Timeline for Should Stack Exchange in general be awarding "A"s for Effort?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
42 events
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| May 23, 2017 at 12:35 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 16, 2017 at 16:33 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Apr 24, 2014 at 13:52 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Migration of MSO links to MSE links
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| Jan 16, 2014 at 16:41 | comment | added | Shog9 | "Mr.Dollar", @hek2mgl? Seriously? By all means, close crap. Close it because it can't be answered, close it because it will never help anyone else, close it because it isn't about programming... Just don't close perfectly good questions that folks have put time and effort into answering based on your subjective perception of "effort". Because you're not hurting the author of the question then, you're hurting everyone else. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 15:45 | comment | added | hek2mgl | @Shog9 Finally you'll get a site for idiots. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 15:40 | comment | added | hek2mgl | @Shog9 You are thinking too much about guys which aren't worth it. If a guy is too stupid to ask a question, or too lazy for own investigation, it doesn't matter which reason he gets.. 5 guys close, that's it. I can't think of what will happen in a typical FOSS mailing list if a typical stackoverflow opener will ask a question. At least I know that they would show him how to went off quickly. That's natural human behaviour. And so should SO. But unfortunately on SO Mr.Dollar has joined the game and that's why every f*** get's respcet (And this question and answer on meta gets >100+). | |
| Dec 13, 2013 at 11:23 | comment | added | John | @Shog9 I'm a bit confused - are you talking to yourself in the first sentence? You're answering your own question here, right? | |
| Dec 12, 2013 at 11:38 | comment | added | OGHaza | @Shog9, I understand your point when referring to answers but do we need context to know that a question should be downvoted? You say "If you have a special interest in a particular question, break out of /review and do whatever you like" but in this case you're saying that a question requiring a downvote is not a special case, if anything it's the expected case. | |
| Dec 11, 2013 at 16:11 | comment | added | james.garriss | Down-voting can't be the right answer to poor questions, because it's not an option while voting to review poor questions. If you want me to down-vote instead of voting to close, you have to give me that option on the page. | |
| Dec 11, 2013 at 16:10 | comment | added | james.garriss | Your answer, @Shog9, a list of what makes a good question, should be included in SO's help on how to ask a good question. stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask That doesn't say anything about context or demonstrating minimal understanding. If our help is poor, we can't complain that the questions are poor. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 22:56 | comment | added | JDB | @jpmc26 - I especially wanted to quote "in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed". If you have to ask the OP for any additional information, especially basic information, then the OP has not provided sufficient context. As has been said, if a common or easy solution exists, and upon this being pointed out the OP says "I already tried that", then the OP has not provided sufficient context. It's not always possible to know what context is going to be relevant, but you can tell when the OP hasn't made any effort whatsoever to provide it. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 22:13 | comment | added | CodeCaster | @LessPop_MoreFizz "the downvote is definitely the friendlier approach" - only obviously bad questions get downvoted, the rest gets pity-upvotes regardless the quality. Or 'likes' instead of upvotes, as in "Ooh, he said FTP". | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 21:44 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @JDB The dictionary definition doesn't actually help clarify what it means in practical terms. That brings me no closer to knowing how to identify whether a question includes sufficient "context" or not. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 20:46 | comment | added | David West | The three step effort of providing context, stating the problem clearly, and explaining why obvious solutions don't work was just useful for me. Thanks! | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:27 | comment | added | usr | @Shog9 how cool is that! Let me try this out. It's not going to take long to find a test question... In earnest: I suspect many do not know this, thereby increasing the close queue problem. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:19 | comment | added | Shog9 | For what it's worth, @usr... Down-votes on questions are free. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 19:02 | comment | added | usr | Regarding strategies for dealing with low quality questions: I almost never downvote because I feel that this question does not deserve the sacrifice of the -1 it does to my rep. I know I'm supposed to downvote but I don't. I close. I consider this to be a flaw in the Stack Overflow rule set. If downvoting questions was free I'd do it all the time. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 18:34 | comment | added | Wayne Werner | You know, I think a good example here is the classic example on Coding Horror - Bob told the guy to ask the duck. A ridiculous number of new questions are people asking, "Hey duck, my code won't run" - or some variation thereof. It's a struggle to get people to do the basic effort - when I told someone in comment to use the logging module to help diagnose their problem they asked, "Where does it put the file?". This is a question that 30s of experimenting would answer. And I'd say that's fairly typical. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 18:17 | comment | added | Pekka | so tl;dr: downvote more? That I can get behind. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 17:45 | comment | added | JDB |
@jpmc26 con·text /ˈkänˌtekst/ noun 1. the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
