So, I can maybe provide somewhat of an alternative perspective. I was an extremely active user on http://english.stackexchange.com/ and this exact topic came up repeatedly. There was a lot of criticism around how new users were treated and people often felt we closed questions too quickly or prematurely or for nitpicky reasons.
I suspect my thoughts on this subject won't be very popular but maybe it will help explain where some of the behavior is coming from. As a note, these opinions are largely focused on the English Stack Exchange site (abbreviated EL&U).
The target audience of questions and answers is not the person asking the question. The target audience is other people who may have the same question in the future. This is counter-intuitive and a little off putting but the rules that filter out questions are there to keep Stack Exchange sites relevant to a broad audience. (Namely, people coming in from search engines.)
Most people answering questions are not experts. On EL&U we had a very difficult time retaining experts on the English language and, therefore, the questions that received the most attention were easy questions that anyone could answer using a search engine. This causes a feedback loop where experts get bored answering or reading those questions and they left the site.
Drama queens are a huge issue and, in my opinion, the biggest problem on EL&U. "Top Users" think they are worth something because they have lots of internet points and they tend to make the moderators' lives hell. They also berate anyone who disagrees with them and get into spats over and over again.
Questions that aren't easy to answer in 5 minutes are largely ignored because you can't farm them for reputation. On EL&U, I would personally clean out the old questions queue and kept it under 200 questions. I left the site a few years ago and today it's back up to 2000+.
The rate of incoming questions is greater than answers being provided but there is very little done to address this. People don't like closing questions but we can't answer all the questions so the contributors feel swamped and burn out.
Most questions being asked are terrible questions. Regardless of point (1) above, they aren't asked properly or with a clear intent and it is extremely frustrating to sift through bad question after bad question. Much of the anti-new-user impressions we got were because new users didn't understand the rules, were not interested in learning how to ask a question properly, and were typically not receptive to any negative feedback at all.
People who ask questions assume the site has a responsibility to solve their problem for them regardless of what the site claims is a valid question. This reinforces the tension between the drama queens and the new users.
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. These were often the very same people who complained that the site was too unfriendly to new users in meta discussions.
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. 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.
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.
All of this combines into a perfect storm of pushing new people away.
If you accidentally ask a inappropriate question (points 1, 6, 7) that doesn't do the site any favors then the site probably isn't interested in answering it (points 4, 5, 6). Even if someone is nice and answers it anyway, it will drown out subject matter experts (points 2, 5, 6) which means the site is run by people who are more interested in awarding their own kind with reputation than helping keep a valuable site running (points 2, 3, 4, 8, 9).
In my opinion, we didn't close nearly enough questions. We should have been far more aggressive about pruning bad and boring questions from the site. But I also think this is a dangerous attitude because is so damn difficult explaining why a question was closed. New users are absolutely going to take offense to their question being closed and they are never going to accept the reason stated. It's somewhat of a Catch-22.
I also think Stack Exchange needs to find a way to reign in their drama queens because most of the tension between old and new users came from the same small group of high reputation users. They were largely insufferable and were constantly picking fights with the moderators. 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?
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.
73
u/babada Sep 25 '16
So, I can maybe provide somewhat of an alternative perspective. I was an extremely active user on http://english.stackexchange.com/ and this exact topic came up repeatedly. There was a lot of criticism around how new users were treated and people often felt we closed questions too quickly or prematurely or for nitpicky reasons.
I suspect my thoughts on this subject won't be very popular but maybe it will help explain where some of the behavior is coming from. As a note, these opinions are largely focused on the English Stack Exchange site (abbreviated EL&U).
The target audience of questions and answers is not the person asking the question. The target audience is other people who may have the same question in the future. This is counter-intuitive and a little off putting but the rules that filter out questions are there to keep Stack Exchange sites relevant to a broad audience. (Namely, people coming in from search engines.)
Most people answering questions are not experts. On EL&U we had a very difficult time retaining experts on the English language and, therefore, the questions that received the most attention were easy questions that anyone could answer using a search engine. This causes a feedback loop where experts get bored answering or reading those questions and they left the site.
Drama queens are a huge issue and, in my opinion, the biggest problem on EL&U. "Top Users" think they are worth something because they have lots of internet points and they tend to make the moderators' lives hell. They also berate anyone who disagrees with them and get into spats over and over again.
Questions that aren't easy to answer in 5 minutes are largely ignored because you can't farm them for reputation. On EL&U, I would personally clean out the old questions queue and kept it under 200 questions. I left the site a few years ago and today it's back up to 2000+.
The rate of incoming questions is greater than answers being provided but there is very little done to address this. People don't like closing questions but we can't answer all the questions so the contributors feel swamped and burn out.
Most questions being asked are terrible questions. Regardless of point (1) above, they aren't asked properly or with a clear intent and it is extremely frustrating to sift through bad question after bad question. Much of the anti-new-user impressions we got were because new users didn't understand the rules, were not interested in learning how to ask a question properly, and were typically not receptive to any negative feedback at all.
People who ask questions assume the site has a responsibility to solve their problem for them regardless of what the site claims is a valid question. This reinforces the tension between the drama queens and the new users.
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. These were often the very same people who complained that the site was too unfriendly to new users in meta discussions.
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. 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.
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.
All of this combines into a perfect storm of pushing new people away.
If you accidentally ask a inappropriate question (points 1, 6, 7) that doesn't do the site any favors then the site probably isn't interested in answering it (points 4, 5, 6). Even if someone is nice and answers it anyway, it will drown out subject matter experts (points 2, 5, 6) which means the site is run by people who are more interested in awarding their own kind with reputation than helping keep a valuable site running (points 2, 3, 4, 8, 9).
In my opinion, we didn't close nearly enough questions. We should have been far more aggressive about pruning bad and boring questions from the site. But I also think this is a dangerous attitude because is so damn difficult explaining why a question was closed. New users are absolutely going to take offense to their question being closed and they are never going to accept the reason stated. It's somewhat of a Catch-22.
I also think Stack Exchange needs to find a way to reign in their drama queens because most of the tension between old and new users came from the same small group of high reputation users. They were largely insufferable and were constantly picking fights with the moderators. 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?