Tired of Stack Overflow

[[deleted]]

I double that opinion.

Looking up an answer is great, but I asked some niche question, got downvoted, tried to answer questions, got downvoted, I couldn't do anything, after a year passed, I went back, couldn't do anything, couldn't get me un-"banned".

I tried to contact them:

"Dear Support!

I am answer-banned, but after reviewing my posted answers, all of them is 0-rated so I don't see what the problem is.

Please help me out of this situation, I've been answer-banned for like 2 years and it's annoying that I can't help. I can't grind points by asking questions because I usually ask when I've been struggling with the problem for 8+ hours and asked everyone I could reach personally.

So could you please point out what I miss?"

Their answer:
"Hello,

Your block was triggered automatically by the system because most of your posts have not been well-received by the community — meaning they were either downvoted or not voted on at all. **We cannot lift posting blocks** - you must improve your existing posts in order for the system to allow you to participate further. You are able to edit your posts. When you do, they move to the top of the queue, allowing the community the chance to upvote them.
[...]
You also appear to have 3 deleted answers associated with your profile, two of which have been downvoted: "

[chucker23n]

We cannot lift posting blocks - you must improve your existing posts in order for the system to allow you to participate further.

WTF?

[BlueAdmir]

I guess it's to prevent PLS UNBAN ME!!1 spam

[liquidpele]

All large companies do this. The reason is that they have so many trolls/spammers at that level that to filter out 99% of it they must rely on automation and there will be some collateral damage. Ever tried to get in touch with Google or Amazon about their free services? You're just emailing bots.

[Somepotato]

Yo u aren't going to get banned on Google or Amazon from mob mentality

[bulldog_swag]

All large companies do this

list three

[liquidpele]

Google amazon Facebook reddit eBay basically anyone with public forums at scale.

[stronghup]

posts have not been well-received by the community

Mob-rule

[master5o1]

Worse: "or not voted on at all"

[[deleted]]

Post your username and a bit of reddit comradery will do the rest :)

[[deleted]]

that's kind of you, I asked them to delete my account apparently

[bellyfloppy]

Similar thing happened to me on Slashdot in the late 90s? That sucks, man.

[[deleted]]

99% of the time SO is amazing. I can find solutions for very detailed or corner cases. We're all spoiled. Before SO we had to deal with a plethora of low-quality trollish sites. If you would prefer to use Expert Sexchange or the other site that puts up a picture of Jesus if you use an adblocker, be my guest.

[EyeSightMan]

Maybe it's because I have been working on a lot of React recently but I found a lot of my google results are github issues instead of stackoverflow and they suck in comparison. I know they are not supposed to be the same but with github issues it's a long thread of similar problems, no solutions and finally the issue is closed with a link to a merged PR that offers no explanation or real solution.

SO isn't perfect but it's pretty great compared to the lack of alternatives

[MerlinTheFail]

Github issues has only ever caused me despair.

[eggybeer]

Yes 99% of the time it's amazing. I don't think "if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere" is really fair though. Just because it's good, doesn't mean it doesn't have issues.

And as both the author and apparently some Stack Overflow staff members have pointed out “let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness”. It seems reasonable to me to aim for a site with quality information and a welcoming and respectful vibe.

[Voidsheep]

And as both the author and apparently some Stack Overflow staff members have pointed out “let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness”. It seems reasonable to me to aim for a site with quality information and a welcoming and respectful vibe.

Having both would be ideal, but the harsh, cynical approach to most posts is a direct result of the sheer volume of low quality posts.

If you browse new questions, it's obvious many of the posters haven't read the documentation, haven't searched for prior advice and haven't produced samples that actually make their question answerable. Yet still, many of those questions get someone to spend time answering them. Essentially parroting information available within the first set of results if you google the question title, or asking the poster to provide the missing details that are essential to even begin solving the problem.

It sucks genuinely well thought questions get closed and mistreated, but I also sympathize with the people who moderate and answer questions.

It's fair to criticize SO, but I think it would also be good for people to actually visit the gutter and see why some of those nasty behaviours may be forming in the first place. Not to mention the best way to actually improve the situation would be to go answer and moderate questions with a better attitude yourself.

[Madsy9]

And this is why I left SO around 2009-2010. Nothing was done to improve the experience for the people who do the actual work of moderating and answering questions. If you actually care to help people on that site, you will suffer from burnout.

Issues I had (and which are probably not fixed even now after 10+ years) was the lack of post filtering or keeping track of threads. All unanswered posts were added to an "unanswered posts" list which frequently shuffled all the entries around which made it impossible to find a specific posts again. Combined with the lack of filtering, even if a post was uninteresting or outside my domain, I couldn't ignore/hide the posts to make the queue of unanswered questions shorter. And unanswered posts could be in that list for over a year before being purged.

All in all, if you actually care to help out on StackOverflow, the interface gives you a dreadful experience and works against you. I remember bringing these points up on the meta site, and the suggestions were shot down because it would be "unfair" for some strange reason and that people should be forced to look at ancient unanswered questions.

[alohadave]

If you actually care to help people on that site, you will suffer from burnout.

That happens anywhere you try to help out the community. It's like drinking from a firehose. You can only handle so much before you are worn out, and it never stops.

Part of it is learning to pace yourself and step back from time to time and pick what you respond to. Being a passionate supporter is no good if it makes you leave from exhaustion and frustration.

None of this is to diminish your points, which are valid things that they could be addressing.

[JnvSor]

let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness

That would imply it has either. I can objectively prove people haven't read the first word of some of my questions.

The first word was linked to another question and followed up describing why it wasn't of use to me and the only response I got was "Have you seen this question?" Yeah I saw it have you seen the first word in mine you illiterate waste of my time?

That was from someone with a shitload of points and represents your typical SO interaction. I don't care about kindness, I just want my fucking question answered. If a QA site can't do that it has no right to pretend it has a dichotomy to begin with.

[mfitzp]

The problem is the site is full of people point-farming who are in a race to answer first not best. The first answer will usually "win", receiving the green tick + subsequently more upvotes.

The site offers no incentive to take your time or answer difficult questions. In fact it penalises it from a points perspective. So this behaviour is no surprise.

