Well, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't put more weight into it than that. I've too put in that work — and actually, I have the badges and reputation to prove I know "how to use StackOverflow". That doesn't make me a better person. I've just played the stupid game long enough to be good at it, and then learned it was a total waste of effort to stay in that club.
I also don't believe in blaming the victim in matters of online toxicity, which is what your statements (unintentionally, I believe) do.
For every happy person I've spoken to, I've encountered dozens who have given up on StackOverflow, and have ultimately found better community elsewhere. And they found it. I don't have statistics...I just have years and years of using the platform, including as a flag reviewer for an hour+ a day for over a year, and working as a community manager and mentor around the tech world.
If you want a number, look at the number of "top posters" on StackOverflow compared with the number of people who tried joining the community. It's disgustingly low. It was significant enough for StackOverflow's governance to revise the code of conduct TWICE! And no, you cannot just blame the users as being lazy, as is StackOverflow's favorite shutdown — a la "duplicate question, not enough effort, not interesting, not useful" — since many are successful joining less toxic communities like DEV, and even IRC. Yes, there are some lazy users, but many many more just don't know the secret handshakes.
What you have with StackOverflow is an exclusive club of people who have figured out the secret password past the armed gatekeepers. It's not a badge of honor.
P.S. StackOverflow isn't even that good for information. In writing my Python book, I lost count of the number of times that StackOverflow's highest voted and accepted answers were actually wrong. Not even just out of date. Actually wrong.
A front-end developer from Mar del Plata, Argentina. Passionate about CSS, accessibility, and JS. Currently working on "just a small fix", as I've been doing for the last 15 years.
There's certainly people raising bad questions without doing their research first. I realise my wording may make it seem that I'm complaining about how they treat people that ask objectively bad quality questions. That's an issue, but what I want to address is a way deeper, systemic abuse
This is not an angry reaction to a downvote from my first question. I participated in their game for about eight months, did everything I could to lead by example, answered 200 questions, asked 1 question that received good feedback, got into "the top 0.01%" and collected all those pretty badges and points. I understand how it works.
In all honesty, I got out when I realised it was affecting my professioanl and personal life . I thought I was being an icon of helpfulness. In reality, I was participating in the sick game of edits I described above.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't put more weight into it than that. I've too put in that work — and actually, I have the badges and reputation to prove I know "how to use StackOverflow". That doesn't make me a better person. I've just played the stupid game long enough to be good at it, and then learned it was a total waste of effort to stay in that club.
I also don't believe in blaming the victim in matters of online toxicity, which is what your statements (unintentionally, I believe) do.
For every happy person I've spoken to, I've encountered dozens who have given up on StackOverflow, and have ultimately found better community elsewhere. And they found it. I don't have statistics...I just have years and years of using the platform, including as a flag reviewer for an hour+ a day for over a year, and working as a community manager and mentor around the tech world.
If you want a number, look at the number of "top posters" on StackOverflow compared with the number of people who tried joining the community. It's disgustingly low. It was significant enough for StackOverflow's governance to revise the code of conduct TWICE! And no, you cannot just blame the users as being lazy, as is StackOverflow's favorite shutdown — a la "duplicate question, not enough effort, not interesting, not useful" — since many are successful joining less toxic communities like DEV, and even IRC. Yes, there are some lazy users, but many many more just don't know the secret handshakes.
What you have with StackOverflow is an exclusive club of people who have figured out the secret password past the armed gatekeepers. It's not a badge of honor.
P.S. StackOverflow isn't even that good for information. In writing my Python book, I lost count of the number of times that StackOverflow's highest voted and accepted answers were actually wrong. Not even just out of date. Actually wrong.
Hi grunk and derek,
There's certainly people raising bad questions without doing their research first. I realise my wording may make it seem that I'm complaining about how they treat people that ask objectively bad quality questions. That's an issue, but what I want to address is a way deeper, systemic abuse
This is not an angry reaction to a downvote from my first question. I participated in their game for about eight months, did everything I could to lead by example, answered 200 questions, asked 1 question that received good feedback, got into "the top 0.01%" and collected all those pretty badges and points. I understand how it works.
In all honesty, I got out when I realised it was affecting my professioanl and personal life . I thought I was being an icon of helpfulness. In reality, I was participating in the sick game of edits I described above.
The very first person to reply to my tweet was one of the devs I was competing with all the time. #1 contributor in the [css] tag, former moderator, and a great guy that always tried to lead by example. He stayed in the site for far longer, but ultimately reached the same conclusion: it's the system what generates the bad habits.