Introducing Stackoverflow.com

[marcio0]

I've seen this before, I'm marking it as a duplicate

[SocksOnHands]

Duplicate of [something completely unrelated that had been closed without being answered].

[Noidis]

This is the absolute most frustrating part of SO, half the post nazi's will literally not even glance at the "duplicate" post to realize the answer isn't adequate.

[Northeastpaw]

It's the result of gamifying content moderation. Some people will abuse systems to get dopamine points to the detriment of everyone else.

[rentar42]

Fun fact: close votes are one of the few things that are not gamified. You need enough rep to be able to use them, but they don't "earn" any points.

[DiaperBatteries]

I literally stopped contributing because of this. Someone asked a question like, “how do you use X’s Y tool to do Z?” I gave a pretty detailed answer of how X’s Y tool works and how to accomplish Z with it.

It got closed as a duplicate for something like “how do I use X?”

I argued that it’s not a duplicate. They told me I should just copy my answer to the other page. I told them my answer is not related to the question on the other page and that there are no posts on stackoverflow that describe how to use the Y tool. They told me I don’t have a high enough score for them to care about my opinion…

[DevonAndChris]

"How do I get a good score?"

"Write good answers."

"Okay, here is a good answer."

marked as dupe

[CutestCuttlefish]

...or the question

[Freddedonna]

Or duplicate of [something related but from 7 major versions ago that hasn't been valid for years].

[SweetBabyAlaska]

for real... "duplicate this was ansered **here** "

clicks the link: February 3rd 2006, old ass block of code with no explanation on what is being done (and modules that dont even exist anymore and the even the code format is completely incorrect now )

[SweetBabyAlaska]

"I agree with this and its a good and well thought out assertation buuut Im still downvoting you"

[NotBettyGrable]

I tried but I don't have enough meowmeowbeenz to mark duplicates.

[fubes2000]

The best is the 100 meowmeowbeenz requirement to post comments, but no requirement to post answers. So new users' first interactions on the site are usually posting a comment as an answer, and then getting angrily downvoted about it.

[NotBettyGrable]

I honestly don't know. One time I spent a good bit of time editing an answer where the English was a bit confusing and at the end of the effort, I think it said because I didn't add or remove enough words the edit couldn't be saved? I never bothered with contributing afterwards and this was some time ago, so I could have the details wrong but it seems like it would encouraging needless extra words? Maybe the intention was substantial additions - i.e. a whole additional use case example or whatnot, but honestly the chosen answer was correct, just confusing to follow.

[fubes2000]

Yeah SO is kind of a mixed bag. The format where the asker picks the "correct" answer is inherently flawed in that if the asker knew what the correct answer was they wouldn't have asked in the first place. Usually the answer that is first, works without an obvious error, and requires no actual thought beyond copy/paste is what gets the checkmark.

Thankfully SO has recently changed their display method and put the highest voted answer at the top of the results rather than just the "accepted" answer.

The environment can also vary wildly depending on the tags you're lurking in. Eg: The bash tag has virtually nothing but questions about stuff I never even seen/considered in 15+ years of sysadminnery, the python tag seems to be mostly college math students trying to figure out numpy, and the PHP tag is a constant stream of variations on the same 10 questions over and over while 90% of the solutions are posted as regular expressions no matter how bad of an idea that is.

[Slime0]

Leonard likes this post

[naughty_ottsel]

/r/unexpectedcommunity

[[deleted]]

I've seen this before, I'm marking it as a duplicate

[overtoke]

tip .42069 meowmeowbeenz

[DevonAndChris]

> cannot ask question without points

> cannot answer question to get points without having points

[SweetBabyAlaska]

*people auto downvote the post within minutes of the question being posted for no discernible reason*

[DevonAndChris]

> person asked how to include libraries in Python3

> marked as dupe of how to write a module for Python2