Why "What Stack Overflow is Not" was deleted

Question

I just deleted What Stack Overflow is Not, a collection of various explanations for things that Stack Overflow doesn't do, wasn't meant to do, or shouldn't be used to do. Several people put a fair bit of time and effort into it, so I felt I should take a minute to explain my reasoning...

First I should note that this wasn't due to problems with the post itself. Not that there weren't problems - you can find them discussed in depth in How can the "What Stack Overflow Is Not" post be improved? - but they could've, and to some extent were, being fixed with edits. As negative as "What X Is Not" sounds, the intentions were good: a set of answers to common misconceptions on the purpose of Stack Overflow, directed at new users, written and edited with an eye toward clarity and brevity.

It was a nice idea; my hat's off to those who were willing to try it. Unfortunately, it was also fundamentally misguided.

As I wrote a while back in response to a similar suggestion,

Most importantly: they're not here to get reputation, or badges, or become part of a community. They're here for answers to their questions. Anything we throw in their way - from a line of text to a multi-page document - is just a roadblock they have to navigate around in order to get to their destination.

The best you can hope for is to catch a handful of the folks who actually do care to learn a bit more about the philosophy of the system they're using, while the vast majority ignore your efforts completely and do only what the system (and I'm including editors, voters, and moderators in that system) forces them to do in order to get what they want.

But hey, the best case still has some good results, right? So what's the problem?

Here's the problem:

• Stack Overflow is not a research assistant where art thou code. what have you tried? where did you fail?

• One, get your accept rate up and two, Stack Overflow doesn't provide product or service recommendations

• -1 I had no idea what the difference was myself, but a 3-minute search on Google was quite enlightening. Stack Overflow is not a search engine.

• Stack Overflow is not a proxy for customer support. And this has nothing to do with programming.

• Stack Overflow does not reverse engineer other people's software

• This is not an appropriate question for SO - SO is not your private research assistant.

• Stack Overflow doesn't provide product or service recommendations

• Stack Overflow is not a paid service

• There are many things incorrect in your question. Please read the FAQ and https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not

• What Stack Overflow is Not

• Stack Overflow is not a research assistant so tell us what have you tried

• Stack Overflow is not a code translation service

• Stack Overflow is not a research assistant

• What did you tried? Also https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128572#128572

• Stack Overflow is not a research assistant

• Stack Overflow is not a debugging service

• Stack Overflow is not a code translation service. And have you done some research like googled for "javascript rc4"?

• Stack Overflow won't do your homework for you

• Stack Overflow is not a code translation service

• Stack Overflow is not a Debugging Service - https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/135066#135066

• stackoverflow.com does not make recommendations on tools, services or products. This site is for questions concerning code.

• http://WhatHaveYouTried.com and Stack Overflow is not a research assistant.

• What Stack Overflow is not.

• Stack Overflow is not your personal research assistant

• Stack Overflow is not a language tutorial.

• Stack Overflow does not provide product or service recommendations

• 43 question and 3 accepted? Your accept rate needs to be worked on. Stack Overflow doesn't provide product or service recommendations

• Stack Overflow is not a code translation service

• Welcome to Stack Overflow! Sorry, but SO is not a research assistant. What have you done yourself so far?

• Stack Overflow doesn't provide product or service recommendations.

• Stack Overflow is not a recommendation engine.

• Stack Overflow is not your research assistant. Your research level here is zero.

• Stack Overflow is not a research assistant so what have you tried

The above quotes were pulled from among the recent comments on Stack Overflow that linked to WSOIN. There were over 1.3K of these comments (which have been removed en masse, since the link is broken), and the vast majority of them were like those above - links, with maybe a bit of generic or snarky advice thrown on top. This crosses the line from benign to actively harmful - whether or not the intended recipient of the message ever even reads it, there it sits, an ugly wart on the site, screaming out to future readers that what Stack Overflow Is isn't clear, but there are plenty of folks more than willing to send you packing after telling you what it IS NOT.

