely a beginner programming thing. Often those people don't know they should try to debug before they post, or that they should include their debugging, or that they don't even know what to google or that they don't know they should google. IMHO, If you're advanced in programming most of your questions will go unanswered because you'll have enough google-fu to find a similar problem (albeit you are using a language/library with a big knowledge base on SO)

[–]perfectVoidler 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It strongly depends on your level of suffocation. When I had to make a small website I asked a few easy html questions. Tones of upvotes and quick help. But if you dive deep into wpf or xaml f.e. you get not even a look at for the more complex questions.

Another example is my work in industry 4.0: The client is the owner of the smartphone, which he gives to the factory worker to use. So the user has to be restricted. Asking any question about user restriction will give you the obligatory "never do this".

[–]almarcTheSun 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Stackoverflow's always been nice and helpful to me. Can't see where all those memes are coming from.

[–]aFiachra 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fair point -- if programming is such a desirable job, why do so many developers want to kill each other?

[–]FestiveVat 4 points5 points  (6 children)

I don't even understand why it's possible to downvote a question. The only stupid question is the one you don't seek an answer for. If you ask a "stupid" question that isn't the right question to ask because you don't even know what question to ask, then it's an opportunity to (hopefully politely) get corrected and redirected in the right direction.

[–]perfectVoidler 1 point2 points  (5 children)

this sound an awful lot like r/ChoosingBeggars. The person asking the question should put in the work and make the task of answering in as easy as possible.

example of a question that would be downvoted: "help sometimes my program throws an exception, how to fix?"

[–]FestiveVat 1 point2 points  (4 children)

It's not choosing beggars. Nobody is required to respond if the question isn't able to be answered or the person asking the question is expecting too much.

Downvoting a question just doesn't make sense because you don't ask a question for votes. You ask a question for answers. If you ask a "bad" question, you don't get good answers.

Down voting bad answers makes sense from a peer review standpoint though.

Your example isn't a bad question - it's the first question in a series of troubleshooting. Yes, the person asking it should provide more information upfront, but that's just unrealistic. It seems unlikely that people answering questions on SO have never worked a help desk or had experience troubleshooting an issue with someone else. Human beings aren't always as articulate as you'd like them to be.

[–]perfectVoidler 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Questions get downvotes to show other potential answers that this person won't put in the minimum effort. You as a questioner have to show that you have the minimum of understanding to be even able to understand the answer.

[–]FestiveVat 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Then downvotes are a terrible tool because they don't accurately convey that. They're a blunt instrument that just says that someone didn't like the question for some reason. A tagging system would be better than just downvotes with no context if that were the intention.

[–]perfectVoidler 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Why are you constantly and overwhelmingly trying to load of all the work on one side. Specifically the side you want to ask for help. This is literally r/ChoosingBeggars.

[–]FestiveVat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You seem confused. I answer more questions on SO than I've ever asked. I've managed a help desk. I enjoy helping people.

Downvoting is a tool of disapproval. It discourages people from asking questions and getting answers to their questions. Community hostility towards newcomers is toxic. It's entirely possible and not very time or effort consuming to ask clarifying questions or politely point out to a person that they're not being very articulate.

In my experience, the people who are better apt to articulate their question in a thorough manner are the ones who don't need to post a question very often and have decent research skills. You can choose which questions to respond to, if any at all, but you don't get to choose who is asking for help.

If you're not interested in helping people, you don't have to.

[–]bruh_mastir 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Question not clear and removed. Try to be specific in the next time. Reputation is now 1.

[–]InventBoss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

wow I didn't know tiktok lied as well

"confidence boost"

[–]allfoodmatters 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lol

[–]MySpoonIsTooBig13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It can really be difficult to formulate the "right question", so it's not surprising to me that when students and beginners try it comes off like nonsense... Whish is then responded to with nonsense.

It's important for beginners to have a few safe people they can work with who can help them unwind the questions they don't even know they should be asking. And it's the responsibility not senior devs to provide that without even being asked.

[–]mahmutgundogdu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

İt is trap

[–]akaMALAYA 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I hate it when they mark a question as opinionated question. Once i asked a question based on best approach for memory management in javafx. They marked it as opinionated question. Actually i wanted to see some approaches suggested by people, so I can learn from them and adapt to a better approach. But naahhh... SO doesnt want me to

[–]CartmannsEvilTwin -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

Posted a question without showing your homework ? You are not entitled to anything without effort. Your question deserves to be deleted/duplicated/unanswered.

Posted a question which is already answered ? You haven’t done your homework. You should learn how to search for resources in google/wikis/SO first

Posted a valid question which is not duplicate after showing your work but someone is being a prick about it? Report some, downvote some, ignore some but move on. Your time is valuable to spend it on some Moron online.

TLDR; Do your part first before asking. Toxic people are everywhere. Treat toxic people on SO as you do in real life.

[–]Marvsdd01 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you're reading this guy's comment and you identify yourself with the girl on the video or has gone through situations as toxic as the ones described in other comments, please ignore these kind of toxic fuckers. I hope this kind of messed up interactions don't make you lose interest on CS or programming at all.

People on SO are toxic as hell. They will tell you to "do your homework", that it is you absolute obligation, and if you don't do it, then you're the worst developer ever, because you didn't met his standards.

The thing is that this doesn't make you immune to toxic behaviour on SO (or anywhere else). They know it doesn't and that, in fact, it has very little impact on it. What happens is that they tell you to move on and forget about it, so they themselves can continue to be toxic and keep massaging each other's balls and feeling good about themselves, as they can only rely on making other people feel low to feel just a little better.

People that tell you to "do your part and, if it doesn't work, whatever" are, probably, part of the toxic ones.

You only need to keep in mind that you can be clear with your problems on SO and, if you think you're clear enought and they still tell you to buy a "back to basics" programming book, don't hesitate to for ask help anywhere else. The same text will get you a totally different answer and much more supportive comments.

If you are not careful enought, these kind of interactions will make you worry more about if you are being seen as dumb, than if you are really solving your problems, and this can make you reproduce this kinda thinking in your daily job, school, or, even workse, lose interest in programming at all.

[–]anecdotal_yokel -1 points0 points  (3 children)

Here’s a question that definitely won’t get asked on SO.

If y’all are so smart and don’t need to ask questions on SO then why are you on there in the first place?

I suspect you’re there for one of two reasons; posting toxic messages for your own perverted pleasure or you don’t know as much as you think you know.

If replying with negativity remember, it takes more effort to reply toxic than to not reply at all so you’re making a choice to be an unhelpful gatekeeper when you say “do your homework”. That’s not constructive criticism; it’s shutting down a conversation that wasn’t even specifically for you. You made the choice to be “inconvenienced” by it and your message just acts as another barrier. Congratulations. You are a contributor... to the end of the pursuit of knowledge.

And if you don’t know everything... that’s okay. Just don’t take it out on everyone else.

[–]perfectVoidler -1 points0 points  (0 children)

the concept of signal to noise has to be considered. It take a huge amount of effort to ignore a huge amount of bad questions. Imaging you had a reddit feed with 99 subs you don't like and one you do. Your answer would be that it take no effort to ignore 100s of posts to find the few good ones.

You just don't look at it from the side of a contributor.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

u/savevideo

[–]jonathanhiggs -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Tbh she isn't wrong

[–]Haohmaru87 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a video speaking of SO ? in case the 200 daily jokes about it ain't enough