DEV Community

Discussion on: How do you deal with Q&A web platform's trolls? (e. g., Stack Overflow, Quora, etc.)

Collapse
 
laisbsc profile image
Laís Carvalho • Edited

Hello Mx Spider @riidon, I mean... :P
Thanks for your comment. I like your way of dealing with it.

The 'no response' reminds me of the Python Discord channel, where you can post your code and if someone doesn't pick up the issue for 90 min, it expires. No need for snarkiness! Just silence, it doesn't break the soul as much.

My personal issue with the bad answers is how much emotional toll it takes on people. We are in a field where we constantly think that everyone else is smarter/more capable than we are. After days batling with code and sleeping short hours, posting a question on SO (because one does not know what to do anymore) and getting a bad answer can lead to a very bad mental state.

I don't mean to raise the gender discussion here but I cried for days after a snarky comment on my newbie Java code. I even thought about giving up because I was 'stupid' and 'incapable of writing code'. Which is not true!

Coding is hard and if the community is not supportive, newbies will give up even before they are confident enough to post SO questions. In my perception, if one has nothing to contribute with, keep it quiet and wait until it expires. Or ask nicely (!) for clarifying questions.

Thanks for exposing your personal experience :)