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Why is stackoverflow turning so negative?

11 points by magic_man ↗ HN
Whenever I search a google many of their questions pop at the top. A lot of these questions end up closed. However some of these questions have a ton of votes. Some questions are down voted or closed and obviously where asked by someone who just started programing.

You can't even answer them because they were closed. Everyone is there at some point.

18 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] thread
venomsnake
I think stackoverflow is just following the normal curve or market dominance - first you solve the problem, then you become the problem.

I think it is a side effect of the way some policies that were needed are now culture/institutional memory.

magic_man
If you look at some of the older question you can see there has been a general shift in the way people help others. They used to be a lot more helpful and there was less "arrogance." Something what you think might be trivial might not be for someone else.
V-2
There are people who just drop their homework assignment on SO, not even bothering to write a single word from themselves. They just expect users to serve them solution on a plate, doing their homework for them. And apparently they're sure it goes without saying. Now that's arrogance, no double quotes necessary
swasheck
This is an important observation. As more users arrive, the quality of both questions and answers drops. They work hand-in-hand.
rubyn00bie
Who cares if they do? They're only hurting themselves and many others may find it useful.

It's like going 65mph in the fast lane, when the person behind you wants to do 80mph. "They shouldn't be going that fast," but they are and they're going to. Best not worry about it yourself, and let them get pulled over and learn the lesson on their own.

I personally agree with the sentiments of the OP. I am often shocked at some responses, and threads closed marked as "non-constructive." It seems counter-intuitive for learning and sharing knowledge (to me).

V-2
Who cares - the OP, perhaps?

I have no way of knowing whether cases like that aren't the ones he's referring to.

Noone (including yourself) has come up with any examples yet.

krapp
The obvious question, then, becomes where is the site that does what people want Stackoverflow to do?
totalforge
The issues appear to be symptoms of the gamification employed by the site. There are users with high scores that are eager to protect their position, and dominance of their particular subject area. These users are putting their scores on their resumes and online profiles to advance their careers. You could create your own new stack overflow site focused on helping beginners.
V-2
And quite how would overzealous closing of simple questions help to "protect their position"? If anything, answering them is the easiest way to score more points.
nnoitra
Personally I like Quora. It has a community feel to it. Has a ton of smart programmers who aren't arrogant with beginners. I really think that Quora is the future of knowledge sharing.
pearjuice
Content discovery on Quora is hard. I only come there once a week when they send me their perfectly fine tuned weekly dose of content related to my interests. I wish I could view a live stream of that, on their website.
V-2
Okay - any examples? To back up your assertion that they were closed merely because the OP was a beginner?
zem
here's one example i remember arguing against: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5486945/asking-for-algori...

the question was "closed as duplicate" in a knee-jerk manner, whereas if you note that the questioner is a beginner, and read what they're actually asking, pointing out the duplicate is useless.

V-2
Closing it as a duplicate is only debatable, in worst case. Hardly an impressive example of how SO is generally getting "negative". I see no element of malice or bad will at all.

I can't see how the alleged prejudice against new members was involved, either.

The OP had asked nearly 50 questions before asking the one that got closed off as a duplicate - only 2 out of the 50 were closed, and some were highly appreciated by the community (+16 votes).

The misjudgement itself is also far from obvious.

Furthermore, the question is 2.5 years old to start with - not a short time, given that SO itself is 5 years old, and it didn't gain its wild popularity from day 1. And if I understand well, SO "turning negative", which is what magic_man is alarming us, is not supposed to be old news, but a recent troubling phenomenon.

Also before the question was closed, the OP was given an answer that he himself marked as accepted - so he got his problem solved!

As for the duplicate thing - well, the other question contains a fully working (after corrections) code sample that does precisely what the OP wanted. The "ok" function is testing the diagonals.

Note that this guy "garima" wasn't specific about what exactly he struggled with trying to implement the algorithm that checks diagonals. He only asked "how to do it". Broad question - broad answer: here's code that does just that, go figure.

Had he had further doubts (eg. understanding the code from Mister Bunker's question), noone would stop him to ask another one question, targetting some particular difficulties.

Many people in this thread supported the notion that SO is so negative (sharply chosen words like "snobbery", "arrogance" etc. were used), but the example you gave is EVERYTHING I got that's supposed to substantiate this claim, even though I specifically asked about examples...

This is why I remain unconvinced

richbradshaw
It's likely that this viewpoint depends on the language you tend to view – I haven't seen much evidence of this trend. SO is a large site now and has different subcultures within it.
datphp
I like lurking around SO as there is a lot of good knowledge flying around, and I've seen my share of closed questions.

Honestly, I hate the abuse of power you see on many forums, but I've never seen a topic closed without appropriate justification.

SO is meant to be a place to ask for a solution to a specific problem you've narrowed down as best as you could, not copy-paste a bunch of stuff you don't understand for people to analyze. I think it's awesome, because it keeps the quality very high, and makes it an extremely useful resource to quickly find solutions to not-so-obvious problematics.

Posting links to some of those threads would help having a better look at what you've witnessed though, maybe as someone said it's specific to certain areas of the site?

eddyparkinson
What to do about it? ..... I often wish I could get points for pointing new users in the right direction.
DonGateley
This totally infuriates me as well. Some bizarre snobbery over there. Nearly every time I follow a Google search link to stackoverflow I find the topic closed for one bullshit reason or another. Rarely does the logic make common sense.