As Popular Demand wrote,

The second issue is related to the first. Now that WSOiN exists, users who link to it can — consciously or not — feel like they've done their part and move on. I've seen people post one-liner links to WSOiN entries and then leave without making any attempt to fix obvious spelling errors or other issues with posts. I suspect that the same is true of voting and flagging.

In other words, linking to WSOiN is the "I just walked five extra steps to throw away a candy wrapper instead of littering, so I've done my part to protect the environment for this year" of the SO world. It really is the least you can do.

If teaching the person you're responding to is worth your time, they're worth taking the time to actually respond to the question or answer they wrote. If they're just a drive-by help vampire, then there's no real point to commenting at all. There are many useful resources, guides and tutorials out there - but if you're just slapping down links in lieu of actually trying to engage and teach, you might as well be linking to LMGTFY.

If you see this practice (comments that link without bothering to explain why or relate it to the specific post) happening with other links (for instance, https://idownvotedbecau.se/), please flag them.

See also:

Stack Overflow Is Not a Link Farm

Answer 1

As said, I'm annoyed about the lack of previous discussion before you made the decision. People spent plenty of time refining and improving this and it's now wasted. It's not like you don't have a point with the reasons for deleting it, but you should have at least given some hint that the project is on probation, and any work invested in it may be for naught.

Anyway. Looking at the issue underneath: this feature really filled a gap, a gap that I feel needs closing somehow. Used well, WSOIN had the potential to provide just-in-time documentation: to tell the OP exactly what they were doing wrong, and how to fix it. Grasping SO etiquette is hard, and people don't read manuals.

The argument that a question or OP that has a chance of improving should be worth enough of your time to write a full-fledged comment manually is only half the truth. It is terribly tiring to say the same thing over and over and over, even though it's said to worthy users. Some automation is needed, as the flood of bad and borderline-good and "I don't know my way around here yet" questions grows faster than the number of experienced users.

So please:

• Consider integrating Benjol's pro-forma comment script in some form. I could think of four different limitation ideas to help prevent abuse - to be combined or used separately:

  • Make it a rep privilege.

  • Provide it with a fixed set of pro-forma comments only. The comments could be community-curated (maybe in the form of a Meta question like this one). However, it would be necessary to have different comments in different tags.

  • Provide a fixed set of comments only, and make them static (a special type of comments that can't be edited). That takes away a lot of flexibility, but the benefits may still outweigh that loss. Or make the comments static for low-rep users, or users whose comments have been offensive flagged often.

  • Come up with a metric that measures diplomatic skill, and give the feature only to users who have proven they can talk to people without being rude. I have no idea how to measure that though - the only thing I can think of is that Is a mod is a pretty good indicator of diplomatic skill, while Is a high rep user isn't always...

Also, please restore the full contents of What Stack Overflow is not in some way so all the hard work isn't lost. I'm fine with making it unlinkable, but the work in its entirety is very polished, and definitely has value. It should remain a part of the site's documentation in some form.

Answer 2

I used to post ad-hoc comments like

Please don't prefix your titles with "C#" and such. That's what the tags are for

I replaced that with

Please see "Stack Overflow does not allow tags in titles"

I generally got good responses from these, if I got any responses at all, for instance:

@JohnSaunders: Thank you for your information. I will consider to change the title

I think this decision required more discussion.

I would also like to see some constructive ideas on what we should say to the tags-in-the-title crowd, and the signature, "thanks in advance", and "please help" crowds. Without such ideas, I'm feeling ... fairly displeased right now.

---

I came across this question again and though I'd update. I have been using the script referred to in a comment, and using the following comments:

No tags in titles

I have edited your title. Please see, "Should questions include “tags” in their titles?", where the consensus is "no, they should not".

No, Thank You (or Signatures)

Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?.

No Thanks in Advanced

Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?. BTW, it's "Thanks in advance", not "Thanks in advanced".

No Thanks in Advantage

Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?. BTW, it's "Thanks in advance", not "Thanks in advantage". That doesn't even make sense.

