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Stack Overflow has become an unwelcoming and hostile platform

Uriel Bitton on July 04, 2020

We <3 and believe in Stack Overflow. But sometimes, loving something means caring enough to admit that it has a problem. Let’s start with the pa...
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yellow1912 profile image
yellow1912

I have experienced this before. I may not be the best questioner, but Everytime I ask some thing I put tons of thoughts into research first, and to make sure it is easy for people to understand the question and to answer. Yet I do find some people very hostile, they think it's a stupid question etc. I think if you don't feel like answering then don't . It's that simple . I also really hate the down vote thing. I think if you down vote something you Must include a reason and be willing to explain your reason.

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urielbitton profile image
Uriel Bitton

Couldn't agree with you more. I experience the same exact thing everytine I use the platform. Its crazy

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

It's all about RESPECT ... people shouldn't become arrogant just because they've got a bit more experience.

But the "problem" with Stackoverflow is, it's just "too useful" to ignore, it's saved my *ss numerous times. However if the problems you're signalling become rampant then that might ultimately be its downfall, hopefully that can be prevented.

My advice to people (and to myself)? Count to 10 before you hit the "submit" button and think about if what you wrote is really "right" not just in a technical but also in a moral sense. If you can't say anything nice then maybe it's better to say nothing at all.

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urielbitton profile image
Uriel Bitton • Edited

I couldn't agree with you more! Of course it saved me too and helped me a lot but the discrimination is just too present to ignore. I always say if you're not here to help then just move on. Sadly its still a huge issue today. (2 years after this article was written).

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

IMO, StackOverflow remains exactly because some old questions are of bad quality, yet the answers are good enough for people to CopyPasta; although that may not help the asker much.

Yes, bad, but daring-to-ask, questions.

But I don't see it is growing much.

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urielbitton profile image
Uriel Bitton

what is important is not that questions are of bad quality. A very important concept in life i learned is that there is no such thing as a stupid question. Everyone is there to learn and that can only happen by asking questions.

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bravemaster619 profile image
bravemaster619

But it’s built on mechanics and norms that push people away if they don’t know the ins-and-outs.

Yes, SO is meant to work like that. If anyone doesn't want to inspect and study the ins-and-outs of SO, he doesn't have what it takes to get help from SO contributors.
SO is not a forum nor a social platform. Only minimal, reproducible answers are acceptable.

I don't know if you've done review tasks in SO. New SO questions are (most instantly) reviewed by voluntary SO users(hundreds of thousands of them) who have 500+ reps.

Your new question is reviewed by one of them almost as instantly as it's posted. If the question quality is considered to be poor it'll get downvoted by them. Or even worse, it will be closed (but by moderators and users with gold badges) without your consent.

SO already suffers from low quality question "overflow", thus any requests to make entry barrier lower gets tens of downvotes in MSO.

If you want to know how SO is working and what the current meta is in SO, you need to visit meta stackoverflow

Here are some posts in MSO that I want to mention:

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v6 profile image
🦄N B🛡

This seems to presume that StackOverflow is meant to benefit the asker more than the future reader.