I ran afoul of the SO closing process here: my question.
The whole process has been incredibly unpleasant and it has been so because of the close process. The process only works in one direction and provides no feedback to the unfortunate newbie who gets caught up in it. If you simply hit a child every time you are displeased, you'll end up with a fearful and timid child (or a psychopath). If you explain to it how to please you and coach the child you will get a different result. The close process does the former.
Let me explain how I came to this point. A year or so ago I was looking for a pattern for using the asynchronous facilities in iOS that was easy to use to create complicated webs of asynchronous tasks. I did not find what I was looking for. My searches were broad and nebulous because by definition I did not know exactly what I was looking for. I did not find it here or the Apple Dev forums or anywhere else I looked.
I now know that people had found such patterns, but had not made them public. The patterns require the creation of a new object class. I came across such a pattern in JavaScript recently called Promises. I realized that this as also the answer to my iOS problem. I implemented Promises in iOS.
Now I had an answer to my question of a year ago and I decided to make it public. I get a lot of information, techniques and code from people who have done the same before me. Occasionally I like to contribute to the process.
Since SO and the Apple Dev Forums are the places where I find the most the information, that is where I posted my work. The actual work is on GitHub, because it obviously does not fit in a forum post. The thread on Apple Dev Forums has been a purely positive experience. Not so here.
I had an answer and I posed my own question so I could answer it. There is a specific UI on SO to do this, so I naively assumed it was a supported idea. The first person to propose closing my question accused me of posing a question just so I could answer it!!! WTF? Of course that's what I did.
He also accused me just trying to publicize my idea! Of course I was. I had created an open source project (my first). Since when are people who create open source projects thought of as selfish and self promoting? If you think the idea is bad or the coding poor, very well, say that.
The only feedback of any kind about why the question was closed, other than above, is that the question was vague. Well my original need was vague in my mind. I was trying to put up a question that I would have found when I was looking for this a year ago. But OK, I read the FAQ about closure and I rewrote the question to be more specific.
Then I heard ... nothing. Is my new question better? Closer to what is wanted? I have no idea.
The most specific question I can think of would be "Has anyone implemented JavaScript Promises for iOS?" Would that be specific enough? I have no idea.
I have read up on how the Close process works and it appears that the real problem is that when a person votes to close a question, they move on and never look at it again. They almost never leave any useful feedback beyond the initial reason. Even then, different close voters may select different reasons.
It appears to me to be useless to rewrite questions because your rewritten question will never be seen.
When I first encountered SO, I was surprised to come across questions where I found the answers really interesting, but the question had been closed. Now I understand why. It's a fundamental flaw in SO.
There also seems to be a bias against questions where there is no definitively correct answer. Answers that are in some way subjective are frowned upon. IMHO, the most difficult and interesting questions are these. I think it an odd choice to prohibit these questions.
Here's more bizzarreness: I convinced one Close voter, Rob, to remove his down vote. He also posted a long answer that would have been very useful to me in the past. It contained nothing new for me now, however, other searchers who came across it would definitely have found it useful. Then all of sudden her reverses himself again, votes for closure AND DELETES HIS ANSWER. He deleted useful information that he spent significant time preparing. I'm just baffled by this waste.
-Bob
Added: It's sad that most of the responses are simply hostile and not constructive. I had a specific answer that I know has value. I would be happy to put any question in front of it that you all would accept. I thought the point here was to provide useful information to the users of the site. That's all I am trying to do. I as a user am trying to provide information that I as a user would want to find. That's all.
The process only works in one direction
- questions can actually be reopened), and aren't providing constructive opinions as to what you would like to see differently; it reads like a rant in which you're just taking the opportunity to insult this community. Negativity is responded to with more negativity.