NullReferenceException

Almost all cases of NullReferenceException are the same. Please see "What is a NullReferenceException in .NET?" for some hints.

What Have You Tried?

Please don't just ask us to solve the problem for you. Show us how you tried to solve the problem yourself, then show us exactly what the result was, and tell us why you feel it didn't work. See "What Have You Tried?" for an excellent article that you really need to read.

Can Someone Help Me?

Simply listing your requirements and asking for help is not a good way to ask a question on this site. Please see Why is "Can someone Help me" not an "actual" question. Show us how you tried to solve the problem yourself, then show us exactly what the result was, and tell us why you feel it didn't work.

See the C# Programming Guide

There's an entire manual on the C# Programming Language. You should look at it before asking basic questions on the syntax of the language. See C# Programming Guide . For detailed reference, see the C# Reference.

ASMX is Legacy

ASMX is a legacy technology, and should not be used for new development. WCF or ASP.NET Web API should be used for all new development of web service clients and servers. One hint: Microsoft has retired the ASMX Forum on MSDN.

Remoting is Legacy

Remoting is a legacy technology that is retained for backward compatibility with existing applications and is not recommended for new development. Distributed applications should now be developed using WCF or ASP.NET Web API. See the note at the top of http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/xws7132e.aspx for proof.

XmlTextReader/Writer

FYI, you should not use new XmlTextReader() or new XmlTextWriter(). They have been deprecated since .NET 2.0. Use XmlReader.Create() or XmlWriter.Create() instead.

Office Interop

It is a horrible idea to use Office Interop from ASP.NET or another server technology. These APIs were written for use in a desktop application, for automating Office (a suite of desktop applications). Server applications are different in many ways that make it a very, very bad idea to use Office Interop in them. It's also unsupported by Microsoft, and may violate your Office license. See Considerations for server-side Automation of Office

---

As requested in a comment:

###No tags in titles
I have edited your title. Please see, "[Should questions include “tags” in their titles?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19190/)", where the consensus is "no, they should not".

###No, Thank You (or Signatures)
Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "[Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts).

###No Thanks in Advanced
Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "[Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts). BTW, it's "Thanks in advance", not "Thanks in advanced".

###No Thanks in Advantage
Unlike forum sites, we don't use "Thanks", or "Any help appreciated", or signatures on [so]. See "[Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts). BTW, it's "Thanks in advance", not "Thanks in advantage". That doesn't even make _sense_.

###NullReferenceException
Almost all cases of `NullReferenceException` are the same. Please see "[What is a NullReferenceException in .NET?](http://$SITEURL$/questions/4660142/what-is-a-nullreferenceexception-in-net)" for some hints.

###What Have You Tried?
Please don't just ask us to solve the problem for you. Show us how _you_ tried to solve the problem yourself, then show us _exactly_ what the result was, and tell us why you feel it didn't work. See "[What Have You Tried?](https://web.archive.org/web/20210926041156/https://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/)" for an excellent article that you _really need to read_.

###Can Someone Help Me?
Simply listing your requirements and asking for help is not a good way to ask a question on this site. Please see [Why is "Can someone Help me" not an "actual" question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/284236/why-is-can-someone-help-me-not-an-actual-question). Show us how _you_ tried to solve the problem yourself, then show us _exactly_ what the result was, and tell us why you feel it didn't work.

###See the C# Programming Guide
There's an entire manual on the C# Programming Language. You should look at it before asking basic questions on the syntax of the language. See [C# Programming Guide](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/67ef8sbd.aspx) . For detailed reference, see the [C# Reference](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/618ayhy6.aspx).

###ASMX is Legacy
ASMX is a legacy technology, and should not be used for new development. WCF or ASP.NET Web API should be used for all new development of web service clients and servers. One hint: Microsoft has retired the [ASMX Forum](http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/asmxandxml/threads) on MSDN.

###Remoting is Legacy
Remoting is a legacy technology that is retained for backward compatibility with existing applications and is not recommended for new development. Distributed applications should now be developed using WCF or ASP.NET Web API. See the note at the top of http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/xws7132e.aspx for proof.