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| Dec 10, 2013 at 17:35 | comment | added | Shog9 | See: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140405/… @OGHaza | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 13:37 | comment | added | OGHaza | If we should be down-voting rather than (or as well as) voting to close, is there a particular reason we can't down vote from the review queue? | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:33 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | Going by our experience on Information Security, I find that “minimal understanding” is exactly right, and not difficult to apply, if only it was applied for what it means, instead of being turned into “no effort” (which it has zilch to do with). Maybe the close reason needs to be reworded? I'd say “you're so out of your depth that wouldn't be able to understand the answer”, but I don't know how to word it in a way that's both polite and not going to be reframed as “no effort”. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:30 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | ”Show your work“ — that's relevant for homework, where the point is to make people to the same thing over and over again. That's irrelevant — against the grain, even — for Stack Exchange, where the point is to answer each question once and for all. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:27 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | “Folks aren't looking for ‘effort"’ because they think displays of struggle are some sort of magic pixie dust, able to turn a terrible, useless question into gold”. You know, I rather think they do (as well as the converse: the biggest ingot is worth nothing if you didn't break your back carrying it). And experience doesn't bear it out. FAQ-type questions are among the most useful, even if they're one-liners. Huge code dumps aren't useful to anyone no matter how original they are. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 9:33 | comment | added | jpmc26 | Very well written. It sounds to me like a part of the problem is a lack of obvious criteria. You post greatly clarifies what we should really be looking for, but the fact this kind of clarification of terms is necessary suggests that the terms aren't particularly clear to begin with. On that note, "context" is a rather vague word, too. Could you elaborate on what constitutes "context"? I imagine it's something along the lines of, "a clear statement about what you are trying to accomplish and how this problem fits into it." Something like, "I am at point A, and I'm trying to get to Point B." | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 5:52 | comment | added | LessPop_MoreFizz | @JDB the downvote is definitely the friendlier approach. A downvote says "this isn't very good". It helps to slow the acquisition of new privileges which the sort of person that asks bad questions might not be ready for. It cleans up the front page. But there's a floor on the 'harm', since most of these questions are asked by 1 rep new users anyway. A close vote, by contrast, puts up a sign that says "CONFORM OR GO AWAY". I'd argue the means of sending that message that still lets the user get an answer is, ultimately, less harmful to all involved. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 5:16 | comment | added | JDB | Excellent question Shog. You really got me thinking. As much as you like my answer, I realized that I don't always act in a manner consistent with the philosophy. Your answer was equally excellent. There's still a part of me that feels like closing and downvoting harm the OP in some way, so I often avoid doing both. And that downvoting is somehow more harmful than closing (since it effects rep), so I often opt for closing as the "softer" approach. Now I'm rethinking that. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 3:22 | comment | added | user213963 | @Troyen That isn't sufficient given that many people answering the questions browse the 'newest' and 'active' via tags. And remember, all it takes is one "You forgot a semicolon on line 15" answer to keep the question from getting deleted. Incidentally, there's a low rep question (-3, not off the front page yet) and have down voted 3x answers on it (and so far, the answerer has self deleted twice)... but there's a -1 answer there... and thats enough to keep the question from getting auto deleted. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 3:17 | comment | added | Troyen | @MichaelT But a score of -4 drops them off the homepage, meaning they'll get significantly fewer views. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 3:03 | comment | added | user213963 | "...If they just down-voted the questions, a privilege available to nearly everyone flagging them, they'd drop out of sight a lot faster." - not completely. The automatic scrips that delete not-closed questions will not delete questions that have answers. Closure prevents answers (that get up votes and prevents that automatic deletion). Down voting alone is not sufficient to get them to drop off the radar. People still answer them in hopes of the stray +10 rep from an answer up vote or +15 from an accepted answer. Either one prevents automatic deletion. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:34 | comment | added | LessPop_MoreFizz | Oh hey, that rant. I'm flattered, I guess. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:21 | comment | added | user102937 | Ah, yes, I see what you are saying. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:20 | comment | added | Shog9 | And of those 5, only 4 bothered to down-vote, @TheGrinch. It's the sort of thing I'm used to seeing on bikeshed questions, but... This isn't that. So I'm left scratching my head at the notion that someone would think a specific, answerable programming question is so inappropriate that it would need to be deleted, but isn't even worth a down-vote. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:17 | comment | added | user102937 | Ehm, you unilaterally reopened that post, after it had been closed by 5 community members, and flagged by two more. Just sayin'. It was posted in 2010, when the "rules" were arguably more relaxed than they are now. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:14 | comment | added | Shog9 | The context is Android, the problem is obtaining current latitude + longitude, and the obvious solution (if one exists) isn't given. Apparently, only 4 people found that lack of research troubling, @TheGrinch. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:12 | comment | added | user102937 | How does your previously cited example question square with context, a clear statement of the problem, and an explanation for why the obvious solution (if one exists) didn't work? | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:07 | comment | added | Travis J | @TheGrinch - haha, I chuckled at that image. I think I have done that when faced with code walls far too often. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 0:06 | comment | added | user102937 | In that interview, Richard Feynman (who is normally quite elegant in his speech patterns) exhibits the same Tourette-style gyrations that seasoned Stack Overflow users often exhibit on reading such questions. | |
| Dec 9, 2013 at 23:59 | history | answered | Shog9 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |