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How can we make this tool more refined? I keep seeing weird questions where the user has 1 reputation, and someone downvotes anyway. These questions seems to be coming from students.

I was expecting this place to be more for serious programmers, which it is, but how can we assist the folks at Stack Overflow with this?

How about

  1. Creating something like "Studentoverflow.com" (programming questions for students) -or-
  2. Indicating that the user should have at least 1 year of experience programming when signing up?
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  • Good luck on meta with this one... Jan 22, 2010 at 19:22
  • I know. It seems people have the time to vote down questions...like they did to this one.
    – Saif Khan
    Jan 22, 2010 at 19:24
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    No use for a separate site if people then post on the wrong one. You're not exactly leading by example here.
    – Mirko N.
    Jan 22, 2010 at 19:28
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    @Saif - Sometimes people downvote questions because questions or ideas are bad, simply. It's not just a local sport ;)
    – Gnoupi
    Jan 22, 2010 at 19:32

2 Answers 2

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I guess simply from the FAQ:

No question is too trivial or too "newbie".

Elitism is more a danger than a virtue, in my opinion. Geek communities are known for years of "RTFM", I think it has been done to death. SOFU sites welcome anyone, and this is a quality. Nobody forces anyone to read and answer questions they don't want to see. And from what I see every day, "refined" questions exist and are successfully answered.

I don't see a problem besides luxury tastes from some people.


And about:

Indicating that the user should have at least 1 year of experience programming when signing up?

I know other kinds of sites which are asking you to justify "years" before you consult them, and it's a known fact that nobody ever lied when entering them... ;)

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    +1; you saved me from writing essentially the same response. Unfortunately, way too many users of the Trilogy still lean toward their unfortunate RTFM/LMGTFY ways. :(
    – John Rudy
    Jan 22, 2010 at 19:34
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There are a surprising number of nuanced questions about difficult subject scattered here and there: you just have to keep your eyes out for them, and I generally find more chaff in the form of "What's [your|the] [best|favorite|hardest|oldest|newest|...]" questions and repetitions of bog-easy-to-search-for stuff than questions from greenhorns.

Aside from that, what do you have against beginners?