###XmlTextReader/Writer
FYI, you should not use `new XmlTextReader()` or `new XmlTextWriter()`. They have been deprecated since .NET 2.0. Use `XmlReader.Create()` or `XmlWriter.Create()` instead.

###Office Interop
It is a horrible idea to use Office Interop from ASP.NET or another server technology. These APIs were written for use in a desktop application, for automating Office (a suite of desktop applications). Server applications are different in many ways that make it a very, very bad idea to use Office Interop in them. It's also unsupported by Microsoft, and may violate your Office license. See [Considerations for server-side Automation of Office](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757)

Answer 3

I think you've done a disservice in deleting the post. As you've mentioned the post isn't the problem, it's how the post was used to institutionalize rudeness that was the problem.

However, we've dealt with institutionalized rudeness in the past through technology. For example, lmgtfy links are now banned on Stack Overflow.

Yes, technology currently does solve the problem now, but that's a side effect of another system that's in place and is used to provide what seems like a knee-jerk solution to people's reaction to a valuable (by your own admission) post.

There's no reason that the current comment check can't be made to include links to the WSOIN post. If the comment contains that link, you simply do whatever you do with lmgtfy links now.

This way, you don't delete important/valuable information (something which many have championed as being important to the cause of Stack Exchange) while at the same time preventing it from being used to institutionalize rudeness.

Once this system is in place, the WSOIN post could be undeleted.

Answer 4

Two people who are equals and who respect each other don't just drop links and leave short, curt comments. This behavior just serves to further alienate people, sparking irrational behaviors stemming from heightened emotions and hurt feelings. People who are upset, angry, and bitter will not learn how to be a good user on our network.

After learning this for myself after failing to see results from dropping those one-liner links, I started leaving comments like this:

Hi John Doe, it's customary in Stack Overflow (and Super User) answers to include a summary of the contents of a link or the highlights that specifically answer the question. The goal of SE sites is to become a resource of knowledge, of answers, for years to come. With a link-only answer, the op must dig through another resource to locate an answer he/she might not be sure about. Most importantly, if your link were to ever break, your answer is useless for anyone who visits this page in the future. Consider making and edit to your answer to add more details. Good luck!

There is also more information here on the Programmers SE Meta on how to leave constructive, guiding comments to new and existing users.

After talking to users on a more equal level, I noticed that more users took this advice and actually changed their behavior, becoming (or at least attempting to become) good Stack Exchange contributors.

With that said, not all of these users will learn, and some, the help vampires, just don't care. Don't waste energy on them, and don't get pulled into their control dramas when they try to argue with you. Be nice, move on, and just leave the community to deal with them in the form of closed questions, downvotes, and moderator flags.

In summary, by taking the approach of assuming the person is new, had a hard day, maybe missed the information in the FAQ or didn't take it seriously enough (sometimes rules aren't enforced in some places), and is more than willing to change his/her behavior to join our community, you'll find that you get more positive results.

Removing this resource is the correct action in this case. Shog9, thank you for doing that, and thank you to the people who contributed to it in hopes that it would bring about positive change. Not every experiment we try here will work, and that's no slight against you for your efforts. I hope you continue to brainstorm ideas for improving the community.

Answer 5

I'm new to Stack Overflow, so here are some opinions from a new arrival.

• It's a great place
• It adds real value to the world
• There are some absolutely awe inspiring answerers around
• There's also a lot of people who are in it for the reputation points. No judgement, but I feel that a quick search and a "the answer is already over here" might be more appropriate sometimes
• Some people are snarky. I have never ever met a development team without at least one snarker though.
• However, a few seconds, minutes, hours later, a Good Samaritan turns up, and can, quite literally, change then entire tone of the question
• The moderators respond well to flags—the community has a mechanism for bringing behaviour back into line
• Meta provides a necessary place to question some decisions

You also have

• Unicorns. Ponies. Cthulhu. Jokes. Humour. Healthy cynicism and sarcasm. Legends. Magic.

