Timeline for Should Stack Exchange in general be awarding "A"s for Effort?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
29 events
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| Jul 29, 2019 at 19:30 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
I'm editing out my rather unwelcoming tone. While I still believe in what I wrote, I think calling people "help vampires" is probably not going to be perceived as "friendly".
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| Mar 5, 2019 at 12:04 | comment | added | JDB | @m.k And still, whether there is effort or not on a question that was well asked or not, posts on SO regularly get upvotes. It seems the decision to vote or not made by the autonomous individuals that make up our community are more complex than you're suggesting. | |
| Mar 5, 2019 at 11:33 | comment | added | M.K | And still, when there is effort on a well asked question, depending on the community (SO is where I have seen it mostly), people do not want to upvote. It seems the community does not want to upvote something if they do not also have upvotes. | |
| Mar 4, 2019 at 17:50 | history | edited | jscs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Tooltip for video link
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| Mar 4, 2019 at 3:55 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Updated a YouTube link that was dead
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| Jul 14, 2015 at 16:29 | comment | added | JDB | @AndrewT. - oh, that stinks. It's a documentary piece about mosquito swarms in the arctic that can drain Caribou of blood to the point of death. The caribou are forced to eventually leave their fertile grazing grounds for frozen tundra where the mosquitoes aren't able to survive (but neither are the caribou, so they must eventually return). | |
| Jul 14, 2015 at 16:27 | comment | added | Meta Andrew T. | Just saying, the YouTube video is not available in some countries. I got "The uploader has not made this video available in your country." message. Bummer. | |
| Jul 14, 2015 at 14:43 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 8, 2015 at 18:09 | comment | added | JDB | @CeesTimmerman - The question was closed before your edits. Users must have at least 3k to nominate the question for reopening. Since you think you could answer it, I'll vote to reopen it, but 4 other users have to agree before it will be reopened. | |
| May 8, 2015 at 17:36 | comment | added | Cees Timmerman | @JDB I already answered him elsewhere, but even after turning the title into a question and adding an example, this question is still on hold for alleged vagueness: stackoverflow.com/questions/30097512/… | |
| May 8, 2015 at 16:29 | comment | added | JDB | @CeesTimmerman - Are you sure? Seriously, though, of course no one is forced... I was using hyperbole. You are free to answer poorly asked questions, and I'd encourage you to do so. But it's still a poorly asked question and I'm still going to respond to it with an appropriate and balanced response. | |
| May 8, 2015 at 12:01 | comment | added | Cees Timmerman | Nobody is "forced" to do anything. This is all volunteer work. Or am i forced to speak out about not being able to simply answer "vague" questions that some hasty people don't take time to understand? | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:32 | comment | added | Shog9 | Ranking questions/answers according to usefulness is also emergent, @millimoose. Folks tend to not know something is useful until they need it - at which point, they can vote on it. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:18 | comment | added | millimoose | @JDB As for the usefulness to future visitors, this seems like a somewhat nebulous goal. Personally I'd say that SO has drifted away a little from it – "how useful will this be to someone else?" doesn't really factor into voting/closing decisions as far as I can see, and the "too localized" close reason got nuked. I'm not sure whether it's a solid enough notion to base best moderation practices on, as opposed to being an emergent consequence of having the site mostly consist of "good" questions and answers. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:07 | comment | added | millimoose | @JDB - I think there's a difference between expecting the asker to do some amount of busywork to "demonstrate worthiness"; and expecting the asker to progress in their task as far as is reasonably possible, insofar as to make the job of the answerer simple. While the latter could also be easily interpreted as demanding "worthiness", I believe the problem lies when the demand is perfunctory. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 18:18 | comment | added | rommel | Beyond the above, effort also reduces duplicates - this definitely is true, but sometimes can we really blanked all OP because of the strength of their question? From some questions, I have deduced that the OP is not fluent in the English Language and that will clearly be evident in how they ask a question. Additionally, am sure we do not want to do anyone's homework, but there are many newbies to SO who do not bother to read the faq of SO, can we really banish them or merely guide them to asking clearer more defined questions? | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 17:50 | comment | added | JDB | @millimoose - I identify with the sentiment, but the focus there is on the worthiness of the OP to have their question answered, rather than the value of answering the question for future visitors (which is what SO is supposed to be about). | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 17:30 | comment | added | millimoose | And at the cost of coming across as smug, answerer time and attention is a limited and precious resource. Especially on SO specifically where I'm guessing there's a clearer separation between the two groups, as well as a significant disparity between their sizes. (I'd love to see some sort of data on that actually.) One at least as valuable as the asker's time. It's not unreasonable to expect the person asking to put in more of their time if (and only if) it saves the time of the person answering. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 17:27 | comment | added | millimoose | I've seen plenty of questions which include long blocks of code in an attempt to display "effort". I agree that this is annoying, and I don't accept these as evidence of effort. Personally, I strongly prefer the opposite. Questions where the code sample is a trimmed down test case that demonstrates the problem and only the problem. The "effort" that I look for isn't just effort towards solving the problem, it's also effort towards making the problem easier to solve for whoever clicks on the question. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 15:55 | comment | added | Lightness Races in Orbit | Oh go on then have a badge | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 11:20 | comment | added | Denis de Bernardy | "One user who hasn't tried anything is a tad annoying. 10,000 users who haven't tried anything is, more or less, the death of the site." — we're well beyond that point already. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 5:15 | comment | added | Burhan Khalid | "In the meantime, considerable effort is expended in the comment sections of the question and answer trying to define the OP's actual situation (and what they want). This is effort that could have been used answering one or two other user's questions, had the question been asked clearly in the first place." = +1 | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 4:50 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:44 | comment | added | JDB | @Bart - To answer your question, though... I'd say "yes", effort is only required as necessary to answer the question. And nearly all questions require a fair bit of demonstrated effort to successfully provide an answer. | |
| Dec 9, 2013 at 22:05 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 9, 2013 at 21:30 | comment | added | JDB | @Bart - I've complained about regex questions before, actually. And it's a good example of why we don't want these kinds of questions on the site in general. That tag is filled with completely useless junk. If the whole site were like the regex tag, I don't think I'd visit as much as I do. I'm not the only one who thinks so. | |
| Dec 9, 2013 at 21:26 | comment | added | Bart | Interesting answer and exactly what I would otherwise have written. Why I didn't however is because I don't know where that puts us with "simple" questions. I.e. those that are clearly answerable, but where the OP might not have a clue. And seeing the failed attempts might be next to useless. Take Regexp questions for example. It seems the community happily answers those requests for code, without any prior effort. And I can't really blame them for not requiring it. So does that mean that demonstrated effort is only required if I couldn't answer without it? | |
| Dec 9, 2013 at 21:20 | history | edited | JDB | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 9, 2013 at 21:05 | history | answered | JDB | CC BY-SA 3.0 |