Stack Overflow Moderator Election(stackoverflow.com) |
Stack Overflow Moderator Election(stackoverflow.com) |
Wikipedia has the same problem.
At least SO is clear and honest and upfront about it, and they don't have megabytes of rules and guidelines and essays and etc to follow.
I do understand the frustration of having good interesting questions closed. (Especially if it's for dumb reasons.)
Wikipedia can feel very toxic. Even if you're avoiding the obvious hot-button topics.
Who would be harmed if those questions were left open (other than the anally-retentive)?
(Personally I'm a fan of a little site called Hacker News for this purpose... but I've never found the answer to a programming problem on Hacker News. And I've never found french fries at a Pizza store, and I don't fault Pizza stores for not selling french fries)
If someone wants a discussion, or slightly off-topic questions there's other places to do that, and SO is not obligated to accommodate everyone.
We generally believe that it's important to keep the quality on Stack Overflow high, so that when you click on a stackoverflow.com result on Google, you can trust that you're going to get something good. That means that Stack Overflow is not just a host where anyone can type things into the Internet, and we host it. It's a curated environment.
I get it. They were actually right about the broken-window theory. The demand for quality has had an enormously positive impact overall and they should get a lot of credit for that. But they routinely close questions that simply do not need to be closed.
Sorry, that was unnecessarily snarky. People on the Internet tend to believe that if there is a TEXTAREA tag on the internet, they have a right to type things into that TEXTAREA and have them hosted on the Internet by somebody else until the end of time. This eventually leads to youtube, reddit, etc... very amazing things but nevertheless not necessarily good places to solve programming problems quickly.
What's needed is for somebody to set up an equivalent site with better moderation policy. I'd love to take a shot at that, but I'm up to my eyes already, I just don't have time. Probably the same is true of most people here, but if you ever run into anyone who is looking for a project, please point them to that idea.
On the other hand, sometimes is really is a popularity contest. My number one pick is someone from the tag community I hang out with the most. I already trust his judgement.
X. It took me Y seconds to google your problem and find that solution.
It'd save me downvoting every time I see that kind of ridiculous passive aggressive bullshit.
Frustrating to be so downvoted for raising something that is so rotten by the way, presumably it's ok to talk down to somebody simply because you feel they haven't put in enough effort in asking a question?
Or perhaps it was the language? That stems from being frustrated with the nasty culture that seems to be seeping in to so many corners of our development communities.
"Google it" answers tend to be deleted pretty quickly by the mods.
http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/what...
http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/32007/which-statist...
Fairly open ended, possibly answerable, but the OP will have no fucking idea if an answer is good or bad. (Apologies if the OP reads Hacker News).
Now, the fact that the stats stack exchange also encourages students to ask questions about homework introduces the similar problems, so I can't be sure that the open-ended nature of these questions is the main cause of the site's suckiness, but I'm pretty sure it contributes. And I don't want to participate in that forum even though I waste a shit-ton of time online on places like HN and prefer stats to startups.
Experts Exchange and Yahoo Answers come to mind. ;-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
You say this as if it were just so. I don't happen to agree.
I literally clicked randomly on a subject I know about to read a question and its answers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15305764/angularjs-clear-...
The question is wrong, the answer is bad. Didn't get 'curated'.
Now take this one, a very useful question, great answers. It was 'curated' and it's only there because of page views:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...
SO should let us decide what is good or not, people don't like to be 'moderated'.
Now, that question is of that class, so it has been closed. However, there are exceptions. Normal humans are good at making exceptions and should have made one here. A certain type of personality -- one that's over-represented in engineers -- likes to create systems that don't have exceptions. They like to create abstractions. And then you get this.
It's also why you have people who still organize their email, even though search obviates that problem.
Like it or not, the types of questions you see allowed or discouraged on SO are in large part the result of years of discussion, debate, and collaborative moderation by a rather large portion of the userbase on SO. Even the handful of people able to take unilateral action to include or exclude questions are elected - hence the event that instigated this thread to begin with.
Ultimately, the folks with the most power over these decisions are the ones using the site. If you don't like what's being closed, cast your re-open votes and convince others to do likewise.
That particular question ended up being closed and reopened multiple times, and discussed heavily on meta. Ultimately, it reached the point where it was simply unmaintainable, in spite of the hard work of many people involved. So it was locked to preserve it.
If you visit some of the more well-maintained tag wikis, you'll notice they contain sections for freely-available books amid links to other useful learning resources. This tends to keep them smaller, easier to maintain, and much more likely to be maintained by folks who know something about the topic. Example:
This is not to say that most of what is closed shouldn't be closed. But your existing policies consistently drive away conversation that I'd like to be involved with, and contributers like me.
As a concrete example, I'm quite sure that my most upvoted answer on SO is on a question that would be instantly closed and deleted under current guidelines if it came to the attention of the SO policy lawyers who volunteer to "moderate". See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/93526/what-is-a-y-combina... to verify.
Incidentally, the answer just after yours is mine (lwburk), so don't draw too much attention to closing the question! What I'm more upset about is that the accepted answer is nothing more than a link (and has a lot more votes than your much better answer). That is definitely a historical accident. If these answers were each given today, yours would be voted much higher and his would be closed.
I've had personal interaction with moderators over that exact issue. I personally enjoyed answering algorithm questions. However it came to my attention that any time moderators notice that type of question, they close them for exactly that reason. (No matter what the wishes of people who ask and answer that type of question might be.)
As for the historical accident - I agree. I'm amazed that an answer given years after the question was asked got as much attention as it did.
Regarding the historical accident: I was the one who suggested that you post that answer there after I saw you post it here [0]. I posted my answer a little while after that. I'm pretty sure all of our upvotes came from Hacker News.