WSOIN for me, seemed to like the unofficial house rules, with a side of personality. It had been evolved by the community. It tackled things that frustrated people. If it seemed brusque, or rude, then so be it—this was a tool developed by people to address issues they saw every day, but it represents a healthy portion of the spirit of Stack Overflow.

With all due respect, and there is a lot of respect given the reputation you've earned, removing it without asking the community was the wrong thing to do.

On the other hand, @JeffAtwood's comment about pre-canned comments for dealing with these situations is a great alternative, but, even so, WSOIN should live until this functionality, or suitable replacement functionality, is implemented.

It's had a lot of effort poured into it.

Given your scanning of the links, an 87% rate of links that are, at best, not useful is very high. But this means that there are 13% of links that actually do have worth. By promoting the behaviours exemplified by those 13%, an unlucky number could be turned into the norm, rather than the exception. People regularly bet on outcomes with far lower occurrences! Why not pick out people who do use these links well, and reward them with a bounty? You know who they are! Conversely, negative rep can be awarded by moderators to those who ignore or flout the rules.

Now, the other issue is that its removal is somehow supposed to lead a shift of attitude change in the way Stack Overflow users conduct themselves.

Jeff Atwood said:

@shog yet again this goes directly to a smallish list of canned comments that are shining examples of friendly, civil, well explained education about common problems with questions. Given the statements here (which I definitely agree with; we don't need snark, cynicism, and link only comments) I find the decline of the pro forma comments more and more perplexing.

Again, I respectfully disagree with part of this;

A little snark and a little healthy cynicism is okay—it's a natural consequence of dealing with the technologies, successes and failures we deal with on a day to day basis. If it gets out of hand, is openly rude, or is particularly unconstructive, then we should flag it; tools already exist for this. Plus, the commenter's name is right next to it so you know who the guilty parties are.

Link-only comments are evil, though. So too are link-only answers. 404.

You see, what Stack Overflow has, for example, that that other place that looks like it might actually be for gender change operations, or that official one with the repeated posts, is character. By trying to strip out some of this in, perhaps, an effort to be more professional is, in actual fact, an exercise that risks the heart and soul of the community.

Because, well, because, what's next?

• Ponies and Unicorns are deemed to be too unprofessional (and I've seen comments to that effect) so they get removed and replaced with official avatars?

• Bans for adding unsanctioned humour into a conversation?

• Rewards for making people into customer service machines whose only additional goal is to ask people if they'd like fries with their answer to maximise the customer satisfaction?

Dammit Jim, we're programmers, problem solvers and individuals, not the IT help desk. Well, okay, maybe we sometimes are.

TL;DR

WSOIN is an expression of the character of Stack Overflow. It was being misused in the way that people were linking to it, although there were also examples of how it worked really well. Rather than debate, improve and replace it, it was removed, which I disagree with, and leaves the site a slightly lesser place than it was before the removal. But only a little bit.

And this is all opinion anyway.

Answer 6

Before WSOIN: A person who is not willing to respect any rules of SO post an offtopic question, attracts downvotes, and someone explains in a comment, why the downvotes.

With WSOIN: Same, but now you can link to an explanation instead of retyping it every time. I call it optimisation.

With WSOIN deleted, we're back to manually typing in the reason why that question attracts downvotes. This is something opposite to optimisation.

This OP's suggestion:

then there's no real point to commenting at all

seems to be a bit out lines of SO policy we have been having, which have been encouraging users to make the place better by explaining downvotes.

I wonder if the new policy is, downvote silently and move along?

Answer 7

While I entirely support the purpose of this move, I have to question whether that purpose is actually served by it.

People on the internet are frequently rude, especially those not using their real name. The problem is exacerbated by people who make useless posts, ignore our rules, and whatever else. I'm not saying rudeness is warranted, just that it's not unexpected.

Removing "SO is not" does nothing to address how people behave. People will still tell people to go use Google or that they need to go away and read the manpage or whatever else.

