We need to be a little less hostile

Question

I've noticed a distressing tendency for questions that seem basic or overly short to be immediately closed and downvoted into oblivion.

Case in point: How can I tell if a DOM object is out of the window using JavaScript?

Within a minute of being asked, this question received 12 downvotes and was closed as "not a real question".

That particular question is a very real, non-trivial question, but it had somewhat poor grammar and looked a little like a much simpler question.

Can we try to be a little more accepting?

Answer 1

The background:

The SO is flooded with "I have requirement", "My boss told me to", "I have homework" questions which deserve to be closed. Because there are so many of them, many users have developed a set of heuristics to determine in a few seconds that something should be closed immediately:

1) Lack of code

Usually lack of code = lack of effort. OP doesn't even know how to start and is expecting to get full solution.

2) Title and content doesn't match

I don't know where this fashion come from, but such questions often has title not matching the content. Title is treated not as summary of questions, but as the first sentence of it. So we again have heuristic: title-as-first-sentence = spam

3) No question mark in content

This is co-morbid with 2). Question mark is already in title, so why to repeat it?

4) Thank you

Well, usually the OPs showing no effort believe they increase the chance of getting something done for them when they include "Thank you from advance" on the end. It's an effect described by Cialdini, maybe it works... on other sites.

Now the question itself. It wasn't clear enough at the beginning. It could be understood as the combination of visibility and being placed in current viewport. The problem is formulated without word "viewport" so google isn't showing the answer directly in that case. It would be good enough to close it as duplicate without downvoting. The author would have the answer anyway.

But

unfortunately for the OP the question is so formulated, that it triggered every 4 heuristics. Say, 1 of them gives 90% probability that a post is a crap, 2 gives 95%, 3 - 98% and finally 4 - 99%. Though we should optimize for pearls, not sand, if there's only 1% probability that it could be good question... the fast finger usually wins.

Answer 2

So I'm going to interpret your question pretty liberally here.

• You are a very high-rep user who has been around as long as SO has. I'm going to infer that if you observe a trend like this, you are probably onto something.
• By "hostile" you don't mean comment hostility. You mean ultra-efficient downvote, close, and can.

I think the problem you are picking up on is that as a community we've gotten very good at preventing poor or even mediocre questions from being answered. And this is a good thing. We're a big city now trying to create a repo of questions and answers of long term value, and this means shifting some of the onus of this onto the questioner and his/her team of people willing to edit the question into a good one. However, I think you've accurately picked up on the problem that it's way easier to close a question and downvote it into oblivion than it is to recover, and as we've gotten good at downvoting and closing questions very quickly, we haven't made it any easier to recover from this state.

In short: team "close" and team "downvote" are now beating team "edit" and team "salvage" to the punch. And this is checkmate on the question. It should not be checkmate.

I also think that's where my competing answers and comments miss the mark. The point isn't that it was a bad question. Of course it was. The point is it had a chance to be a good question with some time for users to comment and edit and the OP to respond, and we took that chance away. And yes, this is a big problem: a new user posting a poor and rocky question then having perhaps harsh or unfortunately sarcastic, but constructive and transient support is how new users go from asking poor questions to asking good questions. We're nuking this new user flow by one-way downvotes and closures. And yes, closures tend to be de facto one way, and more than a couple downvotes tend to be very hard to rid of even if the question is made into a darn good one. (If anyone finds this contentious I can find meta threads to back it up pretty solidly. Please don't make me actually do that.)

The only viable solutions to this problem I see are in:

• Every "close" has its thorn: replace "close" with "on hold" for the first five days
• Allow an edit to notify downvoters: "I think I've fixed the issue now - please check"

Two proposals with much community support. In particular I think the first is what is needed here. But the mega-discussion on this topic is here (you could arguably say this question should be closed as a duplicate of that, I'm deferring to OP to make the focus of this question more precise):

• Help us make "Not Constructive" and "Not a Real Question" closures more effective

Answer 3

Lack of research is a problem. When folks don't take the time to perform even a simple search before asking, that creates extra load on the site and its communities. Note that even if you ignore the search field in the "EULA", the system itself will do a simple search for you based on the title.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help if you have no idea what keywords to use. "Object is out of the window" doesn't exactly produce a useful set of results on Stack Overflow when what you're really looking for is DOM object visibility.

