Why do some people on Stack Exchange seem to only denigrate users on here? [duplicate]

Question

As useful as forums can be for people learning coding/languages, why do some people feel the need to denigrate others on here who are not at the same level as they are? Do they not remember what it's like to be just starting out coding, or just learning a new language? Why do they feel the need to put down beginners? Why do they have to doubt that the person asking the question has truly looked for an answer before posting it on here?

I have gotten lots of help on here for things that I most definitely have tried researching via Google. A lot of times it may come down to my not knowing the specific terms or wording to lead me to the answer I need, so I come on here. And most of the times, people have been very helpful. But there are also a number of times where people just felt the need to be smug and superior and I don't understand it. As if they were born with it? Do they not remember what it was like to be starting out, or to suddenly not really be sure how to word what you are looking for? (sorry, but just so very frustrating sometimes)

Answer 1

This comment says it best:

The short and long answer is SO is not for learning a new technology. There’s tutorials, documentation, books, classes, videos, etc for that. It’s for established practitioners asking questions encountered during professional work. That’s what Q&A is for (and alps why we don’t refer to SO as a “forum”).

Taking a look at your latest post on Stack Overflow, using a forum or a teaching tool, I'd guide you to the answer by asking questions much like the comments on the post are already doing:

If you're parsing line by line, you can keep track of what the current and last lines contained, right?

You'd probably answer "yes" and maybe show the code to do that. I'd ask if you could parse a String of any given length, if you said "no" I'd ask you to Google it...

However Stack Overflow is a wiki. An exact answer would only be useful to you. In fact as a learner, the exact answer wouldn't be very useful to you as taking the above steps and finding the answer yourself would be. (But again that's not what SO is for.)

Answer 2

Why do some people on Stack Exchange seem to only denigrate users on here?

To a large degree, that basic assumption is a big misconception.

Sure, sometimes people are annoyed, and they let that emotion guide their communication.

But: when we just look at those users who write impolite (or worse: rude) comments, you will find one thing: they do much more than "only denigrating" other users.

Those people that write such comments, those are the active users who try to uphold quality. And who probably look for interesting, well-written questions worth answering.

So, pro tip: every time you find a user who gives such a comment, you should do two things:

• flag the comment for being rude (and later check your flags, to see if the moderators agree with you!)
• but then click on the link that takes you to the profile of that user

Then: study how many answers that user wrote. Probably dozens, most likely: hundreds. Look at the counters how many times that user voted, or edited other posts. Chances are: pretty high counters. Meaning: most such people are contributing lots and lots of answers and moderation work. Day by day by day.

What I am trying to say: those people who come back and give you comments (even when their language is too aggressive), those are the people who made you come to this place. Because, in the end, you are looking for volunteer experts who are willing to spend their free time to help you with your problem.

So, just for a second, look at this from that perspective. You come to that place so that highly experienced professionals help you for free. But when they say something that you dislike, all of a sudden, the same people "only denigrate" other users?!

And to explain to you why that rudeness happens (been there, unfortunately done that plenty of times): out of frustration. In contrast to popular belief, Stack Overflow isn't programming school. It is a place for professionals and enthusiastic amateurs. And when you are an expert, and you look for interesting questions, and then you wade through endless endless waves of "plz do my homeworks for me" and "I need answers with code and explanations ASAP"... at some point, you snap.

And as wrong as it is, you might unload your frustration onto the next question, albeit that question is just "slightly off". We are all just humans here.

Long story short: it is wrong to be rude to new users. But that works in both directions. Being a "newbie programmer" isn't an excuse to come in unprepared, with unrealistic expectations.

Answer 3

There are quite some aspects, but it comes down to that Q&A is not the best tool for learning programming from the very basics.

People get lots of help here every day but they basically need to present a new answerable question. Quite a lot of the beginner questions are, you can probably guess, already asked before. Thorough research is needed before asking and even searching is something that must be learned. An answerable question must contain all the required information to give a unique and not too long answer. It requires a bit of skill to ask such a question. Asking for opinions or online resources is often off-topic on the Exchanges, new users often forget that.

But otherwise, if somebody knows the answer and has time it will be given freely. There is the occasional snark, mostly in comments, but we have ways to deal with that. Snarky comments can be deleted and the commenters suspended in the worst case. Use the flag to bring such cases to the attention of a moderator. A bit of a thick skin helps, but that is true in general in the Internet.

Please start learning to program somewhere else and then after the first steps are made come back to sharpen your skills. Don't give up and you'll see what Q&A can do for you. Good luck. And don't forget that downvotes are nothing personal.

We have not forgotten how it was when we started to program (although in my case the Internet wasn't popular and I learned with books and friends alone, there was nothing else). But we can't or won't answer questions that aren't answerable or not a good fit.

There was once the idea of some sort of academy where users can learn to ask questions, the idea was promoted by a user called Shog, but it didn't fly. Maybe it would have been a good idea.