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Can you tell me what's wrong with How does Base32 encoding work in Java? please?

I want to edit it so that it can be helpful to the community. I don't think that just anonymously downvoting can be of any help to the others.

I think it's a clear, short and answerable question. More importantly, as I said in a comment below, I read the documentation and believe me, it was not an easy thing to find. Then I searched the Wikipedia page for Base32 and I don't know why, the part of the question where I said I searched the wiki, was removed (you can see I did it, by checking the first comment to the question). How is that poor searching?

I am question banned now.

The only reason I'm asking this question is because I want to be a part of this community and I understand I have to learn something to be part of it. Why did you donwvote me again? I feel like I'm being trolled now.

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    We don't know. Voting is anonymous. Note that you are never banned for just one question being downvoted.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:15
  • But though it was anonymous, the comments you received might be an indicator of why people downvoted. I'm not saying that those users did, but it might be a reason for someone to do so.
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:16
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    If you are question banned, then previous questions were downvoted too. Did you receive comments on those? Did you heed those comments?
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:20
  • @MartijnPieters The only other question I was downvoted was one where I posted a working code asking for revision and better way to do something, and they said that codereview.stackexchange.com was the place for posting that kind of question. I didn't even know about other stackexchange sites, but I was explained, and that made be happy and has made the community a less dirty place. But the last question?
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:28
  • Also, the only reason I'm asking this question is because I want to be a part of this community and I understand I have to learn something to be part of it. Why did you donwvoted me again? I feel like I'm being trolled now.
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:32
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    @domenicop You have 5 negatively scored questions and 7 closed questions. Not just 2, as you seem to imply. All those count towards a ban.
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:42
  • @Bart it seems you're right, i was downvoted at far more question then I thought, but I can't see why. My worst question is stackoverflow.com/questions/15180346/fastest-for-loop and I think it's that kind of question that many, many programmers ask themselves at a certain point in their career (as was suggested in the question given to me), and it was simply posed and easy to understand. What's wrong with that?
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:47
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    when you call a method and want to know something about it, how about checking the documentation? The documentation (after one level of indirection) answers your question. Ever heard of RTFM?
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:53
  • the documentation was the first place I went. The info was not that easy to find, try to search for the .toString() function yourself.
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 14:54
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    @domenicop: Are you really saying you couldn't find the documentation for BigInteger.toString(int radix)? I don't see how it's hard to find: you go to the BigInteger documentation, look for the right overload in the "method summary" section and then follow the link for details. That documentation then links to Character.forDigit. Which step did you find difficult?
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 15:26
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    I just checked and you don't seem to be blocked from asking questions. I do recommend taking a look at questions where you could make edits that actually improve them (clarity, extra info, things you tried or even where and how you searched) and you should move safely away from being blocked again. You seem to care about your posts, that's awesome, just take your time when asking and think .. will anyone ask if I searched for X? - if so, search for it, or let us know how / where you did - that goes a long way.
    – user50049
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 15:32
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    And to all - he doesn't seem to be complaining, he honestly wants to know why the post was down-voted, presumably to avoid it in the future. That's exactly what we want - go easy on the guy :)
    – user50049
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 15:34
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    @domenicop: I'm sure that you'll find that the more questions you answer, the more you'll grow to appreciate what makes a question "good" -- seeing it from the other side helps a great deal. Good luck!
    – Kerrek SB
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 16:42
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    @TimPost thank you for your attitude. I'm editing some previous, bad, questions, and it seems I've already got good feedback. Appreciate your participation, thank you again.
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 16:43
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    @domenicop: I didn't claim that you did say the info was not there. But you said "The info was not that easy to find" - and that's what I'm struggling to understand. It looks pretty simple to find, to me - what went wrong when you tried?
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 17:17

4 Answers 4

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It looks to me like the comment and close reason pretty well sum up what's wrong with the question...

My suggestion would be to edit the post/s and add addition information, what research did you do, what did you try, what is it doing now, how does what it is doing now conflict with what you would like it to do, etc.

Martijn Pieters pointed out in the comments "...you are never banned for just one question being downvoted." In your case, I can see 7 closed questions in your user profile, 5 of which have negative scores.

Like I said edit, edit, edit...

See: What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?
for more information.

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Given the flood of actual crap that arrives on the front page every day, I think it's sad to see people taking time to close this one. Yes, the information is there, but what seems obvious to one person post-hoc is not always so obvious to someone who is approaching the problem from scratch. The answer to the question here is that, indeed, five people decided that the information was too obvious to allow the question to be legitimate.

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  • 1
    Jon Skeet voted to close it :/
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 17:16
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    Yes, and I'd do so again. The answer is in the documentation, which (despite claims to the contrary) is really not that hard to find. Look at the first version of the question (which is what was closed) - there's no evidence of any research whatsoever. That's a big red flag in my view: Stack Overflow shouldn't be the very first place you go when you have a problem... it shouldn't replace research, it should be an option after research has failed.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 19:52
  • I saw it post-edit.
    – Rosinante
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 19:55
  • In the first post I stated I looked in the wiki for what's a base32 conversion and how it can happen. The fact that SO doesn't report that, is so strange. In your comment, given 2 minutes after the question, you seem to refer to that research though.
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 7, 2013 at 7:59
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    @domenicop: No, I was referring to wikipedia as it was the first place I looked. There was no indication that you has looked at Wikipedia. There's no evidence that in the first post you did actually state that you'd looked in Wikipedia. I suspect this is more likely to be you misremembering what you'd written than a flaw in Stack Overflow.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 7, 2013 at 11:02
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Votes are anonymous. People who downvote posts can explain the reason in the comments if they want to, but it's not a requirement.

Basically, it looks like you didn't do enough research before asking the question. I am in no way a Java expert, but it looks like you could have found out the answer to this question with a little bit of research, as Jon Skeet says in the comments.

It's always a good idea to go through the Stack Overflow question checklist before asking a question. Try to answer all the questions in the checklist (I know it's hard). If the answer to any of these questions is "no", you should take the time to fix up your question before posting.

And, many of your other questions were downvoted too, and this could by why you were question-banned. Go back to those questions and improve them, if you can.

See also: What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?

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  • I starred the Stack Overflow question checklist, thank you for the useful input.
    – doplumi
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 17:11
  • @domenicop: Sure. You're welcome :-)
    – Amal Murali
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 17:13
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Your question was easy to answer using the official documentation. A bit more effort would be nice.

There has been a nice acronym for this kind of question for decades: RTFM

I wonder Wonder what BigInteger.toString(32) does in java...

Google for "biginteger class java"

First hit is the official documentation for BigInteger.

Now what was the method again? -> toString(int), that matches the toString(int radix) in the page, where you can read:

The digit-to-character mapping provided by Character.forDigit is used, and a minus sign is prepended if appropriate.

See also:

... Character.forDigit(int, int)

click on that link, to read:

If the digit is less than 10, then '0' + digit is returned. Otherwise, the value 'a' + digit - 10 is returned.

Question answered.

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