The best thing you can do for someone asking a question like that - particularly if they're being heavily down-voted - is to edit the question as quickly as possible to reflect the true nature of what is being asked.

The best thing you could do when the question happens to be a duplicate would be to dig up a link to an existing question with a good answer and vote to close it. In this case, doing so could help others with the same question (and unusual set of keywords) find their way to an answer in the future.

Of course, you could also do both - I've closed the question and tried to adapt the original title to something a bit more descriptive (while maintaining the same keywords), in the hope of improving the situation for the next asker.

Answer 4

Object is out of the window

I'm looking for a method to know if a object (as a Div, a img, etc.) is displayed and visible by the user at the screen in JavaScript / jQuery.

Thanks in advance !

Firstly, this is a case of where the user has not put in any research effort. There are tons of posts on this on SO and the Internet. We expect a user to put some effort into the thing before posting.

Besides, it is quite confusing. The first time I read it I thought it was asking if an object was visibility:hidden/display:none'd. The second read made me realize that he was talking about the object being within the viewport. If a post confuses a significant fraction of the users, it's probably NARQ. People have varying gibberish-decoding capabilities (this isn't gibberish, yes, but that's not my point), and it shouldn't be so that only a few people can easily understand what's going on.

Nothing a few edits can't fix. But that doesn't mean that it isn't closeable.

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As far as the downvotes go, well, there's not much we can do about that. But a poor post can expect a poor score :/ Especially one with no research effort.

I agree that chatrooms shouldn't get into coordinated voting. I don't mind coordinated closing, but linking and mass downvoting posts is rather mean imo. (https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/9516108#9516108). Also, they could have spent a bit more time on it to try and improve it or VTC as a dupe. EDIT: Seems like rightfold did that, kudos! :)

Answer 5

I totally agree that "we need to be ... less hostile", however, until this gets translated into hard Stack Overflow feature-requests for "negativity-reduction" then not much will change (we all know we should be nice, but when the rubber hits the road... mmm MMMMM).

Recall the "accept-rate" controversy. I guess most people were civil about it, but there were always the 1 or 2% that shamed users with low accept-rates, so then we got rid of accept-rates, and so far it seems it's OK.

I think one way to possibly reduce excessive downvotes (or "close" votes) is a buffer period of some kind, like on /r/AskReddit (but rather than 30 minutes of vote-disappearance, just 2 or 5 minutes or 10 minutes). And forgive me for using Reddit as a source of inspiration, I'm not an addict ;-)

I feel that we may also benefit from laziness with the mediocre and duplicate questions, just leave it alone rather than close/downvote. Lack of an upvote is a signal too. If you merely refer to the FAQ, maybe the OP would get it. Maybe not, but no skin off our backs. To pretty much "leave well enough alone" ... the system can easily accommodate it (unanswered questions). Moderators and administrators have better things to do than argue with newbies about why their question is crappy, let them bounce around and fall a few times. If you ignore something, well that is a message too...

I don't like the chat-room interference, either. But... not much to do about it.

Answer 6

Can we try to be a little more accepting?

Why should we?

We get plenty of questions from users who actually take the time to do research. We get plenty of solid questions from new users who ask decent questions. Why should we waste time with someone who can't be bothered to understand the concept of "read the FAQ before posting"?

His question was not acceptable. And while the downvoting may have been a bit extreme, the post very much deserved to be expurgated ASAP.

While some users may choose to edit questions into a reasonable form, it is not our responsibility as users of SO to do so. It's the responsibility of those asking the question, of those asking us to spend our time helping them. And if those responsibilities are not respected, then there will be consequences.

Stack Overflow is plenty accepting to people who are respectful of it. The person you're talking about was not, and he was chastised accordingly. He got a close message explaining where he screwed up. And that's that.