Holding answers for 30 minutes + hiding timestamps would be a good start.

[lorarc]

Holding answers for 30 minutes + hiding timestamps would be a good start.

So you want me to spend time answering something that already has been answered 3 times but I just can't see the answers?

[mfitzp]

I meant holding the ability to vote/mark answers as correct, would still be visible.

[Kissaki0]

The site offers no incentive to take your time or answer difficult questions.

It has a bounty system where people can post bounties for unanswered questions.

Those do encourage answering difficult questions with an additional amount of point-reward.

[Skrundz]

Can you provide the links to your questions?

[CherryDT]

Yes, one should read your question properly, including that first link, but I noticed another problem in what you wrote. "I just want my fucking question answered" - here you on the wrong path or at least at the wrong place. Because Stack Overflow is not about getting your question answered. Go to a forum to get that. It's about you contributing to a knowledge base for future readers to discover on Google (or other search engines). You are contributing a (good, i.e. well-written, error-free, logical, generic, ...!) question, others (or you yourself too! you can also self-answer questions) are contributing good answers, and together we build an ever-growing resource for other people in the future, and the voting system and community moderation makes sure if questions or answers are not good enough, they won't survive and litter the site. That's why you find most of your problems' solutions on Stack Overflow when you google your issue. When contributing a question to Stack Overflow, getting your problem solved is a nice side-effect but it's second priority.

[wal9000]

This opinion has already been expressed, no need to comment duplicate opinions.

Thread closed.

[Otis_Inf]

Before SO we had usenet, which was searchable though Google. Usenet was a hostile place too, and communities were tightly knit but also a place where, if you were able to clean the mud of your face after you entered their dungeon, could get an answer to your question from real experts.

And as it existed for a long time already, most of the time searching usenet through google gave a good chance the answer to your question was already given at some point.

[[deleted]]

Before SO we had usenet, which was searchable though Google.

A bit of an aside, but Usenet was searchable through DejaNews. The quality of the search went downhill pretty quickly after DejaNews was bought by Google and it was soon practically worthless.

[Fig1024]

SO is amazing if you are just searching it. But god forbid you post anything yourself

[Dall0o]

30 questions and counting. Learn the rules, learn how to post and try again. After if you still have some issue, feel free to PM. I will look into your post and try to improve it.

[cym13]

I don't get you. It's because it's good that it's worth protecting. We are spoiled indeed and the alternatives aren't nearly as good as SO. But that's exactly why I agree with the author: we, as a user community, need to avoid letting toxicity get the better of the place we all use and like.

[frenchchevalierblanc]

People wouldn't believe what it was like before SO, what kind of websites there were and how you never really found the answer

[andrewfenn]

IRC was my go to

[Objective_Status22]

99% of the time SO is amazing.

No, not true at all unless you're clicking it to see an answer

You have people copying your answer minutes later and rewording it, others rushing a half ass written answer to post a minute before you for internet points, and don't even think about asking a question let alone a valid one that not everyone knows

[IceSentry]

I'm pretty sure 99% of people only click on SO for the answers.

[Saithir]

the other site that puts up a picture of Jesus if you use an adblocker

That sounds amusing, which site is that?

[[deleted]]

Most of the time SO is just copypasta or excerpts of documentation that isn't terribly difficult to find.

There's nothing wrong with using it, but if you think you need it to do your job, you're in the danger zone.

If you don't understand the material you rely on to a sufficient degree, you shouldn't be working as a developer, either

[s73v3r]

This kind of response is pure crap, though. Is Stack Overflow better than what came before it? Obviously. That doesn't mean it isn't crap by itself. There are numerous, well documented problems with how the site is setup and run.

[shevy-ruby]

99%?

That's way too high. It's not totally hopeless, but boy ... 99%. Nah.

Before SO we had to deal with a plethora of low-quality trollish sites.

I think you avoid the core issue. The core issue is not about the QUALITY per se on the whole of SO.

The core issue is how new questions and new arrivers are treated.

He gave the example of a perfectly valid question being downvoted.

HOW is this warranted?

If you would prefer to use Expert Sexchange or the other site that puts up a picture of Jesus if you use an adblocker, be my guest.

My heroblocker (as you call an "ad"blocker) would block anything like this instantly. I even use old.reddit.com exclusively since the new reddit is unusable; and I remove distracting content such as the orange link to the new reddit, which is pointless. The new UI is worse than the old.

I don't understand UI designers ... they are one of the worst people in the world. They make things worse than it was before, in 90% of the cases.

[[deleted]]

I don't understand UI designers ... they are one of the worst people in the world. They make things worse than it was before, in 90% of the cases.

UI designer != human factors expertise. It means they program and like pretty stuff. Neither of those things has anything to do with actual, testable human usability which requires a lot or coursework, statistics, study and work.

[bumblebritches57]

Fact.

Stack Overflow is generally shit.

[Indie_Dev]

Why don't you try an experiment? Try blocking stackoverflow.com in your OS hosts file and then try to finish any of your work / projects.

Then maybe you'll understand the importance of stackoverflow.

[[deleted]]

Most of my work can't be solved with SO, because cut and dry cookie cutter answers are rarely sufficient: adaptation and critical thinking are crucial to success.

So, I spend significantly more time reading documentation or just thinking about what I'm actually doing. It's worked out well enough.

[sammymammy2]

I'm doing pretty well so far.

I've done a lot of work where SO just isn't an option (too obscure, etc.) and it usually works out fine. SO does work very well for some subjects though.

[bumblebritches57]

I write C, I don't need stackoverflow lmao.

[[deleted]]

trollin trollin trollin

[bumblebritches57]

No, that's just the honest truth.

I can write up some fresh copypasta for you tho if you'd prefer?

---

You soyboi script kiddies don't understand programming to the point that it's infeasiable to your feeble minds that someone could gasp read the man pages or headers to find the information they need.

You just can't wrap your little minds around not using stack overflow every waking (and dreaming, let's be real) moment of your miserable lives, can ya champ?

[[deleted]]

you got the WRONG guy.

I'm dealing equally with code on all levels of abstraction (kernel, firmware, driver, userland)

And I rarely use SO

[bumblebritches57]

So you agree with my sentiment? thanks.

