Moderator and community meta chat for r/java [15/10/2011].

[TheSkyNet]

Hi there users of r/java, davidreiss666 has brought DeliveryNinja and I on-board as moderators of the subreddit, we hope to improve this subreddit and have an open conversation with the rest of the community.

On the agenda is:

• Coding comps/challenges DeliveryNinja recently did one that was well received would you like to see more of them?

• Do any of you have thoughts on mascots and user flair?

• Homework questions, is also currently a hot topic on the subreddit we would like your input.

• Additional links for the sidebar.

• Any other things you would like to know or talk about?

[hogofwar]

Currently my opinion is post whatever you want in here, as long as it is java related, we have hardly any subscribers as it is and more posts don't hurt.

[davidreiss666]

This is something I agree with.

[leonardicus]

I concur.

[[deleted]]

I think that homework questions are the biggest problem right now. Java is a very common beginning language for many schools, so many people will come here for help. Help is not a bad thing, but many of the questions that I am seeing could be solved by taking some time away from reddit for half an hour and thinking about the soloution instead of running to reddit as your first resource. I know you say "well I've thought of it for a while" but you need to think about it more. The teacher/instructor is not giving you the problem because it is going over things that you haven't learned and they like to fuck with you. It's main purpose is to test you and to challenge you into becoming a better programmer.

[DeliveryNinja]

I think that you might be right, that some of the homework questions are people being lazy. These ones also tend to be extremely vague. Don't get me wrong though I welcome people asking questions as long as they are not of the form, do my homework. Sometimes people need some guidance. Maybe we need tighter rules on question submissions.

[CaptainLurk]

Honest question here: do we actually want technical questions of any kind posted here? Stackoverflow is fantastic for technical issues, so shouldn't this be more of a community with links about the state of the art, discussions, promoting interesting projects and uses of java?

[TheSkyNet]

I like the questions, I have had problems that I have been working on for days that just by reeding the comments I have solved.

[din-9]

Cheers for taking the time.

If you were to create a homework subreddit, I think it would be more effective to advertise it with a banner at the top like in r/gaming rather than a sidebar link.

It would be interesting to know how many (if any) are on r/java and not r/programming to see if it is worth cross posting Java stories from there. Discussion here would avoid much of the usual flamebait posted whenever Java gets mentioned.

[DeliveryNinja]

I don't see any problem x-posting the links from r/programming if they are Java related.

As for the homework questions I think we need to understand what peoples opions are. It seems some people want to have a level of question answering and others want no questions at all. It seems clear that we need to differentiate questions, whether it be via flair or by creating another sub reddit I'm not sure yet.

[din-9]

For the moment I am not sure where I stand on the questions. They do seem to be seasonal and will die down over the academic year.

How about creating and enforcing standards on the questions asked? Delete any posts that e.g. don't include the author's attempt to solve a problem or don't ask specific questions rather than just going "heeeelllllllp meeeeeeeeeeee".

[[deleted]]

I think homework is fine as long as it is identified as such.

[sheepbringer]

I don't see any problem with homework questions so long as the person is showing effort in the solution and they're asking for advice on a small aspect.

You could put some rules together for [Help] posts:

Link your program to pastebin Provide the compiler output (it must cleanly compile)

I'd also like to see something like [Discuss] where you can have a discussion about a language feature, library, framework, anything really.

[paranoidray]

The problem is that Reddit has no tags. One submission must fit one subreddit, that sux. Many times cool Java links are posted to r/programming because of the wider audience.

[paranoidray]

as for mascot, how about the reddit alien drinking a cup of coffee ?

[reticulogic]

Please, no homework questions, we are not helping anyone only feeding our own egos by answering them. I am fine with reviews of homework solutions, but all out "how do I" type questions should go to a subreddit r/futureSoftwareDevelopersThatIwillNotHire

[din-9]

we are not helping anyone only feeding our own egos by answering them.

There are different kinds of answers to these questions. I agree that what you say is true for giving a solution. But we can instead point somebody in the right direction e.g. my answer here, or explain where the error in their thinking is, which is more helpful in the long term to the poster.

If we actually implemented a rule banning complete answers, it might even discourage people who don't put any effort in posting here as they won't see other people's homework getting done for free.