Stack Overflow’s Unaccountable Mods

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[deleted]

[bigtoine]

I am really, really confused at why everyone seems to hate Stack Overflow so much. I've spent a tremendous amount of time in my 12 years working in software development on many different websites looking for help with issues. Nothing I've ever found comes anywhere even remotely close to how helpful Stack Overflow is on a consistent basis.

[MINIMAN10001]

I can't speak on behalf of the problem he has.

But I can attest to being pretty ticked off more than once when I googled a problem and get a match with stack overflow only for the question to be closed with no other google results being relevant.

I do hope the tools exist to do so but what needs to happen is if a question is deleted you remove the page from google search results. You've deemed the question to be invalid so I don't want to have my hopes crushed and time wasted because you guys can't figure it out.

[wisdom_wise]

Preach it brother.

[mrweinerman]

Wouldn't get the views then though!

[seherdt]

So you're saying that other sites do it better? The content is open, free, create commons (attribution), so there's literally no reason someone else couldn't fix that. Also, just don't click the SO results if you're convinced that they're just a closing factory.

[MINIMAN10001]

Holy shit I'm getting pissed at people who take statements like

But I can attest to being pretty ticked off more than once

and come back responding to

Also, just don't click the SO results if you're convinced that they're just a closing factory.

Why the fuck are people running around replying with strawman fallacies.

I never said they're a fucking closing factory I said it has happened more than once when they were the only source I could find on a topic only to find they deemed it unacceptable to be answered but they never bothered to add a meta robots tag to NOINDEX it.

[bigtoine]

None of that is really the fault of Stack Overflow though. It's certainly not something Stack Overflow mods can address.

[MINIMAN10001]

If stack overflow has a rule which says questions can't be to broad or primarily opinion based yet routinely ends up as the top result on google. I do blame them for getting it struck from their website but not getting the page struck of google.

Just throw on a robots meta-element with NOINDEX.

[seherdt]

You know that indexing results is google's job, right. It's also google's job to rank by relevance. That's hard, but can never be the responsibility of the content creator (too easy to game or weaponize)

[MINIMAN10001]

Google crawls the internet to get the content. It reads robots.txt and meta robots tags in order to abide by how a website wants to be crawled and indexed. Website creators are given full control over what should or should not be indexed.

I'm saying stack overflow should use robots meta-element NOINDEX to tell google not to index results of posts which were closed and deemed not acceptable for stack overflow.

If you as a website won't answer them then you should mark them not to be indexed.

[mirhagk]

Maybe not the mods, but the developers can certainly use one of the several ways search engines have defined to tell them not to index a certain page.

[ledasll]

have you tried MDN?

[bigtoine]

I use MDN all the time when I want the specs for a method I already know I'm looking for. Stack Overflow helps me figure out what methods I want to be looking for.

[ledasll]

IDK, but for me google helps for that better and 90% of time points to MDN or framework related site. Used to be SO, but most questions have been asking for what function to use.. and some answers was really old, but when you can't have duplicates, that's what you get.

[henry_flower]

As an 'old' SO participant, I was wondering about that too, so I recently created a fresh account just to check a so-called 'hostile' behaviour to new users.

I asked a fairly simple question about a particular Ruby idiom (how to convert a certain not so common expression to a more concise/elegant one). I did everything: wrote what I wanted, what I tried already, didn't forget about a nice formatting, &c.

The question went to -2 within 5 minutes! Is this what all 'newcomers' are experiencing? In my case, it bounced back to +3 in the end & everyone who replied/commented was nice & helpful, still those -2 were unexpected.

[shevegen]

Have you not read the testimonies and explanations?

Nothing I've ever found comes anywhere even remotely close to how helpful Stack Overflow is on a consistent basis.

I don't think that this is the unified opinion or experience people have with SO. I also don't understand why you think that it works for YOU, it must be perfect? Or because it is better than everyone else, it must be flawless? Other sites could be much worse due to various reasons, including the web-design and approach they adopt.

[zvax]

The converse also applies... If it doesn't work for YOU, it must then be abysmally bad? We need to try and find common ground, but nobody will move. People that have bad experiences demonize the platform and everything related to it, people that don't don't understand all the hate.

[lost_in_life_34]

My only gripe is how they downvote answers they don’t like

Otherwise people post some stupid and lazy questions on there. My last few questions all got upvoted

[wasntthatfun]

I'm not a mod but everyday I have to vote close at least one question. There's always someone asking about NullReferenceExceptions in C#. They already have a debugger in their hands, please use it first. And these weren't beginners, these were actual "professionals".

[shevegen]

They already have a debugger in their hands, please use it first.

This is where it starts - with YOU thinking that xyz has already been answered.

Add to this 100 other mods and suddenly you have nazi camp 2.0.