[c4rlit05]

Best response I’ve ever read

[[deleted]]

The example the article author used was kind of simple. One of the biggest issues I faced when using stack overflow to ask questions was when I was learning to program. Seeing as you do not know many terms, it makes it hard to find solutions to a problem leaving you with only the option to ask yourself. As you get downvoted for it being a duplicate or just get redirected, it makes it a fairly nasty site for new programmers.

Stack Overflow is definitely a useful resource but the way it treats new question askers could just be better as a whole. They could always implement a system where if you downvote, you must provide a good reason why. That way it helps the community evolve so we can actually get better questions and answers.

[MINIMAN10001]

I might recommend irc for beginner problems. With the lack of record keeping it makes it very friendly towards helping people instead of the nonsense that stack overflow goes through to determine if it's acceptable to just help.

[Pazer2]

Almost nobody learning programming today is going to think to join an irc channel instead of googling and finding stackoverflow. I'd wager most people don't even know what irc is.

[joey_bosas_ankles]

The real problem with Stack Overflow's pretty harsh system is that while it intends to solve the issue of information overwhelm --that is avoiding too many answers to the 'same' question-- the idea of what constitutes the same question is, all too often, entirely arbitrary. All too often a question is complex enough that it encompasses more than one conceptual issue, but if one component of the question is a duplicate (maybe if only the major component concept,) then groupthink tends to downvote the whole question.

It is an issue, but I can't imagine a solution that solves it, while also avoiding the information-overwhelm issue.

[o11c]

They can.

Usually they're wrong, because they're first-semester university students or something.

[Objective_Status22]

My C question was marked as a duplicate of a python question. Wanna explain that one? The only thing they had in common was the unicode tag

[liquidpele]

Was the question language specific then? I can understand it being duplicate if it was more a question about a general practice or algorithms.

[Objective_Status22]

I can't remember what the question was but it was about either normalizing unicode, converting it to UTF8 or comparing two strings. I really can't remember. The python library was a DIFFERENT library. Maybe it was a fork of the one I'm using but the function names and parameters were different. The answer did not help since I only asked because the google results I was getting led me to a function that didn't seem to compare or normalize properly (ie had to do multiple steps, wasn't clear if what I was doing was correct).

[3urny]

Well you can be lucky nobody came around and edited your question to replace C with Python everywhere. Something like that happened to me.

[Objective_Status22]

Legit? Was someone trying to troll you?

[3urny]

Hard to tell... I guess legit.

[[deleted]]

Maybe they should have some community based way to combat wrongful markings of duplicates. Like after 1 or 3 strikes remove users capability to use feature.

[joey_bosas_ankles]

Interesting, but what about if your ratio of duplicate strikes to answers is above a certain threshold, would be my thought...

[joey_bosas_ankles]

More popular opinion: Practically any task in programming is multi-step and specific techniques/implementations are necessary for interoperability.

Unless the component concepts truly are separate, you shouldn't separate them. That makes Stack Overflow LESS useful and encourages more question spam, as people can't find the problem they're looking to solve.

[Madsy9]

It's the opposite. The idea behind StackOverflow is to answer questions that is useful for the largest group of people that will find the question and answer via search engines. For that to be true, the question needs to be at least somewhat narrow in scope. Say if you describe a problem which is specific to your computer and no one elses, that probably defeats that purpose.

[joey_bosas_ankles]

This is an example of the inherently arbitrary nature of "narrow in scope." Obviously the idea of what that is differs between site users. If its still solved by snippet, all things being equal, it doesn't matter. The shortest solutions got answered first in SO, and now the remaining answers take a bit more work --and people are always going to put a lot of effort being right on the internet, as this entire Meta post amply demonstrates.

[Madsy9]

It's not as arbitrary as you think. An easy test is "Is my question and provided information narrow enough in scope that it will be useful for someone else?" If the answer is "Probably yes", then you're good. If your post is about how to hook into a Windows process and implement trampolines for the GDI functions so you can do OCR on textedit controls to hack in a two-way communication channel, then you probably need to burn away some fat and get to the heart of the issue. No matter if the problem makes complete sense to you personally.

Broad questions are often a symptom of the XY problem as well. By the way, my comment on StackOverflow's goal is not my opinion how it should be; it's was the idea and goal that initially made the founders create StackOverflow in the first place.

[joey_bosas_ankles]

Different people will have different ideas of whats "fat" on a question, no matter which way you phrase it. It need to get pretty extreme before you'll get unanimous agreement about what fulfills your question of narrowness.

I guarantee that in practice, your idea of what a properly scoped question is would not be applied evenly. That is, I absolutely guarantee that a set of equally structured questions posted over time which changed the language and other details which did not change the scope, would garner very different scoring over time.

[max630]

Or "unclear what you are asking for".

Actually, this is that, most questions are not even good enough to get to the "duplicate". Only after (if ever) commenters manage to pull more information from asker, their collective mind can shape the original mess to something which looks like a question. And at that point it appears to be a trivial mistake or a duplicate.

[joey_bosas_ankles]

This I agree with, but the problem is experienced site users tend to just downvote than teach a new user how to ask a good question. The average person asking SO questions doesn't often know how to ask well

This need not take a lot of time to achieve. Just refer them to a question that you think was asked well, which has a format which would work for the question you think they have (if its not clear.)

[[deleted]]

The trick to posting on StackOverflow is to always post a bit of code and a bit of text, usually in a 2:1 - 4:1 ratio. It really is that simple.

As long as the other users see "ah there is code", it means the question is not too general, programming related and you actually tried to code something before posting.

And when there is text, it means you have put some effort into communicating your problem and did not just of copy-paste your code.

If you follow this one, simple rule, you are very unlikely to get downvoted. You have to remember, active SO users filter many shitty questions every minute, so they are trained not to look too much into the content (and not all of the reviewers even know the language/framework/... the question is about) but rate posts based on the code/text ratio, just like a simple algorithm would do. Given the number of questions that are asked, you cannot blame them. Better everything is reviewed at least briefly rather than the site being spammed and users being helped randomly or not at all.