So overall, I view this as a net negative. A central source of useful information was removed, but no benefit was derived thereof.

We have to change how users behave. That's something of a difficult problem, and I don't think banning links to things frequently used by rude people can ever solve it.

_{I will think about this some more and try to post some constructive feature requests.}

Answer 8

I must admit I sometimes linked to WSOIN, however, in a polite way. But I think my comments were more helpful than negative. They made those newbies adapt to the site faster and prevented that their mistakes wasted user and moderator time.

While it is true that some of them didn't like this and probably left the site, it was clear that they would have done this eventually with or without these links to WSOIN.

However, a lot of people really crossed the line. It is never right to disrespect or leave comments that are meant to harm.

I applaud this decision. This was getting out of control and had to stop.

Answer 9

I'm not here to talk about the post that was deleted. I have linked to it in comments, possibly even rudely, but that is irrelevant. I think it should have been deleted, after seeing the post, but that too is irrelevant.

I'm concerned that a Stack Exchange employee unilaterally (as far as I can tell) made a decision about this. What happened to "Stack Overflow is run by you!" (From the first version of the FAQ) or "On Stack Exchange, we believe the core moderators should come from the community..." (From the recent election) I think that this isn't in the category of what should be done by an employee - it's not even one of those things that "should not normally happen, but when they do, they can bring your entire community to a screaming halt — if you don’t have human exception handling in place." (From Theory of moderation, about what the elected moderators are there to handle.)

Where does it stop? I don't know, and that's why I'm upset by how this decision was made - Again, it's a decision that I think was correct, but it disturbs me.

If the community is not in charge, are we just unpaid workers for a company that is not interested in building a community? I don't think so, but this decision implies that we are. This is something that we should have been able to address as a community, and at the end, with much debate, the moderators and employees could make a final decision. Instead, it was abrupt, unanticipated, and against the stated goals of SO.

Edit:

As Shog9 posted eloquently on the blog in March, "Respect the community", and as an earlier response in this discussion noted, there are things that two people who respect one another don't do. I'd think that one of them is to act unilaterally without consultation in a way that seriously affects the other - especially when it could easily have been proposed and discussed first. If Shog9 wanted to delete it after seeing the reaction to the proposal, he could still have done so, but as it is, it just seems disrespectful to the community.

Answer 10

Didn't want to get too distracted by this in the post, but since it's come up in the comments: yes, I realize that a lot of these comments are born out of frustration with poor-quality questions. This is nothing new - but if we institutionalize rudeness as our weapon of choice in this battle, we've lost. A good read, for those of you who haven't seen it: Help Vampires: A Spotter's Guide.

Anthony Pegram offers the rationale that even if those targetted by such comments fail to learn from them, perhaps they prompt others to help clean up the mess... But replacing one broken window (a poor question) with another (a rude response) accomplishes little. Stack Overflow offers quite a few tools for dealing with quality issues that don't require rudeness, and we're always working on improving them; those of you who've been around SO from the beginning know that this is a war we've been waging from the very start, and will continue so long as there are members willing to fight... and willing to fight for.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster.

Answer 11

I have to admit that I haven't been doing so much reviewing recently, so I don't think I ever linked to WSOiN. Having said that, I actually considered it as a one-stop canonical resource for answering "but where does it say that?" questions from users who don't understand why they can't do [whatever].

What's more, I find the logic of 'this thing is good, but people are misusing it so I kill it' mildly worrying...

Answer 12

I would like to make some points about this post:

• I really liked this nonetheless comprehensively controversial decision.

• In theory, WSOIN could be useful. However, I have never seen a link to it which were helpful, supportive or even respectable. I can see why: WSOIN seems to be inspired on the "What Wikipedia is not" article. As someone who had some experience editing Wikipedia, I feel this page was born as a valid reference but ended as a haven for some of the most stubborn and arrogant pricks in the Internet. See the size of this article: it is huge, full of don'ts. Nobody will read it - at least nobody who want to do things. Every time I have seen a link to this page, it was some unnecessary, energy-drying Byzantine discussion about whether some update turns Wikipedia into e.g. a directory of links or not, because this kind of is-not reference is always vague and ambiguous. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only use of WSOIN, too.

