The only sub-community where I’ve noticed this happening was the C++ one. They were often quite rude, and given the fact that they had a lot of power and recognition on the site, it could look intimidating.
Other than that, I find SO to be great as a community. Can’t really recall seeing questions closed unless they really deserved it and unless there were at least some salvaging attempts.
Generally SO is great for getting answers but I have seen many good questions getting closed for no apparent reason, and sometimes deleted. Often in the latter case it seems that they were deleted because they hadn’t been answered, and a Q&A site with no As isn’t much use. Also I’ve seen editing of questions and titles that just don’t match the original intention, presumably because the editors think they know better (they don’t seem to know the answers though!) or because they just want to get their gold star counts (or whatever it is) higher. The site is pretty great in a lot of ways; people less so.
One irritation I come across far too often on Stack Overflow is related to the “XY problem”.
Somebody asks how to do Y. Through discussion in the comments, people work out that what they actually need to do is X, they just thought Y was the next step on the way to X. They accept a do Z instead answer as correct and go away happy.
Then when I search for how to do Y, I just get hundreds of Stack Overflow answers which claim to be answered questions about Y, but in fact the ‘answer’ is do Z instead, which isn’t helpful when you really want to do Y.
I had this exact same scenario just a few hours ago :D
Sometimes it’s helpful to suggest alternative solutions, but they don’t always apply.
But even worse are the questions that are just left hanging; maybe the OP gave up and walked away, or solved it, or found another way, but we’ll never know.
That’s not a problem only for SO but pretty much any forum where you can ask for help.
Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in common with Wikipedia than a discussion forum
Ironically, an actual wiki doesn’t typically suffer from this problem. If the content of a wikipedia article doesn’t match the title, then it’s simple enough to either change the title, split out the off-topic content into its own article or simply delete it. I’m not sure the question and answer format lends itself so easily to being fixed:
The question asker gets to choose which answer to accept. They will normally be biased towards answers which help them solve their problems over answers which stick to the letter of the original question.
Often, the question asker accepts an answer which is adequate, then a better answer is added later.
If the answer doesn’t actually answer the original question, it’s not trivial to ‘make up’ a question to match the answer.
Having both questions and answers clearly labelled with the user who wrote them doesn’t encourage collaboration. It suggests, “you can add your own answer”, rather than “help improve the existing content”.
Whatever their aspirations, Stack Overflow appears to be stuck being a discussion forum for now.
I have seen many good questions getting closed for no apparent reason
I always see people saying this but is it really true? I have been using SO for so long and have never seen unfair treatment of questions except in the C++ case I mentioned. I’ve seen many cases of closing that were totally justified though. Furthermore, the bases of these justifications, SO’s precise guidelines for relevant content, seem spot-on.
It seems just a tad bit suspicious that people are not confusing precise rules that take actual effort to follow (it’s not a forum) for arbitrary rules.
Sure. I and all the others who are “always saying this” could absolutely just be mistaken or just not reading the rules properly or any one of a range of other possibilities that makes them all wrong.
Stack overflow is where sensible questions go to be closed by tiny people impressed with their moderation powers.
The only sub-community where I’ve noticed this happening was the C++ one. They were often quite rude, and given the fact that they had a lot of power and recognition on the site, it could look intimidating.
Other than that, I find SO to be great as a community. Can’t really recall seeing questions closed unless they really deserved it and unless there were at least some salvaging attempts.
Generally SO is great for getting answers but I have seen many good questions getting closed for no apparent reason, and sometimes deleted. Often in the latter case it seems that they were deleted because they hadn’t been answered, and a Q&A site with no As isn’t much use. Also I’ve seen editing of questions and titles that just don’t match the original intention, presumably because the editors think they know better (they don’t seem to know the answers though!) or because they just want to get their gold star counts (or whatever it is) higher. The site is pretty great in a lot of ways; people less so.
One irritation I come across far too often on Stack Overflow is related to the “XY problem”.
Somebody asks how to do Y. Through discussion in the comments, people work out that what they actually need to do is X, they just thought Y was the next step on the way to X. They accept a do Z instead answer as correct and go away happy.
Then when I search for how to do Y, I just get hundreds of Stack Overflow answers which claim to be answered questions about Y, but in fact the ‘answer’ is do Z instead, which isn’t helpful when you really want to do Y.
I had this exact same scenario just a few hours ago :D
Sometimes it’s helpful to suggest alternative solutions, but they don’t always apply.
But even worse are the questions that are just left hanging; maybe the OP gave up and walked away, or solved it, or found another way, but we’ll never know.
That’s not a problem only for SO but pretty much any forum where you can ask for help.
From the article:
Ironically, an actual wiki doesn’t typically suffer from this problem. If the content of a wikipedia article doesn’t match the title, then it’s simple enough to either change the title, split out the off-topic content into its own article or simply delete it. I’m not sure the question and answer format lends itself so easily to being fixed:
Whatever their aspirations, Stack Overflow appears to be stuck being a discussion forum for now.
I always see people saying this but is it really true? I have been using SO for so long and have never seen unfair treatment of questions except in the C++ case I mentioned. I’ve seen many cases of closing that were totally justified though. Furthermore, the bases of these justifications, SO’s precise guidelines for relevant content, seem spot-on.
It seems just a tad bit suspicious that people are not confusing precise rules that take actual effort to follow (it’s not a forum) for arbitrary rules.
Sure. I and all the others who are “always saying this” could absolutely just be mistaken or just not reading the rules properly or any one of a range of other possibilities that makes them all wrong.