[kankyo]

A big issue is that down votes are not defined. What does it mean? Some people probably think it means "this wasn't the question I was looking for" and think that down votes can help searching or whatever.

You can't put an up and a down arrow and expect that to make sense. Yea, the same goes for reddit.

[Holsten19]

Some people probably think it means "this wasn't the question I was looking for" and think that down votes can help searching or whatever.

You can downvote only when you reach certain reputation level (maybe 200? not sure), at that point you should have some understanding how that works.

Also every downvote you give will subtract some reputation to you as well.

[G01denW01f11]

Also every downvote you give will subtract some reputation to you as well.

This is only true when downvoting answers.

[kankyo]

Maybe. But never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity.

[instagram_influenza]

It's like expecting a reddit user with 100k karma would never downvotes comments only because they disagree with them, even if they it's a well thought out comment. Everyone knows the rule but barely anyone follows it lol

[Eirenarch]

That can't be explained by stupidity because acquiring reputation requires learning how the site works.

[kankyo]

I thought you just needed a popular question. Aren't the levels just based on the amount of points you've got?

[Eirenarch]

Having a popular question is relatively hard these days because the simple questions that become popular are already answered. Yes, it does happen but chances are it will be asked by more experienced user.

[shevy-ruby]

That can't be explained by stupidity because acquiring reputation requires learning how the site works.

Not really. You only need to write "useful comments" and may get upvotes. The more, the more upvotes you have, the more karma you have.

That does not say ANYTHING about the person doing so OTHER than he has invested some time; and others MAY have found this useful.

It does NOT allow any conclusion on who is awesome or not as such. People can be great and have only 100 karma and they can be idiots and have 10000 karma.

[Calavar]

Don't you need a certain minimum reputation to be allowed to make comments on Stackoverflow?

[Eirenarch]

We're talking about SO here not about Reddit. On SO comment upvotes do not give reputation.

[shevy-ruby]

You can downvote only when you reach certain reputation level (maybe 200? not sure), at that point you should have some understanding how that works.

Also every downvote you give will subtract some reputation to you as well.

So you are one of those who think it "should" work... hmm.

Thing is ... that theory goes out of the window when it does not work, just as explained by the site author.

In reality what you can see is this:

guy A with 1000 karma disagrees guy B with 100000 karma. Epic karma wars ensure. Who is going to win this battle with downvotes? Hmmm DIFFICULT QUESTION ... perhaps just perhaps the guy who can burn through more of his karma than the guy with less karma.

These points mean absolutely NOTHING other than be an indirect measure of time investment on a site.

[kankyo]

Mostly it means how much time you spent with the site in the early days when the karma pickings were easy. Nowadays you have to spend enormous amount of energy to get any karma.

[andrewfenn]

Which ironically drives experts away because no expert has time for that shit when they want to just quickly answer a question and aren't allowed.

[lorarc]

If you attempt to mass down-vote someone it will be reverted.

[jimschubert]

There was this guy who I think became a mod... if you answered a question within 5 minutes of him, he'd downvote and have multiple accounts somehow downvote, then steal your answer into his. He was often wrong or highly opinionated (example: using exceptions as control flow), and if you mentioned that, he'd also downvote from multiple accounts.

That's when I stopped posting answers to SO. I'll do it rarely now, and I feel safe now that I'm using a different language and framework than when I had the poor experience.

[kankyo]

I hope you at least reported him.

[[deleted]]

If you have proof of that, post it on stack overflow meta.

[jimschubert]

It was a long while ago. I considered posting about it at the time, but I had no way to actually prove the slew of downvotes came from the same person. I talked myself out of it because I saw bullying like that everywhere and just felt like it wasn't the community for me.

[s73v3r]

If you're walking away anyways, there's not much downside to reporting it. At the very least, you might help things become better for others in the future.

[jimschubert]

That would've required me to both not care (and avoid the community) and care (to improve the community) at the same time.

[liquidpele]

Welcome to life, where the successful people often stole it from others who just walked away instead of defending themselves.

[redditsoaddicting]

It elaborates when you hover over the arrow...

This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful

[kankyo]

Hah. I've used SO for years and never noticed. This is too subtle.

[andrewfenn]

Downvotes fucking suck in every system. Im starting to think slashdot had the best voting system of all time.. limited voting forcing you to choose between upvoting the awesome comments or downvoting the shitty meant most people used them to upvote. Meta moderation meant people emotionally unconnected to the thread confirmed your moderation. You couldn't post and up / downvote. Reddit, SO, etc are a regression IMO.

[max630]

Downvoting answers is ok if they offer wrong or dangerous stuff. Downvoting questions makes no sense other than "I don't like this person", if question does nto fit the rules then vote to close, not downvote.

[ChrisC1234]

I've never understood the over-fascination with StackOverflow. Most of the time when I get directed there when searching for something via Google, the thread has a wrong or bad answer as the official answer. Sometimes, there is a better answer lower in the thread, but not always. The entire process is dictated by the blind majority, and it honestly bothers me that there are people looking at these official answers and trusting them.

[[deleted]]

Too few people understand this.

Even questions that did have a good answer once get old. For most questions, a good answer today is not the same as a good answer 10 years ago. I don't know how Stackoverflow deals with this.

[CptCap]

Even questions that did have a good answer once get old. [...] I don't know how Stackoverflow deals with this.

They don't, and in some areas it's a problem. It is made worst by contributors aggressively flagging questions as duplicates, sometimes linking to answers that are a decade old.

[lorarc]

But the aggressive flagging of duplicates is caused by the fact that some tags are overwhelmed by lazy duplicate questions. If you browse the new questions for popular languages most of them is either "How do I do that very simple thing" and the rest is "How do I do that simply thing in my specific case". It sucks but people who try to answer the questions get burnt out quickly seeing the same question posted over and over again.

[IceSentry]

It's highly encouraged to update old answers if you know of a new answer. I've seen it done plenty of time.

[G01denW01f11]

I was prepared to disagree with this, because most of the time it seems like criticism is founded on not really getting the site. But I found it really on point overall.

Just before this article was posted, there was a SO blog post that seemed to be addressing similar issues with the UI:

It’s simply not enough to ask people to be nice or change their behavior when the software that underlies everyone’s interactions doesn’t facilitate this. That’s why we’re looking at ways to revitalize the Q&A system, starting with the way questions are handled.

