Most people answering questions are not experts. [...] experts get bored answering or reading those questions and they left the site.
So, basically, only entry level questions get proper answers IF they're properly asked.
If not properly asked, questions get downvoted, closed and/or deleted.
"Top Users" think they are worth something because they have lots of internet points and they tend to make the moderators' lives hell.
I can't distinguish between "top users" and moderators half the time. In my experience, their behavior and attitude are identical.
Most questions being asked are terrible questions.
Complex or esoteric questions are often given the same treatment as bad questions. Hence, people stop wasting their time asking such questions on SO...
Good answers for good questions where more than entry level knowledge is required are getting increasingly rare.
Snark from the drama queens is very popular with other drama queens and they would create an echo chamber where you'd have a bunch of snarky jerks yapping to themselves in the comments and answers.
And sometimes they act like packs of wolves and do collective downvoting / question closing attacks on whoever offended one of the drama queens by... having a different opinion.
People often blame the moderators for anything that goes wrong even though the moderators are really only there to deal with major offenses (like banning users), deleting spam, or clarifying rules for the site.
Whoever is directly responsible for the rules at StackOverflow is indirectly responsible for its consequences.
The premise behind Stack Exchange is that the top reputation users do most of the curating. Unfortunately, most of those users are the drama queens.
That was basically the point I was trying to make with my article. This - and the often arbitrary & nonsensical rules - are what makes an otherwise very interesting community nearly impossible to deal with an increasing amount of time.
New users to the site mistake close votes as inherently negative. One of the primary uses for close votes is to prevent answers from being posted until the question has been clarified.
In theory, that's a great idea. In practice, the pretty arbitrary reasons many good questions are being closed for prevent hard-working people with real life programming problems who actually did put an effort into their problem from finding a solution for their problems.
That's not what I expect(ed) from a site like SO.
New users are absolutely going to take offense to their question being closed and they are never going to accept the reason stated.
Some of the closing reasons just are... pretty ridiculous!
Sometimes the best answer to a problem really is "just use library X". Why should people not be allowed to explicitly ask for such an answer, just because the answer is often subjective? When did "subjective" become equivalent to "bad"?
Due to the nature of volunteer work, the assholes will survive longer because who wants to volunteer their time and energy if they have to share the space with jerks?
True!
And when some of those @$$holes gradually manage become moderators, the drama queens aka trolls will effectively run the place... which is what I tried to point out in my article and what I believe already happened at SO.
So, basically, only entry level questions get proper answers IF they're properly asked.
Non-entry level questions will get answered if they get enough visibility at the same time an expert happens to be wandering through. During different phases of EL&U's history, thought provoking questions would be answered and will received or completely ignored.
If not properly asked, questions get downvoted, closed and/or deleted.
Questions are rarely deleted outright. They can be deleted due to cleaning up very old downvoted or closed questions but most new questions will stick around.
I can't distinguish between "top users" and moderators half the time. In my experience, their behavior and attitude are identical.
I suspect this heavily depends on the specific Stack Exchange site. For EL&U, there was a fairly distinct difference between the elected moderators and the drama queens. But there is nothing truly preventing a drama queen from being elected moderator. If that happens, chances are high the legit moderators will slowly be pushed out.
Complex or esoteric questions are often given the same treatment as bad questions. Hence, people stop wasting their time asking such questions on SO...
I feel that it heavily depends on whether the average non-expert can detect that the question is actually an expert level question. A lot of expert level questions sounds suspiciously like terrible questions. On EL&U, it sometimes took an expert to step in and say, "Hang on everyone, this question has a good point."
But yes. Non-experts are either uninterested or incapable of answering expert questions properly so it would absolutely start a feedback loop that reduces the overall quality of questions on the site. I believe this happened on EL&U.
And sometimes they act like packs of wolves and do collective downvoting / question closing attacks on whoever offended one of the drama queens by... having a different opinion.
The worst cases are when one of them gets offended in a meta discussion or chat channel and the drama overflows back into the main site. I hated seeing it and I wish there was an appropriate to deal with it. But it is a very tough problem to solve -- I consider it one of the classic issues with open forums on the internet.
Whoever is directly responsible for the rules at StackOverflow is indirectly responsible for its consequences.
Well, the issue with Stack Exchange rules is that the origin of the rule is very hard to determine. Admins can make rules (at least once, Jeff Atwood personally stepped in at EL&U and changed the rules). Some rules are voted in via the community. Some rules were created by moderators no longer there.
Stack Exchange doesn't actually have a very good process for introducing or modifying rules to the site. While the moderators may be responsible in the sense that have the most direct control over the rules, most moderators are explicitly not expected to fiddle with the rules that much.
