Can I have some criticism? [closed]

Question

I'm talking about SO, one of the best sites I've ever known.

There are some things I wanted to ask, and learn what others (especially gurus and the owners) think about this point of view.

This question caused me to be banned.

1. I do not want to ask you to give my account back.

2. Most of the people here are not native English speakers, so a few misunderstandings and misleading topics are possible.

3. Aren't we sometimes treating the users cruel, harsh, or too bossy?

4. 1. I've been a developer for more than 16 years and had different experiences, maybe in some expert and if we summarize the subjects I will be quite good.

   2. Developers could have different opinions about sharing their code and ideas. So, if I didn't post a piece of my commercial code, can I be blamed for that? In some posts I tried to summarize the code as much as I can.

   3. Sometimes explaining a question is hard, or explaining why and when you come into that problem could be hard also.

      In some of my posts the confusion comes when you started 2-3 pieces of new coding technologies.

   4. I myself Google first before each of my posts, then maybe someone will come into your topic and give their own Googled links, or believe me sometimes you will get silly or irrelevant answers.

      So if one time I asked "please give a piece of code regarding my simple problem" that was the reason. And, a person came to that topic looking at it upside-down saying, "don't ask for code! What have you done?" In that case I did a similar activity in 4-5 different ways if I posted a key part about each the topic would be messed-up and that would cause just confusion, and some others maybe came to talk about other different parts of that topic. Isn't it right?

   5. Being more in SO could be good because I love this site, but having more reputation here doesn't mean that someone is higher than anyone or even has more knowledge on the topic, but it's possible to be true that way, maybe lots of the higher ranks have more free time than some others!

5. I like SO a lot and think it could be the best site on the globe and this is one of the sites I was spending more of my time on the Web here.

6. Sometimes you have to give your question in the simplest form that it comes into your mind. There are situations when you are in a hurry and your question isn't as good well-formed as you desire.

7. Maybe 2 questions be completely relevant and complementary to each other, and be better to be in one question and not separates into 2 different questions.

8. I think some times moderators that want to manage and control the topics and trying to reform SO's posts and making them more reliable with rules do taking decisions with precipitation.

These were my ideas or some notions that came into my mind regarding these kinds of problem and maybe a bit of criticism that some could be thought about.

Answer 1

Most of the people here are not English native speakers, so a few misunderstandings and misleading topics are possible.

Non English speakers of course are welcome. However, StackOverflow is an English site, so if you want to participate, a certain degree of command of the English language is required. There are many proposals on Area51 of StackOverflow in a different language. If you feel that your language skills are a barrier to effective participation in StackOverflow, find one in your language, or propose one.

Aren't the users sometimes cruel or harsh, or too bossy? "Do this! Don't do that!"

Perhaps the interpretation of "bossy" might be part of your first point, which is language barrier. We are communicating through a very inexpressive medium, simple text. You can't gauge tone and mood from text alone, at least not very well. Text should be taken for what it is. Trying to extract feelings and anger from it almost always leads to misunderstanding.

There is a degree of "you should be doing this", and "you really shouldn't be doing that" mainly because the community feels that adhering to those things ultimately helps it. StackOverflow is an awesome community, and the content and help you receive is outstanding. The strict standards that are in place are what helped make it that way. Many other communities have no such standards, and posts like "Can u help me with X plz?" cause that community to suffer.

Sometimes explaining a question is hard, or explaining why and when you come into that problem could be hard also.

Do your best. If more clarification is needed, it will usually be asked for in comments. Edit your question and improve it until it supplies enough information to be answerable. If the question is hard, then maybe the question is too big and should be asked in smaller, more appropriately sized questions.

Developers could have different opinions about sharing their code and ideas. So, if I didn't post a piece of my commercial code, can I be blamed for that? In some posts I tried to summarize the code as much as I can.

If you don't want to share your code, then don't. However that isn't a reason to believe that an answer that doesn't answer the question is any more acceptable. You could create a more contrived example of your commercial code that is different enough to not be considered the same thing.

I myself Google first before each of my posts, then maybe someone will come into your topic and give their own Googled links, or believe me sometimes you will get silly or irrelevant answers.

Then don't vote it up, or at least leave a comment explaining that you have seen the link and it wasn't able to help you.

So if one time I asked "please give a piece of code regarding my simple problem" that was the reason. And, a person came to that topic looking at it upside-down saying, "don't ask for code! What have you done?" In that case I did a similar activity in 4-5 different ways if I posted a key part about each the topic would be messed-up and that would cause just confusion, and some others maybe came to talk about other different parts of that topic. Isn't it right?

Don't ask for a full solution then. If you are having problems finding the right way to get started, then that is what you should ask for. Ask for a pointer, or a place to start, or pseudo code. At the very least, if you have made an effort, show it.

Sometimes you have to give your question in a simplest form that it comes into your mind, there are situations that you are on hurry and your question isn't as good well-formed as you desire.

If you aren't going to make the required effort to make it a good question, then don't ask it. Rushed or not, questions need to be good. That includes explaining what you are looking for, what you have tried, what it doesn't work, etc. See How to Ask.

Answer 2

There's quite a lot of things in your question but two points in particular I wanted to pick up on:

Developers could have different opinions about sharing their code and ideas. So, if I didn't post a piece of my commercial code, can I be blamed for that? In some posts I tried to summarize the code as much as I can.

The best thing to do regardless of if it's real commercial code, a hobby project or a text book exercise is to create a minimal but complete example of the problem. That way you don't reveal your secrets, but more importantly you give everyone who might be able to answer it a common, unambiguous starting point to answer from.

Usually you'd want to explain what what your example does and why you weren't expecting that or what you were trying to make it do.

From a complete but minimal example I can run it on my machine and see the error you got or the results very easily and try out ideas for fixing it without having to spend a lot of time recreating what you describe. If 10 people each create a minimal example to try it out that's a huge waste of effort for something you could very easily have supplied with the question.

As an added bonus often the cause of the problem becomes obvious when you're creating a minimal but complete example - either it doesn't work in your minimal test case (in which case your assumptions were wrong) or you spot how to fix it in the process.

There are situations when you are in a hurry and your question isn't as good well-formed as you desire

If you're in a hurry the best way to make sure you get good answers quickly is to spend some time making the question as unambiguous, clear and well formatted as possible - so anyone who might know the answer can glance at it decide quickly that they want to answer.