I've been a Stack Overflow user from since a few months of its launch, and have seen a lot of changes. This is more a complaint you are likely to hear from newbies, but even to me it hardly seems to be worth participating anymore.
So today a low rep (~1000) asks a question but gives it an improper tag. A 100+K rep user complains but does not remove the tag, which I am able to do with my mere 7K rep.
BTW how much time do you have to spend at work on Stack Overflow to get over 100K rep? Speaking of such users, when I matter-of-factly commented that with my significantly lower level of rep I was able to remove the tag, I got a snarky comment from a different 100+K rep user.
Nice.
Furthermore, the issue in the question was caused by a typographical error, so I voted to close it, but people answered it nonetheless. So I had to waste rep down-voting answers that never should have seen the light of day.
I'm only participating anymore to get the "gold" (top) level "Socratic" badge awarded for 100 good questions, I'm over 90% of the way. By the way, I ask about 2/3 as many questions as I answer, I also don't understand users who do nothing but answer.
If you don't have questions about programming, you're doing it wrong.
Top comments (12)
Eh, I don't usually bother with downvoting, unless something is particularly bad. There are plenty of people about, especially those with 10K+, who feel it their civic duty to downvote everyone and anyone who so much as breathes "improperty", so I'll let them be the negative ones.
I understand the purpose of the downvote, but I also believe it is the core reason StackOverflow is such a negative place. 9 times out of 10, it's used to slap people for not doing things "right" (and by "right", I mean how the reader expects them to do it). The community has repeatedly shot down every proposal to introduce some simple accountability into downvote reasons, citing "we have the right to downvote for any reason without having to answer for it," which further reinforces my theory that, to put it bluntly, the main purpose of downvotes is bullying.
On the flip side, you have users who don't care to learn or understand how the community is supposed to work. They are a definitive menace, mucking up the place with noise and garbage. This in turn prompts the downvote-happy curmudgeons to do more downvoting and comment sniping, which makes the lazy users angrier. In the end, it's a vicious cycle.
All in all, I rather regard StackOverflow to have the social dynamic of a bad middle school, with its three camps: the popular snobs, the scofflaw rogues, and the small band of well-meaning outsiders who are hated by both groups.
Sad to say, I haven't asked a question on there in years, and I doubt I ever will again. I rarely even venture an answer. Instead, I pour my energy into dev.to and Freenode IRC's
#python,##c++-friendly, and#learnprogrammingchannels.Ahem. Some of us prefer the term rapscallions.
I try to diversify into curmudgeon as well, but downvoting is just not creative enough curmudgeonery for my taste.
Im curious, why did you choose to close a question with a typo? It wouldn't be that hard for the OP to edit their response. Additionally, why need to downvote answers simply because they answered the question, whilst ignoring the typo?
Closing due to typos is an official reason. The questions are supposed to be useful for future readers. Solving typos does not fit with Stack Overflow's mission. Questions that should be closed should not be answered.
If we do not close those kind of "oh, thanks mate, did not saw I forgot a semicolon!" post on Stack, this would make a ton of irrelevant questions. Stack has always been about being a huge Q & A website. So that is not a problem to close such a post imho.
I had the same thought! Based on the other comments, I think the asker's entire problem was the fact that they had a code typo. Not simply that they made a typo in writing the question. It would be completely ridiculous to close a question for that reason rather than just edit it.
You can't spend all the time in Stack Overflow, people who have 100K + rep are the oldest members of Stack Overflow, the ones who answered pretty simple syntax errors back in history where Google wouldn't automatically show an answer from Stack Overflow. Today all simple syntax error questions are already answered and they have been upvoted 100s of times.
Early adapters always gain the large reputation. And Stack Overflow is an established community, with new questions being too specific and too laborious to answer, I haven't even answered single question in last one year. I have gained 30K+ rep but I haven't answered anything important in last 5 years, my oldest answers keep on increasing my reputation.
Its like stock exchange, you have to invest your energy (time/money) in something that will grow over time, anything that is already grown has costly share price. People who invested in Google when no body knew it, are billionaires now.
This is the reason I came to
dev.toas it is relatively new, investing time indev.towill be more sensible now than on to Stack Overflow.If you answer merely a question or two a day consistently you’ll eventually accumulate a fair amount of reputation. In the course of answering you’re going to end up creating an answer or two that becomes anomalously popular and that will pay “dividends” over time.
Dev.to has a very different tone, and I really like it here, but Stack Overflow has its place. If you can express your problem in terms of code, if you don’t frustrate people by being ambiguous or vague when you should be specific, you can get quick, detailed answers to tricky questions.
I’ve been trying to steer people here for opinion-based questions, especially the “what should I learn next” variety, with varying degrees of success. Stack Overflow really needs more automatically suggested alternatives when closing a question for being off-topic.
I'm one of the very oldest members of StackOverflow and have just 7K of rep. But yeah I didn't spend my time (at work?) answering other people's simple syntax errors, but if anything, asking my own questions. And a couple of those in particular keeps gaining reputation as the years roll on.
What don't you understand about them? I'm one of those people, although I haven't been as active for several years. My reasons are:
I often have questions, but typically they've already been asked and subsequently closed unanswered with a note that they are a duplicate question.
Sometimes there's a link to the question it's an alleged duplicate of, but it isn't a duplicate (usually the older question is similar, but so overly specific as to not be broadly applicable) so that's not helpful to me. Sometimes there's just no link to the question it's an alleged duplicate of, but the alleged duplicate question is the only one showing up in my google search results so even if it is a duplicate I still have no answer.
Because of that, I've never bothered to pose any questions I don't find already asked on SO because I figure the same would probably just happen to my questions too.
This is a thing?