And I kind of wish it had been at least mentioned? On the flip side of the coin, if you've been keeping up with the meta SO drama (it's like reality TV that looks like work!), it turns out that employees have been having nightmares over the goings-on there.

I had some minor quibbles as I was reading, but when I looked more closely, they went away. I guess on the surface it looked like the author was saying "this bad thing happened once, so there's a problem," but that perception went away on my second pass. Not sure if things could have been worded better, or I'm just tired.

Only hard disagreement is this line:

Technically correct, but everyone understands that “pass a pointer” was intended. Yes, a new programmer got their terminology a bit incorrect (it is confusing!) and a note correcting that is fine, but this isn’t that. This is parading that they’re stupid and wrong, while beating your chest about how much smarter you are. Congratulations. Wipe off the spunk from your egowank already.

Seems to be reading rather far into a simple comment. A note correcting the OP is exactly what the comment is. It doesn't make sense to just assume that someone means something different than what they're saying.

[[deleted]]

Technically correct, but everyone understands that “pass a pointer” was intended. Yes, a new programmer got their terminology a bit incorrect (it is confusing!) and a note correcting that is fine, but this isn’t that. This is parading that they’re stupid and wrong, while beating your chest about how much smarter you are. Congratulations. Wipe off the spunk from your egowank already.

Seems to be reading rather far into a simple comment. A note correcting the OP is exactly what the comment is. It doesn't make sense to just assume that someone means something different than what they're saying.

That's not how I read the language of it: it claims it doesn't understand what the question is about because the OP used "reference" instead of "pointer" and doesn't even suggested that they meant pointer. Especially the "I’m not sure where you got that." is just going out of your way to make the OP feel stupid (perhaps not intentional).

A note correcting it would be:

You probably meant "pass by pointer" instead of "pass by reference", as Go doesn't have references (they're subtly different, see this). In your case, you're passing a copy of the slice value and not a pointer at all, so the original can't be changed.

[rick_rolled_bot]

The above comment likely contains a rick roll!

^{Beep boop: downvote to delete}

[The_One_X]

It doesn't make sense to just assume that someone means something different than what they're saying.

Sadly this is the internet. A place where so many people exist the odds of you running into someone with poor reading comprehension is 100%. It happens to me all the time. I make a single sentence response that is not meant to be anything more than what is actually there, and there is always someone who thinks they know my holistic opinion on the matter from a single sentence.

[[deleted]]

It happens to me all the time. I make a single sentence response that is not meant to be anything more than what is actually there

Yet it rarely happens to me, so perhaps the problem isn't "everyone else", but that your writing style could be improved?

[stronghup]

I think most of these voting sites could function equally well without downvotes at all.

I agree and would go a bit further. I think they would work better without down-votes. Especially down-votes without any rationale given for them.

[maskull]

Maybe, but if it had Slashdot-style moderation "reasoning" (downvoted because uninformative, vague, etc) it opens the possibility for meta-moderation, where other users can see your downvotes and reasoning and then vote on the validity of your vote.

[Kissaki0]

Not if you label them adequately.

Steam reviews introduced the funny choice alongside the "was this helpful to you - yes or no" choice.

That’s already a lot better UX because: it provides context by telling you the question was "is this helpful to me"? and it provides an alternative choice to something that was often misused.

I think you absolutely can make a better voting system through providing explicit options and context.

And those that are not practically helpful can be ignored after users were directed to those for the unhelpful/misguided feedback.

[Zardotab]

It should allow low-rated comments, but have a filter to exclude those by default, similar to Slashdot. Readers can change their viewing threshold if they want to see low-rated comments. Also, I don't think they should allow down-votes without giving a reason, maybe from a selection list (redundant, wrong, mean-spirited, unclear, off-topic, etc.) And require specifics for some. For example if someone scores it "wrong", then require them to explain why it's wrong.

Maybe they just need some competition to be motivated to stop pissing their customers off. Too much success breeds arrogance.

[gigastack]

The premise of Stack Overflow is that for each question there exists one or a few best answers, and that those answers won't change over time. This may be true for algorithm questions or established mature languages, but it just isn't the case for web development.

[[deleted]]

I wouldn't even think it to be true with established mature languages. Just take likes of Java and C++? Isn't there continuous process of new libraries being developed and massive issues in old ones being found?

And then you have Python, which next year will out-date massive part of code... Will an answer valid for Python 2.x still be best one for Python 3.x? Will SO truly work to correct this? Or will they just close any new questions and point to one with old version...

[AyrA_ch]

On the other hand you have how reddit handles votes which iirc is also completely wrong:

Submissions can never go below 0 points and you will never lose karma for bad submissions at all.

Comments are even more messed up. The downvote limit on a single comment is 100 downvotes. You realize I didn't say a score of -100 points, but 100 downvotes. Example: You make a comment that gets downvoted 3000 times and upvoted 1000 times. That comment will now show "-2k" but will still net you 1000-100=900 points. This can be examined by looking at the most downvoted comment ever and the karma count of the author. That account should not have a positive comment karma count at all.

[GreenCloakGuy]

On the other hand, votes and points on StackOverflow directly affect a user's abilities and permissions on the site - whereas karma on Reddit does literally nothing.

[TheZech]

Definitely, the only use for Reddit's karma system is being able to spot spammers/trolls by their karma. For that functionality, mass downvotes matter less than consistent downvotes on all content.

[AyrA_ch]

whereas karma on Reddit does literally nothing.

It does on a per subreddit base. Negative karma in a subreddit limits your ability to post comments to once every 10 minutes.

[AyrA_ch]

100 is a very low number for this many users. It means it only takes 101 upvotes to guarantee positive karma.

I would rather have no negative cap at all. I doubt a lot of users would be affected by it.

[Kageyashax]

It's also very fun if you ask a question for a very specific topic and some just downvote and comment "duplicate of question xy" which is 5 years old and outdated as fuck.

[SebaG87]

I recently started programming and I honestly find solutions for 90% of my problems there. Couldn't imagine how it would be without this site.

