1868

There is a distinct decline in the level of civility on all the sites here. Some of this is due to new users coming in and posting spam and other nonsense, but the off-topic and downvote buttons are doing a pretty good job of keeping this under control.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is coming from more experienced users, and the site's built-in moderation system does not (and probably cannot) handle this very well. Folks are rushing to pound new users down with "this belongs on meta!", "this is off topic", "this is a duplicate!" and "read the Help!". (Which is correct, but should be done nicer) All this, of course, is accompanied by a flurry of downvotes. This is not very welcoming to new users who don't know about meta, the Help, or what counts as off-topic.

Now I am not proposing that we just allow off-topic, meta, or duplicate questions. However, I think we could be gentler in the way we express these sorts of things. Explain what meta and the FAQ are and provide useful links. Just using please and thank-you when asking folks to read the FAQ or post something on meta would be an improvement. I also think we could rein in the downvoting a bit. Not that we shouldn't vote stuff down, but unless a new user's post is clearly spam, voting it down to -1 or -2 should be sufficient to send a message without piling on.

I like Stack Exchange and I want it to become a resource for everyone, not just an elitist site for high-rep users on the sites.

70
  • 48
    The links to that information should be better displayed, and perhaps displayed more often. Sep 16, 2008 at 21:17
  • 442
    This is why I've suggested having comments for when things are voted down. That way people get helpful hints instead of just the big minus sign. Unfortunately, the suggestion was declined by management. :(
    – Kyralessa
    Sep 16, 2008 at 21:21
  • 133
    For starters, let's stop using the derogatory term "noobs"?
    – Ates Goral
    Oct 17, 2008 at 14:39
  • 46
    @Michael I think it's more likely it came from the word 'newbie' which I don't find offensive at all.
    – rustyshelf
    Nov 20, 2008 at 23:42
  • 141
    As a noob here myself the most irritating thing I have experienced is being voted down without explanation. I'm not here to gain reputation but to get help. I try to be helpful in return. So if an answer is deemed unhelpful I would like to know why so that I can make better answers in future.
    – Noel Walters
    Jan 26, 2009 at 11:08
  • 169
    Rolled back to "noobs". The term is used in our field and I don't think anyone takes it particularly offensively. Tired of political correctness everywhere.
    – mmcdole
    Feb 16, 2009 at 2:04
  • 23
    I totally agree, I've caught wind of this myself and I’ve only been here two weeks. It takes a lot to not attack back via comments. This “decline in the level of civility” can lead to very large nonsense/bickering comment chains.
    – NTDLS
    Feb 21, 2009 at 5:16
  • 52
    I agree. It's very offensive to be a new user, post a question, and have it hit with "topic closed". Even it's a duplicate question, don't bar people from answering it. Some questions that I thought were reasonable were IMHO inappropriately closed. My reaction was "**** this ****ing site!"
    – Anonymous
    Feb 23, 2009 at 20:01
  • 29
    I've always thought that we programmers tend to be a little bit arrogant. Maybe it comes with the binary numerical system understanding May 10, 2009 at 19:27
  • 33
    The beatings will continue until morale improves?
    – sclarson
    May 12, 2009 at 23:56
  • 29
    This is typical. Someone designs and creates a system (StackOverflow) that fails to take into account the nature of human beings, and then someone (in this case, you) criticises the humans for just being themselves and not adapting to the flaws of the system.
    – Timwi
    May 13, 2009 at 0:40
  • 38
    I'd definitely change "noobs" to "newcomers", because standard English is always more understandable. Jun 26, 2009 at 10:39
  • 14
    @mcandre: where in the manifesto is that true: [This is a place for specific, complex questions] That's your personal wish for this place, just as my personal wish for this place is somewhere between experts-exchange and slashdot. Guess what, neither of us are going to get what we want, but IMHO, if we were closer to my vision, we get a better tool all-around and not just some silo to your ego of eliteness.
    – Chris K
    Aug 18, 2009 at 18:23
  • 76
    I find so ironic that this post has been "protected" against newbies...
    – yms
    Apr 24, 2011 at 22:37
  • 115
    I know that when I started I found the FAQ to be singularly unhelpful and got downvoted on my first interaction with StackOverflow because I had no idea why I couldn't leave comments or make votes (probably the two most used features of this website), so left a comment the only way I could, as an answer. I got downvoted with no explanation except the advice that I should have commented and / or upvoted (which I didn't have the reputation to do). It wasn't until just recently that I discovered the FAQ does deal with comments and votes, but only under Reputation, not what I came here for
    – James K
    Sep 16, 2012 at 1:46

51 Answers 51

1
2
10

I've used Stack Overflow for all of a week, and today is my last day (I always keep a link for at least a week).

