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Lot of people have posted these kind of questions, but mine deals with another perspective of the same problem, so before you cry out duplicate! just hear me out.

I'm a pretty new user on Stack Overflow, and a rookie in the world of Javascript and Jquery.

So I wanted to make something clear...

So I asked some questions based on my knowledge, and what I do not understand, while other more experienced users kept pounding me down and down-voting me. Well, in my understanding, Stack Overflow was made with the aim that anyone can ask, and anyone can answer.

Old users constantly say This is a duplicate! or Why didn't you check the FAQ!. Now let me ask you something, Will a new user go through all of the Stack Overflow just to see whether it is acceptable to you or not? OR does he even know that we have a FAQ?

Seriously guys, if you think that a person's question are a waste of time, why do you take the time to down-vote him??

Old users should understand that we are just wanting to get an answer, and not try intimidate us. Give us some space!

I mean seriously, after getting bullied again and again , you think anyone would want to stay on longer?

I agree some new users are just there for spamming, but hey, not all of us are like that!

Just give us some breathing room, and come on, it isn't that hard to be nice to someone.

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  • ^^^Thats what I'm talking about, now I never knew about that question, its my first time on Meta
    – Aman
    Oct 9, 2014 at 10:28
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    I think that your question on SO and this question suffer from the same problem: You didn't take the time to do a simple search for other questions that covered the same ground. I'm sure that that duplicate question even came up as a suggestion while you were typing this one. But please don't take it as bullying, it's how the site works.
    – Alenanno
    Oct 9, 2014 at 10:29
  • @Alenanno I understand what you mean to say, but sometimes the questions that have already been asked might no cover what I might have meant to ask. Sometimes users do nothing, but down-vote questions, that is what makes me feel that I shouldn't be asking questions. I hope SO was also meant for the newcomers, and not only for the experienced
    – Aman
    Oct 9, 2014 at 10:33
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    @AlexR. If you think your new question is not covered by any of the duplicates, make this clear! :) I mean, write for example "I saw this question X, but it didn't help me because bla bla" or "I have seen similar questions but mine deals with this other problem/from another perspective..." and so on. If your question is genuinely different, it will stay open. Nobody is against you specifically, it's just that the mechanism makes sure that duplicates are closed, that's all. :)
    – Alenanno
    Oct 9, 2014 at 10:35
  • @gnat did you delete your 2nd comment? I thought I just saw it there before I closed the question.
    – psubsee2003
    Oct 9, 2014 at 11:51
  • @psubsee2003 I didn't delete it, most likely someone flagged as obsolete after it got integrated into your answer (not that I complain)
    – gnat
    Oct 9, 2014 at 12:19
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    @gnat possibly, but I could have swore it was there before I cast the final vote. Odd that it would have been deleted at roughly that time as the close (which did delete your original possible duplicate)
    – psubsee2003
    Oct 9, 2014 at 12:21

1 Answer 1

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You are making a couple of mistakes that is common for newcomers.

One of the most important guidelines I can give you about using Stack Overflow (and Stack Exchange sites in general) is you are not asking questions for just yourself, you are asking questions for everyone. What I mean by that is the site is not designed to provide you with personalized support to solve your specific issue and hold your hand through it. It is designed to be a magnet for users coming in via Google or Bing or your other favorite search engine who are experiencing the same problem, so questions (and their answers) need to be helpful to anyone and not localized to you. The goal of Stack Overflow is to be a repository of good questions about programming problems and provide quality answers to those problems

You are also taking personal offense at tools that are designed to help achieve that goal.

Downvotes

Downvotes are a signal to both you and to other users that the question is not useful or well researched, or is otherwise unclear. While it is not a requirement of downvoting, many users try to leave constructive feedback in comments to explain what is wrong and what you can do to try to fix it. Pay attention to the comments. Don't see them as personal attacks by people who don't want to help you but users who do want to help you and are offering advice on how you can make it easier for them to provide assistance.

Duplicates

And since you seem to have a personal vendetta against duplicates, I wanted to save that for the end. Duplicates are not designed to insult you. They are there to help you. A user is telling you that the answer to your question may already exist in another question. So go take that advice and read it. If it doesn't solve your problem, then that's ok. It is possible your question was unclear or was missing something that would explain why someone thought it would help you. Edit the explanation into the question. Sometimes it help to acknowledge the duplicate in the question and explain precisely why it doesn't help you. You can find more in Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not

The are 2 parts to the duplicate closing process however. Part 1 is simply someone showing you another question that might solve your problem. That possible duplicate that @gnat proposed to this very question is part 1. The comment is automatically generated by the system. The banner that appears above your question is visible only to you. Sometimes a user makes a mistake or misreads the question. That's ok for the most part as it takes 4 more users to agree with him/her that the question needs closed.

The 2nd part is when it actually gets put on-hold as a duplicate. The On-hold/Close process basically prevents users from adding answers and directs everyone to the duplicate question. If you edit the question after this happens, your question will automatically be put into a review queue for more experienced. They can vote to reopen it if they agree that it is now fixed or was wrongly closed.

The reason we close duplicates goes back to the broader goals of Stack Overflow and all Stack Exchange sites. Common questions tend to get asked over and over again. When you have the same question asked dozens of times, what good does it do to have different answers spread all over the site, or the same answer repeated in every question. So the developers of Stack Overflow designed the system to try to direct users to a single question in which all of the various answers and different solutions could exist. It isn't a perfect system as sometimes questions do get answered before getting closed, or questions get wrongly marked as duplicates, but it is better than trying to find a single canonical answer to a common question amongst dozens of similar questions.

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