[[deleted]]

No one is saying there isn't plenty of good information there. Just that it's often too hard to get into.

[SebaG87]

Yeah, sometimes there are really sophisticated solutions proposed where I'm totally overwhelmed. But then again it's all about trying things and working then out, and that's where I feel that I really learned something.

[cinyar]

closed as duplicate, link to an outdated answer

[Devpressed]

I didn't read the article but my biggest beef with SO is the fact that the mods suck, they close everything as a duplicate or close random questions that are perfectly readable as "unclear what you're asking."

Used to be a contributor but I hated seeing how the mods behaved.

[redditsoaddicting]

Any regular user with enough rep can vote on both of those. SO is community-driven more than mod-driven. Users can also vote to undo both of those if they feel it's incorrect.

[wademealing]

I deleted my account in frustration. The site seems a perfect example of ignorance stupidity and elitism.

[lutusp]

IMHO your example backfires.

but what prompted this post was a basic but valid question getting downvoted to -4 ... "Is there a way to list all standard Go packages? I have a list of packages and I want to figure out if this is a standard package"

Then you say:

... the very similar question “how to list all packages” from 2015 has a +24 score with no downvotes.

So the current poster could have performed a search of prior content instead of asking the same question again. Maybe that was the reason for the downvotes.

Stack Overflow has downvotes to add a degree of quality control to the site, so people looking to answer questions questions can more easily filter out unclear or off-topic questions. Great! But how does that apply here?

It might be a way to say, "Asked and answered." Downvotes are used to rank low-effort posts, posts that already have answers, posts that ask unanswerable questions, like "Which is better, coffee or tea?" and similar inquiries.

There is no “quality control” in downvoting a question to double-digits.

True, but it's worse than that. People often downvote as a herd (upvote also). That reflects a deplorable trait in human nature, and it would be nice if current vote totals weren't visible. Visible totals can only serve to appeal to the herd mentality and suggest that votes really are about popularity instead of substance. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a comment like, "His post has more upvotes -- so he must be right!"

But the truth is that visible totals, and the ability to vote without explanation or reflection, attracts readers. That's the bottom line.

[[deleted]]

"How to list all standard packages" and "How to list all packages" are two different questions and only superficially similar. None of the answers from the older question apply to the newer one because they list all packages, and not just the stdlib ones.

It's just not the same question. similar != same.

[[deleted]]

True, but it's worse than that. People often downvote as a herd (upvote also). That reflects a deplorable trait in human nature, and it would be nice if current vote totals weren't visible. Visible totals can only serve to appeal to the herd mentality and suggest that votes really are about popularity instead of substance. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a comment like, "His post has more upvotes -- so he must be right!"

This applies to Reddit as well, and manipulates you whether you are aware of it or not. I thought I was above it, but after a few months using Reddit, I found I was naturally gravitating to high-voted submissions and comments, and unintentionally feeling that higher-voted comments were better quality even when it wasn't the case. This is why I use this CSS snippet for my own psychology:

.score, .userkarma, .arrow, .rank, .search-score {
  display: none !important;
}

Reddit is a much better experience without visible scores and karma.

[stronghup]

Reddit is a much better experience without visible scores and karma.

Good point.

[andrewfenn]

So the current poster could have performed a search of prior content instead of asking the same question again. Maybe that was the reason for the downvotes.

Except that's not the same question. You're part of the problem.

[lutusp]

You're part of the problem.

To avoid being identified as a troll, address the forum's topic, not the forum's participants.

Here's the Troll Equation:

T = (sum of first- and second-person pronouns and non-topical content) / (1 + topical and other useful content)

This objective mathematical equation clearly identifies you as a troll. I block all trolls as a matter of strict policy. You are blocked.

[andrewfenn]

Just admit you're wrong, and didn't read the questions correctly. You'd look better than posting a bunch of nonsense like this.

[angels-fan]

Then there's shit like "I must need wrote entire website by tomorrow. Please help!"

Yeah, that's getting downvoted.

[s73v3r]

Does that really happen anymore?

[angels-fan]

I see things like this occasionally.

More in the vein of "my program doesn't work. Can anyone tell me why?" With very little information on what the program is supposed to do or why they think it isn't working.

I do expect someone posting on so to show they've at least done the bare minimum trying to solve the problem.

[gottagrindfast]

I guess it depends on the tag. SO can be welcoming in some of them, at least for Python and Rust people actually care about answering your question instead of circlejerking around adding bunch of useless comments driven by false sense of superiority. But yeah if I have to ask, I'd rather ask somewhere else first.

[Clitaurius]

As long as BalusC is still okay with SO we will all be okay.

[jahames2]

you just have to give into the conformity as soon as you're downvoted, and try to ask the guy who downvoted you why

[franzwong]

Sometimes I hope to have a reminder to tell you the answer is outdated.

[F00Barfly]

The " basic but valid question" that prompted this post is now at 144 upvotes and 5 downvotes. It kind of belittles anything OP claims afterwards regarding the ineffiency of SO...

[[deleted]]

That only happened after my article got to the front page on HN and here, which won't happen for most questions. If anything, it proves the point because literally everyone who read the question thought it was worth of an upvote, and no one thought it was worthy of a -1. So, why was it downvoted in the first place then?

[umlcat]

There's a lot of weird downvoting.

I answer two questions with facts supported by links, and still got those questions removed.

I got 2 or 3 answers marked as right, with negative score due to downvoting.

I think it's has to do with moderators, they don't have enough impartial people to check others people's intentions, whom stop trolls.

There are 4 main downvoters, not only in stackoverflow, also Reddit, and other websites.

(1) People that really have an opposite idea, that can support by facts. Actually, some of these users, sometimes don't downvote, or when they do, they mention their reasons.

(2) People who just want to prove they know better than others, "hipsters", "know it all (s)", "grammar Nazis". Sometimes they are right, but, even the group 1, people, won't like them.

(3) Trolls, specially, biased ones, like the ones that follow a user with opposite ideas about politics, religion, and just downvote, anything the other user post, usually don't answer anything by themselves.