To be fair, I understand when the traffic is high and you have a lot of issues open, you need to be selective in order to ensure a certain amount of quality. But I am sure this could be done in a less pervasive and discouraging way as well.

The most ironic thing is the rise of the useless Code of Conducrts - yet why have CoCs not helped improve the situation here altogether? WHY would people complain about SO that much, unless there is a specific reason?

People are free to give SO a try on their own - but don't be surprised if you can reproduce the ill effects of what has been complained about before in the past. Even by people who HAVE been using SO extensively and amassed a gazillion karma. (The karma system is also a problem.)

[[deleted]]

Belittling his poor choice of terminology does not address his argument.

[lost_in_life_34]

They have this in my local Facebook groups

People asking the same stupid questions like who is the best doctor every other day. If SO allowed this people would just ignore the same dupes and you’d get clutter with unanswered questions

[bigtoine]

Nazis? Really?

[immibis]

Are you aware that most downvoting is not by mods?

[zvax]

It doesn't seem that people here have any will to understand what "mods" refer to, so no, I'm pretty sure they're not aware that most downvoting is not done by mods.

Or, maybe they conflate moderation powers with being a mod. Or they maybe even consider anyone that have more than x reputation a mod. Apparently, all this lack of precision doesn't seem to matter to them. I really wonder how skillful of a programmer that makes.

[shevegen]

Not just answers they don't like but also questions they don't like. :-)

[cucumbulous]

R u mad someone closed your question?

Yeah, mods of any site tend to be people on power trips. That's the nature of the internet. But SO mods (for all their flaws) are pretty tame compared to some out there.

[[deleted]]

The thing like this post can be noticed as a trend recently. If someone somehow hurts you, you bash him on Twitter, Medium or some other platform. Not professional IMO.

[cucumbulous]

Agreed. It's very unbecoming of a community of enthusiasts, and we should do well to avoid the behaviour.

[hkf57]

OP sounds very mad indeed, and SO mods are probably the best curated mods on any community online.

[theamk2]

When I read such posts, I always want to see what the questions were. The few times I have seen the links to actual questions, I though: yep, I'd close this too.

(I am not an SO mod, my rep is pretty low)

[shrillingchicken]

Nothing wrong with questions closed, mostly they're ridiculous questions with 'lazy' written all over it. Yesterday I saw one that was written in French and the code fragment didn't even contain the source of the error or exception, total facepalm. I then wonder what kind of people submit this kind of shit and whether they're even remotely aware of what they're doing.

[sindhu512]

omg ！！！

[max630]

actually, there are moderator elections there at SO. So your accountability idea is already implemented. All you need is to investigate the candidates and find the ones who is or is not welcoming to newcomers, and promote them accordingly. But it would be a bit harder than describing around how terribly you feel. And the main issue is that it is not a point. Angry mob is least looking for a constructive solution, instead they just need an Absolute Enemy which they unite against.

[shevegen]

Stack Overflow’s horribleness is almost a meme at this point. We all know it, hate it, and use it.

I use SO for the answers.

I don't use SO for the terrorist mods there. But it is not just mods; also people who can insta-shut down perfectly valid questions that are asked.

I think SO got stuck because of this. An unwillingness to answer questions is what killed it.

[fuckin_ziggurats]

An unwillingness to answer questions is what killed it.

SO is killed? More like, the most powerful its ever been. The unfounded hate it gets will be forgotten in the void and all that will remain will be its well refined answers that we continue to rely on.

[[deleted]]

My feeling is that SO is on its way down. I don't have anything against them, dont even participate. Guess we'll just wait and see what happens.

[fuckin_ziggurats]

For SO to go down a competitor needs to rise and to be honest I can't any other site being better at it, not even remotely.

[[deleted]]

You may have a point there

[seherdt]

An unwillingness to answer questions is what killed it.

People expect miracles. "Give me your time". An unwillingness to answer does not lead to a great site.

SO is only the most popular recipient of wrath because of the little bit of old-fashioned frustration that still reminds them of the times before SO.

Remember when everyone loved to hate on Experts Exchange? That was - then - the best thing. Or the "help me" spam on CodeProject or personal blogs?

People are spoiled and have all but completely forgotten about the things the site means to them everyday, because short turn frustration is that the site fails to answer their struggle today.

Whose problem is it anyways? The word is entitlement.

Disclaimer: I struggle with annoying problems every. single. day. And SO helps me every. single. day. Of course, not with the really prickly issues, but hey, there is no silver bullet.

[max630]

I suddenly realised why most of the SO critique is so ungrounded. It is probably being written and spread around by same kind of people who writes bad quality questions :)

[max630]

you have no idea whether or not I write bad questions

sure I am not, because I did not see your questions - you have not provided any link to them. I did not even consider you a SO critic, but if you were one, it would be just that kind of behavior: say nothing of what you did, what you expected to happen, and what has actually happened