I've answered a few questions for people, found the reference for the question I asked. I posed an opinion question and the results were interesting:

  • Six answers within a few minutes
  • Question was suddenly down voted to -5, all in one go.
  • Two more answers, and question voted up to -4
  • Question closed by some other user within 10 minutes.

The answers were interesting, in that I didn't expect them and made me think. Unfortunately, there are no other answers. The question is still available at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/298076/what-is-the-coolest-aspect-of-your-favorite-language-closed

3
  • 3
    I suppose it doesn't add integrity to the rating system that it was closed as 'not a programming question' while 'favorite cartoon' has hundreds of up votes.
    – Anonymous
    Nov 20, 2008 at 6:12
  • 2
    reopened and upvoted. don't give up so easily. Nov 24, 2008 at 16:19
  • At some point it was closed again, and deleted outright. Based on the title, it was indeed off-topic, but the question is - did people politely say so, or was it downvoted and closed without explanation?
    – user169512
    Apr 30, 2014 at 19:59
9

I haven't been here long, but I see:

  • Sarcastic nonanswers getting up voted
  • People with "High Reputation" being complete jerks and personally attacking.
  • People with high reputation points giving completely inaccurate answers
  • Downvoting everything a user says, because he/she made you mad
  • Answers with the most cheerleading getting more upvotes than clear concise answers.
  • Too many people have inaccurate information and excessively repeating it does not make it any more accurate.
  • Post Whoring
  • Holy Wars

In general, I feel there are too many people with rights they shouldn't have.

Reputation is far too easy to obtain and there are a lot of people drunk with power.

I don't trust 90% of people, why should Stack Overflow?

3
  • 2
    You pointed out these inaccuracies, right?
    – mmyers
    Apr 24, 2009 at 17:57
  • 2
    Sometimes. I've learned that you have to censor your opinion at some point to avoid being punished when talking about a holy war subject. I lost 20+ rep because I said compiled native code is faster than managed code. Which isn't a subjective opinion. They seemed to think I was anti-.net/ms lol
    – Chad Grant
    Apr 25, 2009 at 0:45
  • 6
    "Managed code is waaaay slow compared to native even with JIT." Your phrasing is awfully close to trolling (there's no way you could back that over-generalized statement up); I'm not surprised it was downvoted. I notice you still had a net gain of 12 rep from that answer, though. (And I flagged the top answer there as spam.)
    – mmyers
    Apr 27, 2009 at 14:08
7

I think there's nothing wrong with closing (as duplicate, belongs on UserVoice or whatever else) a newcomer's questions. Of course, adding a comment explaining why is always nice, but I think the main thing is to just not downvote.

If the question is made in good faith, and it's going to get closed in another 30 seconds anyway, why bother downvoting it? Does it deserve it? Does the poster deserve to have the negative votes on his record, simply because he did not yet know how Stack Overflow works?

I try to reserve downvotes for questions that are either

  • made in bad faith, as spam or to otherwise disrupt Stack Overflow
  • or are simply bad questions (unreadable questions, no information supplied to actually make it possible to answer, or "questions" that aren't questions but blog posts or rants).

But a suggestion to improve Stack Overflow shouldn't be downvoted. It should simply be closed and directed to UserVoice. An off-topic question shouldn't be downvoted, but closed (as not-programming-related, or moved to Server Fault in some cases.

I often see questions that get downvoted because they belong on UserVoice, are not programming related, or whatever else. When I do, I generally leave a comment saying that there's no need for downvoting as well as closing the question, and encouraging people to bump the votes back up.

7

I'm a noob. I've been following this site for a few days and so far I really like the format and the quality of topics and answers.

From what I've seen so far there most of the answers to questions are constructive and well thought out (exhibit A in the original post doesn't work). If Stack Overflow was just another forum site flooded with questions from people that won't do any footwork before bombarding a board with questions, I wouldn't have bookmarked it.