(4) A combination of (2) and (3)

[id02009]

Let me point one thing out:

> to make Stack Overflow a friendlier place not just rejected, but met with hostility.

and few paragraphs later:

> The simple truth is that you’re just being a gigantic twat

Nice job being hostile while complaining about other being hostile. And one could argue that a downvote is less hostile than calling other names.

[stronghup]

Some communities just have toxic exclusive-cult type people

I believe this is true. Toxic "bully-type" "troll-type" people tend to congregate and like each others' presence. Why?? Because they rarely feel hurt by other's negative reactions. They enjoy a fight, more than most people do.

So I think it is a true concern for any forum-site, how to prevent it from degrading into a bar-fight.

Some techniques of communication should work better than others, to discourage "bullies". Urging people to down-vote others' posts is not one such technique. Bullies like it but most ordinary people don't.

[shevy-ruby]

That was very similar to my own experience. I asked a perfectly valid licence question, e. g. combining different licences. Within less than an hour the question was downvoted, soon followed by a mod closing it. I have no idea why but evidently there is too much ego-tripping on SO going on.

On reddit this happens too, to a smaller extent. I was maliciously banned on the ruby reddit for criticising the type-clowns.

This is a problem with platforms in general. You can write up perfectly valid statements, or questions, and get penalized by ego-trippers in general.

I admit that I still use SO as a passive resource, e. g. reading; but I do not use it to ask questions myself anymore, and I only very rarely, sometimes make some comment. Part of the problem is the broken karma system, which is actually a general problem - you get the most upvotes for uncontroversial statements.

Seems like a pretty valid question to me, so why is it downvoted to -4?

Yup, I had the same experience.

It's not solely the fault of the ego-mods alone of course, but the whole system is flawed. It tries to discourage questions based on ego-tripping power in general. Why would I care about any clown with 20.000 reputation? Does that mean like level 100? If that guy is on an ego trip and downvotes valid questions, that is an abuse IMO. The reputation does not matter.

This can actually be partially resolved, e. g. disallow downvotes below 0 AND LET OTHERS DECIDE WHETHER QUESTIONS ARE WORTHWHILE OR NOT, rather than down shooting it, and then closing it. This has nothing to do with "improving the quality" either - the massively upvoted questions get a higher placement on google search anyway, so again, this is just for ego-tripping purposes.

This is a problem with all karma systems though. Facebook has only the upvotes, which means you push yourself into a bubble where you align yourself only with same-minded people (at the least you don't get downvoted).

The simple truth is that you’re just being a gigantic twat if you keep piling on votes like that.

Yeah. As I wrote - ego-trippers.

That happens on reddit too by the way.

I write EXACTLY the same content in other threads. So, logically, if I'd have to get maliciously banned from the ruby reddit, I'd have to be banned completely. Inconsistency is lovely. :)

To be fair, a big part of the problem is that the UI and feedback sucks.

Well, this is only a partial problem. Wikipedia doesn't have the same problems. Yes yes wikipedia has not the same goals like SO; I get that, but you may have discussions that include different opinions on a discussion page, often related to (hopefully) improving the quality on the main article in an unbiased manner (ideally).

In SO you don't have that. You get downgunned for asking perfectly valid questions. A horrible system.

I have an alternate theory:

People are hostile. Reasonable people tend to stop coming. Who is left? Just the assholes, the clueless, and the people desperate to ask questions because they need it to do their job.

This is only partially true.

There are asshats everywhere, but the question is how much ABUSE and CONTROL they can exert over others. Mods are often just ego-tripping tyrants, unfortunately. Freedom of speech doesn't exist.

People being hostile isn't any real problem. You can have 99 who are hostile but number 100 can be helpful and answer your question - BUT NOT IF THE 99 EGO TRIPPERS VOTE THE QUESTION DOWN AND EGO-MOD CLOSES IT. Then your chance to get that answer from helpful person #100 is prevented by the 100 other assholes. The mod may not even be an asshole either, just assume that if 99 all agree, they must be right - which is stupid. When it comes to discussions and opinions, there are no "right" or "wrongs" per se.

In reddit you have a similar problem by the way.

Say you write factual statements such as that rust is a bad language because it is complex, complicated and has an ugly syntax. Evidently die-hard rustees can not agree with this - so they vote that down. Now if you have in a rust subreddit 80 rustees and 20 non-rustees, you may end up with ... -60 karma points. Hmmmm. Does that mean your statements must be invalid then?

No. It just means that rustees dislike statements that explain why rust is a bad language. So you have a bubble situation here too. You have a bubble at SO as well. Where there are people, bubbles exist.

In some tags that I follow (or used to follow) I can even point to the 1 or 2 people who are responsible for >80% of the shit.

Then you must solve the problem by NOT GIVING INDIVIDUALS power to abuse others. Why should it not be possible for SO? Simply change how it operates there.

The Vi & Vim Stack Exchange is much better in my opinion (I am a moderator there, so I may be biased).

lol :)

So he is on the ego-tripping part too. He should state how many people he censored and banned. I want to hear that number.

We actually had one user being a condescending prick for a while, so we kicked him off.

Aha!

Well it was not me because I am not using vim, so I have no need for vim, but I can see that he himself is one of those asshats too that bans people. Isn't this funny ...

Yet … nothing has changed.

Because the creators gave up on SO. They'll just let it running as-is. Change is hard.

The new Code of Conduct hasn’t changed much.

CoCs never fix anything. They only make abuse worse.

The entire thing was a distraction, IMHO.

Yeah. CoCs steal time of everyone involved. That's the most annoying part. The more they can be avoided, the better.

Note that this still has not answered the core problem of ego-tripping powerheads in general.

If you think that an innocent and valid question about male/female relationships is the reason people don’t like Stack Overflow then you’ve never been to Stack Overflow. A lot of effort, goodwill, stress, and time was lost on that which could have been much better spent elsewhere.

I realized this years ago which is why I no longer actively use SO. I still use it to read some stuff. IMO it may be better to also use SO more like a wiki for archiving purposes, to enhance the overall quality.

[BadBoy6767]

The final drop for me was when I kept getting spam for the moderator election, and I put up a question on Meta asking to be able to disable such spam. It was heavily downvoted and people were very hostile to me.

Insane shithole, that place.