• So you do not have time to post ten friendly, personal comments. So do not post any comment. I see a lot of bad posts in SO and post no comment on most of them. And you know what? Someone else posts a recommendation. OTOH, I did comment on some posts. So, take it easy, you are not alone. If you are tired of commenting, just do not comment, there are other users here who can and will do that.

• If you reeeeealy want to help the OP but has no mojo to post a good comment, just edit the question. I find it a lot: posts with titles such as "python - calling rm -rf". I just edit it to something like "Calling rm -rf with subprocess", for example. For sure it is easier than a comment and way more helpful than a in-your-face link. Editing posts always has propensity for controversies, but context-free links has no such propensity: the do generate controversies in the best scenario. In the worst scenario, a novice is expelled and no one is helped in any way.

The whole point is: now that WSOIN is not here anymore (and if it does not come back), what will you do? What are the alternatives? Those are my suggestions. Cut off the laziness, because this was the one problem with WSOIN: it made you lazy.

Answer 13

Background: Joel's article on "remarkable customer service". (and, yes, I understand there is a difference between paying customers and freeloading questioners)

Judging by Joel's tweet that brought me here, it seems that this is part of a broader attempt by the powers that be to address what they perceive to be an unhealthy culture of snark that has taken hold at SO.

How did we get here? IMO, there are two main factors:

1. Using programmers as customer service reps.
2. An incentive system / culture that incentivizes quantity over quality.

For #1, I do not mean that programmers are incapable of providing quality service. I mean that our natural tendencies, which typically serve us well, are not always aligned with providing remarkable customer service.

In this particular case, it's the tendency to group problems into categories, and then come up with an efficient way to process them. SO content is a stream of data -- if we can quickly divert it to a pre-defined processing model, that's a win.

Except people don't like being treated that way, or seeing other people treated that way.

Leading to the second factor. There's been a lot of responses along the lines of, "How am I supposed to deal with the huge number of crap questions that come in." It seems a lot of people have this idea that they should be personally addressing a significant percentage of incoming content, and taking a shortcut away from them feels cruel. The structure of the rep system may be feeding this mentality, or it may be that the rest of us have failed to step up in our stewardship.

But this isn't the model people want to believe. When we call a big company's customer service desk, we know intellectually that ours is one of thousands of calls being fielded by a small army of customer service reps that may be in another country. We want to think that we're the only call that company is getting that day, and that we have the rep's full attention. Any indication that this is not the case (hold times, even punctuated by reminders that their call is important to us) is an abstraction leak.

If customer service reps circulated a list of "What [our company] is not" to address common but unreasonable customer requests," I strongly suspect the management would snuff it out, even if those composing it had made a painstaking effort to make it friendly. An organization that just crudely rewarded handling calls in as short a time as possible would likely see its quality drop. They may have some standardized ways of handling common questions, but those should be invisible to the customer.

I understand that many will balk that "remarkable customer service" is the standard that unpaid volunteers should be subject to. But we do still at least claim to be a community, which (to me) involves treating each other as people to be treated with respect, not as instances of problems.

I also think that thinking this way will in the long term cut off some of the more problematic content. Why should I care if I throw crap content at some massive machine that treats me like a number? But I might care about damaging relationships with people who have treated me well.

I'm not certain that "remarkable customer service" is what SO should be aiming for, or what the SO leadership is trying to push us towards (and I do also bristle that a site that claims to be "community run" should submit to the intent of the SE management). But I think it's worth considering.

Final Note: It may be the case that providing this type of service at the scale of a site like SO is incompatible with unpaid volunteer moderators and stewardship-minded users. It may be necessary to choose -- if you want remarkable customer service, you have to be willing to pay for it.

Answer 14

If linking to it from SO was the problem, you could have just banned linking to it from SO, you know. Like the policy with every other problematic link you mentioned.