The FAQ was useful for me, maybe add some of the good examples of bad questions to the FAQ for us noobs too.. It might be fun to go through those too.

7

I just want to include myself as an example of this:

unless a new user's post is clearly spam, voting it down to -1 or -2 should be sufficient to send a message without piling on.

Now, I do think I had to be voted down, and the community should express itself so I can see if I fit in or not. But, as far as I can see, the reputation system is also associated with spam and bot prevention up to a certain ammount of points. So, until that is reached by any valid user this should be the focus: making the user able to use basic resources, such as voting, posting links, etc.

Maybe even the system should change a little bit on that sense. One thing is getting reputation to be able to moderate. Another thing is to achieve "human rights" in the system. And that should not be too hard for newbies.

Anyway, yet again, just my two cents as a newcomer.

2
  • 1
    Cawas, downvotes on Meta are different from downvotes on SO/SF/SU. On Meta, since there is rarely a "right" and "wrong" answer, voting is instead a means to express approval or disapproval. The downvotes don't mean you asked bad questions.
    – mmyers
    Feb 18, 2010 at 17:13
  • Thanks a lot for worrying! But that's way beyond my point here. I'm not hurt from downvotes. I'm frustrated about two very specific things on the stackoverflow system: the spam prevention and the message continuity method, witch have no email alerts and not even RSS as far as I could tell.
    – cregox
    Feb 18, 2010 at 17:37
6

I agree, and I experienced this. I posted something off-topic and marked it as such. It was sufficient to have it downvoted, I don't need somebody flaming me to not post content like that on here. The training is built into the system.

As best I can tell, they're hoping to get some sympathy from other veterans to their cause to help their own rep.

I'm just trying to get to a point where I can upvote interesting questions and answers, and I'm not sure how to best do that when I'm not the quickest or most authoritative response.

2
  • I don't see where you have posted any questions so far, and certainly nowhere that you have been flamed. Reputation is not hard to get at all, but does require a little patience. By design, you should not just be given reputation for nothing.
    – GEOCHET
    Sep 16, 2008 at 18:34
  • I had deleted my question.
    – paulwhit
    Sep 18, 2008 at 11:15
6

Just imagine the poster is someone else in your company.

Give 'naughty' noobs the same bland, negative, unemotional response you'd give to a "boss" who asked you to refactor code in some moderately inane way because they simply didn't understand that of which they spoke.

No need to even be supportive (although that can be nice) but flaming people for mistakes of form, judgement or fact is behaviour that should be beneath real problem solvers. Use the down-vote judiciously and the site will flow better than if we indulge our frustrations on others.

"That is a question that you'll find an ongoing discussion about here" is a polite and straight forward way to deal with a duplicate post that avoids offending anyone.

Practising such pat phrases will serve all of us well in our workplaces too. If you don't regularly need to politely and effectively deal with people who should know better misusing their opportunities you have worked in better places than me.

Anyway that's my two cents worth.

6

Interestingly (to me, anyway), I think that moderation in Stack Exchange has just hit a new level in "social experiment". In a way, you might even say that this is a sign of maturity for SO (but still a problem).

Bureaucracy.

First

I'm going to talk about moderators here, but I'm not taking a shot at anyone. Really. I think that this is more of an interesting social effect than anyone being bad. So before I write the next bit, I want to thank all of the moderators for donating so much time and working so hard to make SO a great site. I mean that, and there is no sarcasm or disparagement intended whatsoever).

Now: Think about this: We have a number of rules and guidelines for using the site, and now we have a lot of moderators. As they work to optimize their job of moderating, they apply group-think based upon supporting the rules. They are doing what humans do -- optimizing their actions to complete their goal. In this case, moderating. BUT, does that necessarily mean that the work is doing the best thing for Stack Overflow (just my opinion, but nowadays, I think twice before posting and sometimes go elsewhere, because I don't want my question getting closed -- I just don't want the extra "intellectual tax" of dealing with cleaning up or thinking about a closed question, when what I'm really looking for is an answer.

Now that I've said all that, where else so you see this sort of group think effect? government bureaucracy! In way, it's really interesting, because in order to have that, doesn't the object of the bureaucracy have to be something that everyone involved feels is worth worrying about? So, in a way, cool! (that said, I'd like for it to be easier to post questions :)

5

Just something I wanted to throw in here.