Answer 7

I agree entirely. This happens on the SQL tag too. People will ask a question that appears to be trivial, but is in fact a good question. The gets down/close voted by people who are in no position to judge SQL questions, but consider "lack of effort" to be a proper close reason. But often the answer can not be easily "Googled" (aka "researched" in close/downvote speak.)

This gets funny when the question is reopened, and it turns out several of the down/close voters produce laughably wrong answers.

Now I've noticed that the down/close votes stop once you edit the new user question to:

• Improve the title (from the typical "Need help with complex SQL query")
• Remove the "thanks", "please", and "I'm new here"
• Format the code bits, and URLify the URLs

I wonder if there is a way to allow new user questions to be repaired before they are judged.

Answer 8

This answer addresses how to help revert already-applied negativity.

The SO idea is that negative-voted posts should be edited into viable questions. Unfortunately, newly re-edited, deeply-negative-voted posts do not attract enough new eyes necessary to upvote them, even though they go to the top of the Questions queue. And those who did vote it negative originally are unlikely to be monitoring the question for that one magical edit which would cause them to retract or even revert their vote.

Therefore I propose the system should

Allow for a setting (default true) to Alert Voters if a Post they Voted on is Edited

This proposal is have an alert message sent to voting users if a post they voted on (negatively or positively) was edited (qualifiers can apply, see below).

Currently, votes are locked in after some amount of time passes, but if a Post is edited, a user who placed a vote on the post prior to the edit can change their vote. Editing changes the quality of the post and a post once vote-able in a specific direction may now be interpreted differently. Unfortunately, unless a voting user has a deeper involvement in the question beyond up/down-voting, voting users are not necessarily informed of changes made to the posts on which they've voted.

Obviously certain qualifiers would need to governing the alert process, including an iteration on one or more of the following examples:

• alert if the post was edited by a different user than the prior editor
• alert if the post was edited X amount of time since the last time it was edited
• alert if there is a new answer
• only alert if a comment was made in the edit summary

Answer 9

The post deserved to be closed, not much question about that. I don't think anyone thinks that the question as is falls under SO's definition of a good question. The issue is that it was closed with no explanation, and the questioner was a new user with only one prior question.

I think there can be a balance between closing bad questions quickly and making sure its clear why its happening? Perhaps we could require a comment be written before somebody submits the final close vote for a new users question (new user being defined as less than 3 total questions/answers on the site)? We can't force people to be polite or helpful about closing questions, but it would be good to at least encourage it.

Answer 10

There's nothing wrong with downvoting a bad question. I just think that if proper procedures are followed, excessive downvoting is just not helpful. Beyond a certain point, the message conveyed goes from "We're just trying to show you the ropes" to "YOU POST BAD QUESTION! YOU SUCK! SHAME ON YOU! LOOK AT ALL THE DOWNVOTES YOU ARE GETTING, MUAHAHAHAHA!" (even if it's not our intent, the OP would probably feel that way).

So yes, I think we need to be less hostile (or appear to be less hostile). For one, we could practice some self-restraint when it comes to downvoting.

I think a decent approach to a bad question is:

1. Flag if applicable
2. Comment/leave feedback for OP on why it is not a good question
   • if such comment already exists, upvote that comment
3. Go easy on the downvoting
   • if it is already downvote-laden (say -10) and let's say someone does step #2, I think the point is already made – this is not a good question. Heaping more negativity at this point is unnecessary.

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As to the hostility emanated from closing a question, I believe the wording/tone of the message could be more positive. This seems to be addressed by the new closing changes.

Answer 11

The moment a question in bad shape is posted, it is immediately at the mercy of a huge audience, who cannot do much else to the situation than downvoting.

A more natural approach would be to show a question to a small audience first, and to larger audiences only over time depending on the behavior of first viewers.

Currently SO ist more like a message Inbox with an insufficient spam filter, and first readers of questions help each other by marking spam.

It might help if users could more easily configure a default filter for questions to be shown, as is possible with advanced search. Then the system could suggest to users who downvote already downvote questions a lot to simply not show them such questions anymore. I.e. a downvote could always also be considered as users expressing: "show me less of this kind of questions on the future", so giving users a better filter might be more reasonable than continue to force them to see such posts.