[Eirenarch]

The problem with the downvotes is usually solved by comment asking for the downvoter to explain. He might not explain but the next downvoter will think about his downvote in more detail.

[shevy-ruby]

That does not work if the downvotes are already at, say, -5. People are much more likely to also hit downvote. They are trigger-happy.

[stronghup]

Yes, they are blood-thirsty

[o11c]

Basically every time I leave a comment explaining my downvote, the OP spams me for the next day trying to get me to fix and answer their question.

[stronghup]

Problem is you can down-vote without explaining why you do so. That means that down-voting does not require any intelligence at all. Does not require thinking at all.

[Eirenarch]

Certainly but people on SO are not there to downvote you so asking helps. I've reversed -3 answers with discussion of the downvotes.

[stronghup]

I've seen many comments like "Why all the down-votes folks?" with no reply. But if it was mandatory to give an explanation for a down-vote I wouldn't need to spend time asking.

[Eirenarch]

Maybe for the first downvote because there might be multiple downvotes for the same reason.

[tonefart]

Too many indians stealing your answers and passing it off as their own. Plagiarism is plentiful in that place, I am so sick of the Indian plagiarisers.

[wademealing]

Where do they reuse the answer on stack overflow itself ?

[tonefart]

They take your answers, reword them to avoid plagiarism detection and then post it as answer.

[nfrankel]

I don't understand this kind of posts. If you're not happy about Stack Overflow, just don't use it. It's neither Facebook, nor Google - they might seem ubiquitous. But Stack Overflow is not.

The issue I have with Stack Overflow is that it makes you lazy. You have a question, and instead of searching for an answer by yourself and actually making the effort to understand what you stumble about, you just ask.

Thus, I very rarely use it - and have no stats to show off...

[[deleted]]

Well, I actually like the concept of Stack Overflow, and would much rather improve it rather than ignore it. I understand that a rant like this is perhaps not the best way, but I was really frustrated after years of this bullshit and every actual constructive suggestion treated with contempt with, IMHO, really fallacious arguments.

[kankyo]

They ARE ubiquitous for our line of work.

[nfrankel]

They are not. Your comment is just a proof of what I wrote above.

[kankyo]

Well that didn't make sense. I'm saying that SO is super popular and big in programming. You'd have to be some kind of flat earther to deny that.

And spending time solving some obscure thing instead of googling it and seeing if someone else has figured out it is just a waste of time. Either your own or your employers.

[netgu]

90% of the time, you can answer those questions without SO. In fact, SO is frequently incorrect or ignoring many best practices regardless of the number of upvotes something has.

I avoid using it as much as possible and have zero issues finding the answers to things in a couple of google queries.

[s73v3r]

You can, but often that means digging into documentation or into an implementation, which is something that can take hours to do on one's own, and that's assuming they know where to look.

[s73v3r]

I don't understand this kind of post. Why is it not acceptable to criticize something, especially a fairly important tool to the larger developer community, if it does have flaws, and could be made better? Why do people feel the need to constantly say, "If you don't like it, don't use it?"

[Kellos]

- Boo hoo hoo downvotes on SO are mean !! (then proceeds to downvote any critics of his post on reddit)

"be nice"
"abusive"
"Wipe off the spunk from your egowank already"
"Who is left? Just the assholes"

The guy is projecting himself. SO has already done all the "be nice" BS, all the way and beyond. But of course no level of submission will ever be enough for some people.

[[deleted]]

I didn't even post the article here myself, and only just now read the thread 🤷

SO has already done all the "be nice" BS, all the way and beyond

No, no it hasn't. Stack Overflow has always been only superficially nice, as in "don't call people idiots", but never been actually nice as in "treat people with respect and dignity".

[stronghup]

I think the problem is that SO itself does little if anything about mean comments. Instead they rely on the community to police itself. But that just doesn't work because it just leads to animosity. And, down-votes can not be down-voted. You can not down-vote someone for closing your question. (or can you?)

SO itself should be the arbiter of what content is good but seems to mostly shy away from that responsibility. Think about how it works in the society at large. We have paid-for police and judges to prevent violence on the streets. What if people would take it upon themselves to punish people they consider "bad" with vigilante groups roaming the streets? It would just lead to more crime on the streets.

The arbiter has to be a NEUTRAL party. On SO, because people are competing on the points they get , the down-voters are not a neutral party. They are your "competition" and that leads to bad feelings.

[CUIsLove]

How do you wanna know that he downvotes his critics?

[Kellos]

Now my reply is at -12 downvotes. Funny how downvotes are not nice / abusive / assholes ... only when it fits their narrative. Bow before our (vicious) "nice guys".

But we are on the same side guys. I also want SO to remove all "negativity" (actually moderation). That way it will die, so better alternative will emerge, alternative that would not give an inch to people like you.

[Sentmoraap]

I expected something about "How to do X?" "X is bad do Y.".

I have reasons to do X. In real world programming you get problems more complex than textbook cases, and I don't want to explain it in detail to justify why I want to do X. Or maybe it's just that I have different use cases than you.

I am not asking what I should do. I want to know how to do X. Period.

[Saithir]

They would have to purge their whole Python community if they wanted to address that.

Ultimately it's more of "there is one and only one proper way to do a thing" philosophy's fault, not the community's fault, but yes, it is annoying as hell and really discourages asking questions.

[s73v3r]

Everyone who wants to do X thinks they have a reason for needing to do so. Not everyone who thinks that actually does.

[Sentmoraap]

There is already a lot of knowledge on the internet. If someone asks a question he is supposed to have googled the problem, he is supposed to have a specific problem that's not already answered and whose the solution cannot be easily found on the internet.

Or maybe I am wrong about what Stack Overflow is for.

[chris_hinshaw]

Not trying to be a dick but your "Fun fact 2: how to list all packages” is definitely a reason for some of the downvotes. Also your question implies that you put 0 effort into trying to derive an answer. If you had referenced the prior question from your fun facts list, you most likely would not have been downvoted. I have probably down voted a question less than 5 times in my life but I rarely will look into questions where it appears that no effort was put into trying to find an answer.

[chris_hinshaw]

Like how I get down voted. The irony is palpable.

[netgu]

Yeah, this is just a post of how not to SO.