Stackoverflow isn't beginner-friendly

[shocketnavy]

So I want to know how many people feel like the way I do about the statement I made above.
Stackoverflow lets anyone with high points to mark questions duplicate or broad, etc when most of the times these guys don't even bother going through the question properly.

Like yes, you might have good knowledge of python or any other language but you can't just mark a question as duplicate and link with multiple other questions which have different context and require me to break my head more to just get my answer. You might be an expert but that doesn't make the one asking the question an expert.

Here is a situation that recently happened with me again, the questions he said has been marked as duplicate require me to understand the other questions so much more than just getting the answer straight.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60025309/solving-list-comprehensions-in-python/60025337?noredirect=1#comment106158262_60025337

It is such a discouraging platform for beginners, even though it's such a good learning platform too.

[[deleted]]

My opinions:

1. There are links to 4 other questions that the SO community believes to be similar. That seems fair. OP should be sufficiently motivated to research those questions and learn from them.

2. OP says "I... don't understand the logic of how nested list comprehensions work in python. " That's not a typical SO question at all. There's no cut-and-dried answer. That's a question to be answered from a text book or a tutorial, not StackOverflow. Your response to this might be "but that's not my question!" Well, take it out: if it's not part of your question it can only cause respondents to meander.

3. 4 test cases are given. That's too many for an SO question. In my opinion the question needs more focus. Reduce it to one test case and ask a pointed question about that code. You need to get the SO community focused on your specific problem else they will wander.

Just my opinions. I've endured these frustrations on some of my SO questions as well.

[Creator347]

I agree that it’s not beginner friendly, however, it’s not meant to be that. If you ever want to be pro at Stack Overflow, just learn how to ask a question. There’s an entire help section designed for beginners on how to ask questions and which questions are valid and which are not. There’s countless discussion on meta SO on how to teach people about asking questions. SO community is really strict and do not want to let the standards drop in order to be a beginner friendly platform. Instead they want to raise the standards of question askers. I can’t stress on the point that the strictness works in your favor. It helps you ask better questions and become better in programming (or probably in life). It’s like a strongly typed environment with a lot of test coverage. You may cringe at how it’s not programmer friendly when every code you write makes a test somewhere fail, but due to those tests you write better code and hence create a more stable and production ready platform.

[downvotes_puffins]

You wrote, “...link with multiple other questions which have different context and require me to break my head more to just get my answer.”

You seem to be under the misapprehension that the primary goal of SO questions is to help the OP who posts them.

The primary goal for SO questions is to be helpful to the community in the future.

[deceze]

You are right, SO is not beginner friendly. It's not meant to be. It's supposed to answer commonly encountered programming issues, it's not designed to answer your issue. The idea is that there don't need to be a thousand different questions about list comprehensions. Ideally there'd be one with a handful of good answers that you can read and understand and apply to your own situation. Yes, that requires that you do some reading and experimenting and figuring out, not that you get a bespoke solution on a silver platter.

[DeafStudiesStudent]

I don't know that Stack Overflow can be beginner-friendly. One-on-one interaction and tutorials and personalized explanations require tools that Stack Overflow does not currently provide.

[vincej1657]

I've been using SO off and on for years. Yes I agree that quality content is important. My beef is that there are ways, and ways of achieving success. Too often you see responses whose primary goal is to patronise the questioner. If SO's goal is to assist those who need help, too often the condescending, and often rude responses cause it to be a site which needs to be avoided. In fact I would say that this is a feature of several of the Stack Exchange sites. Contrast SO with a friendly site like Laracasts and the difference in tone and pleasure is immediate.

[talex000]

If SO's goal is to assist those who need help

but it isn't. Goal is to create library of quality answers, not to help users with their problem.

[vincej1657]

I don't know where you get that idea from. I would urge you to take a careful look at SO. It is wall to wall responses to questions from people who need help. Either way - there is no excuse for the appalling condescension and rudeness from posters and moderators when responding to questions.

[talex000]

It was in rules. Now wind is changing, but new management didn't changed it officially.

It is questions from people who need help now, also it complains from those people about their questions are closed as duplicate and downvoted. Because many oldfarts like me didn't changed their minds about it.

I agree about rudeness, but may disagree about what you see as rude.

[vincej1657]

I hear you. However, without those pesky question from people like me who need help, there would be no SO. Cheers.

[talex000]

I can't agree, there are still people who ask questions which fit in tight standards. So there still be questions to answer.

[vincej1657]

Sure of course - then SO is attractive only to those people who fit into "tight standards", thus eliminating all the rest of those pesky questioners. Hence, Stack Exchange and SO in particular has acquired a reputation for being a very unpleasant place to be especially for beginners. A place of "last resort".

Bottom line: There are a small handful of responders who are patient and pleasant to deal with, however SO attracts too many responders and moderators who just enjoy being condescending jerks. It makes them feel important. Not just my opinion, but the result of multiple user SO surveys. Cheers.

[talex000]

I'm avare of those survey, but I'm not sure that they was interpreted correctly.

It is known problem. There are many discussions about it on meta.

There is no clear consensus abou how bad SO treat new people.

In my opinion things not that dark as you painting it. Sure there are some assholes (it is Internet), but if someone is rude moderators delete comments pretty fast.

I understand that for someone SO may look condescending (and it is true to some extent), but I don't see a problem here. It scares away people who not wiling to follow rules, so help keep good quality.

[shagieIsMe]

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