Answer 12

What if a special badge were awarded to anyone who downvotes ten times as often as he or she upvotes?

What if giving ten downvotes would come back to you as receiving one, unless the OP or a moderator cancels it by recognizing that you also provided some help?

What if a moderator would have the ability to dock a point or two form you for "unjustified hostility or disrespect" ? (Unfortunately, that's impossible if the hostility or disrespect is anonymous.)

Answer 13

It seems that a lot of users get "hostile" because of what they consider to be "simple questions."

I think the following really play a key role in the "hostility":

1. People don't do their research. They don't use a search engine before they ask a question. There are numerous duplicates all over the place!

2. They forget to use code. For instance, users ask questions without adding in the necessary code.

3. They're not descriptive enough. Many users don't actually describe their problem. Just because the asker knows what he's talking about doesn't mean that the read does. As a result, sometimes people make others "shoot in the dark."

4. They use poor grammar and the wrong tags.

But remember, many of these people are new users. They don't know all the rules.

Those are my humble ideas.

People down-vote for the reasons listed above. BUt it's not as if we can stop it. I just shrug it aside. I know that it's super annoying, but we just have to carry on.

Answer 14

From the about page of Stack Overflow, "This site is all about getting answers." (And, yes, I will quote that until someone deletes it from the about page.) Anything that stands in the way of that is wrong. Period. That is simple, straightforward logic.

Currently, a very vocal part of the community thinks "getting answers" is sufficiently accomplished today the way things are done. That is good enough. And when other people, like the poster here, come along and say otherwise, the "very vocal" come out for the status quo.

Anytime Stack Overflow fails to get a question answered, even if the question is "unacceptable" as written, Stack Overflow fails: Stack Overflow failed to get an answer. Far worse than this, we drive away future questions that might well be "acceptable." So, this is an aggregate failure.

One of the very difficult skills in software is learning how to get help. The fact that some people are better than others is no excuse for slamming those who aren't. If Stack Overflow, as a community, wants to succeed, they need to foster this skill for the sake of this question and that person's future questions.

No specific waiting period before closing or allowing downvotes will work in fostering better. The poster might simply have to wait one day longer than the timeout. The real answer is that downvotes need to be made constructive instead of destructive and closing needs to happen after a serious process that fosters improving the question.

Unfortunately, these require work on the part of the community. This work has no reward in reputation, so very few take the time to do it. And by the time they can help, the damage is done. So, to allow these people who are willing to be the unsung heroes of Stack Overflow to work, we need to stop the flash-mob vote to close and downvoting and their derivative consequences.

As mentioned, we might change the boilerplate text to something more like, "This question needs help in the following way..." That does not bear the stigma of "closed: not a question," but those who feel better slapping that on things can go on thinking of that way.

We also need to make downvoting in those cases constructive. Downvoting encompasses too many things: "I don't prefer that" to "That sucks" (which is interpreted as "go away"). Also, as has been noted in several places, downvoting survives long after things may have been fixed -- which is grossly incompatible with "getting answers." The point was that at one time something deserved a down vote -- even if it is never reviewed later and holds what is now a perfectly good question as a "bad" question.

Unlike the standard setup of Stack Overflow, downvotes have no community arbitration and evaluation except for offsetting up votes. Up and down votes mean very different things. And downvotes need a real, serious community arbitration method to be consistent and useful. That also requires knowing why something is downvoted. You can flag many things for moderation / removal, but not votes. There is no check on abuse or relevance. This does not benefit getting answers.

We really need more vocal people who are interested in changes that benefit getting answers.

Another example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17197193/modern-resources-for-effectively-mastering-mfc-quickly -- Please do not answer here as to what is "not constructive" about the question. It is irrelevant to this question. But two down votes and close of "not constructive" has done nothing to help improve the question. And, frankly, in the absence of information as to what the specific problem is, it reeks of censorship because it is about a library/toolset/technique/feature that is unpopular (which may be for very good reason) but still needed for real work within the domain of Stack Overflow.