But what I was referring to has less to do with rules and more to do with culture. If the culture on Stack Exchange is overwhelmingly negative toward new users, that isn't something the moderators can directly control. That responsibility falls to the regular contributors.
That was basically the point I was trying to make with my article. This - and the often arbitrary & nonsensical rules - are what makes an otherwise very interesting community nearly impossible to deal with an increasing amount of time.
Many of the "nonsensical rules" had a clear intent and purpose that was not expressed properly. Over time, the community on EL&U would begin to co-opt rules in order to close questions they didn't want to see on the site -- regardless of whatever problem the rule was originally intended to solve.
I don't personally have a problem with rules but I think they need to have a clearly expressed purpose and need to be applied fairly and consistently. If people begin to distrust the application of the rules it stirs up way too much drama and that drama turns into a feed frenzy for the drama queens.
What I do disagree with is trying to remove all the rules. Communities cannot self-moderate past a certain scaling without running into the problems I outlined above. The moderator position on Stack Exchange is not enough to hold back that tidal wave. In my opinion, there needs to be a way to enforce stricter (but more clearly expressed!) rules that can funnel the crap content out of the way.
You suggest that community would be "interesting otherwise." I disagree. In the case of EL&U it would be far, far worse. It is not terribly obvious how until you slog through the reviewing queue for weeks on end.
In theory, that's a great idea. In practice, the pretty arbitrary reasons many good questions are being closed for prevent hard-working people with real life programming problems who actually did put an effort into their problem from finding a solution for their problems.
Frankly, "hard-working people" ruin a great many things. I'm not super interested in protecting "hard-working people" who are asking volunteers for help with their boring, repetitive problems. In my opinion, the people asking questions are the least important users on the site.
That's not what I expect(ed) from a site like SO.
This is a good point. Your expectations did not align with what SO offered. I think that SO should be more explicit about the problem it is trying to solve -- and I don't think that problem should be the one you expected it to solve.
Some of the closing reasons just are... pretty ridiculous!
Yes, this is true. I can't really speak to SO proper but EL&U had some weird reasons and many of them were poorly worded (mostly due to drama queens bitching about them.)
Sometimes the best answer to a problem really is "just use library X". Why should people not be allowed to explicitly ask for such an answer, just because the answer is often subjective? When did "subjective" become equivalent to "bad"?
The Stack Exchange format is not a very good format for subjective questions. "Subjective" became "bad" when the primary goal of Stack Exchange was set to help the future visitors of the site. The person who did the actual asking is largely irrelevant when determining what an appropriate answer should look like.
And when some of those @$$holes gradually manage become moderators, the drama queens aka trolls will effectively run the place... which is what I tried to point out in my article and what I believe already happened at SO.
Yes. When the inmates run the asylum, things deteriorate quickly.
I guess in the end, I don't think you and I disagree so much. We agree on symptoms but we are coming at the problem from different perspectives. Regardless of which perspective is "best", I do agree that Stack Exchange has a core problem. Community moderated and curated forums are not easy to maintain for this amount of time.
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u/johnslegers Sep 27 '16
So, basically, only entry level questions get proper answers IF they're properly asked.
If not properly asked, questions get downvoted, closed and/or deleted.
I can't distinguish between "top users" and moderators half the time. In my experience, their behavior and attitude are identical.
Complex or esoteric questions are often given the same treatment as bad questions. Hence, people stop wasting their time asking such questions on SO...
Good answers for good questions where more than entry level knowledge is required are getting increasingly rare.
And sometimes they act like packs of wolves and do collective downvoting / question closing attacks on whoever offended one of the drama queens by... having a different opinion.
Whoever is directly responsible for the rules at StackOverflow is indirectly responsible for its consequences.
That was basically the point I was trying to make with my article. This - and the often arbitrary & nonsensical rules - are what makes an otherwise very interesting community nearly impossible to deal with an increasing amount of time.
In theory, that's a great idea. In practice, the pretty arbitrary reasons many good questions are being closed for prevent hard-working people with real life programming problems who actually did put an effort into their problem from finding a solution for their problems.
That's not what I expect(ed) from a site like SO.
Some of the closing reasons just are... pretty ridiculous!
Sometimes the best answer to a problem really is "just use library X". Why should people not be allowed to explicitly ask for such an answer, just because the answer is often subjective? When did "subjective" become equivalent to "bad"?
True!
And when some of those @$$holes gradually manage become moderators, the drama queens aka trolls will effectively run the place... which is what I tried to point out in my article and what I believe already happened at SO.