I know it's a bit outdated, but anyone who's asking questions on the 'net in a technical forum should still read How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.

Specifically of consequence to this discussion:

Before You Ask

Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:

  1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum you plan to post to.
  2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
  3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
  4. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
  5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
  6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
  7. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.

Use tactics like doing a Google search on the text of whatever error message you get (searching Google groups as well as Web pages). This might well take you straight to fix documentation or a mailing list thread answering your question. Even if it doesn't, saying “I googled on the following phrase but didn't get anything that looked promising” is a good thing to do in e-mail or news postings requesting help, if only because it records what searches won't help. It will also help to direct other people with similar problems to your thread by linking the search terms to what will hopefully be your problem and resolution thread.

Take your time. Do not expect to be able to solve a complicated problem with a few seconds of Googling. Read and understand the FAQs, sit back, relax and give the problem some thought before approaching experts. Trust us, they will be able to tell from your questions how much reading and thinking you did, and will be more willing to help if you come prepared. Don't instantly fire your whole arsenal of questions just because your first search turned up no answers (or too many).

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that having put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help, the more likely you are to actually get help.

Beware of asking the wrong question. If you ask one that is based on faulty assumptions, J. Random Hacker is quite likely to reply with a uselessly literal answer while thinking “Stupid question...”, and hoping the experience of getting what you asked for rather than what you needed will teach you a lesson.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not; you aren't, after all, paying for the service. You will earn an answer, if you earn it, by asking a substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking question — one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.

On the other hand, making it clear that you are able and willing to help in the process of developing the solution is a very good start. “Would someone provide a pointer?”, “What is my example missing?”, and “What site should I have checked?” are more likely to get answered than “Please post the exact procedure I should use.” because you're making it clear that you're truly willing to complete the process if someone can just point you in the right direction.

also

How To Interpret Answers RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up

There is an ancient and hallowed tradition: if you get a reply that reads “RTFM”, the person who sent it thinks you should have Read The F***ing Manual. He or she is almost certainly right. Go read it.

RTFM has a younger relative. If you get a reply that reads “STFW”, the person who sent it thinks you should have Searched The F***ing Web. He or she is almost certainly right. Go search it. (The milder version of this is when you are told “Google is your friend!”)

In Web forums, you may also be told to search the forum archives. In fact, someone may even be so kind as to provide a pointer to the previous thread where this problem was solved. But do not rely on this consideration; do your archive-searching before asking.

Often, the person telling you to do a search has the manual or the web page with the information you need open, and is looking at it as he or she types. These replies mean that he thinks (a) the information you need is easy to find, and (b) you will learn more if you seek out the information than if you have it spoon-fed to you.

You shouldn't be offended by this; by hacker standards, your respondent is showing you a rough kind of respect simply by not ignoring you. You should instead be thankful for this grandmotherly kindness.

If you don't understand...

If you don't understand the answer, do not immediately bounce back a demand for clarification. Use the same tools that you used to try and answer your original question (manuals, FAQs, the Web, skilled friends) to understand the answer. Then, if you still need to ask for clarification, exhibit what you have learned.

For example, suppose I tell you: “It sounds like you've got a stuck zentry; you'll need to clear it.” Then: here's a bad followup question: “What's a zentry?” Here's a good followup question: “OK, I read the man page and zentries are only mentioned under the -z and -p switches. Neither of them says anything about clearing zentries. Is it one of these or am I missing something here?”

1
  • 3
    I find RTFM and similar acronyms are rude and unnecessay. It would be more helpful to assume that the raiser has done all that they can think of doing on their own to find the answer to the question. They might not have read sources that are obvious to others. If someone is going to take the time to provide a response, why not give the benefit of the doubt and provide a reference and hints on the relevent sections in the reference. Perhaps the response could invite the raiser to return for more help if they still need it after reading the reference. This may also benifit many silent readers.
    – user147674
    Jun 5, 2010 at 0:11
5

As someone new to Stack Overflow, I have to agree, to a point. I've noticed a certain SlashDottishness around here, though it's pretty limited so it is not that large an issue.

I think the environment will take care of itself over time. Those who don't need, want or deserve to be here will leave or be encouraged to leave.

5

I think civility could be improved in general, not just regarding questions about Stack Overflow. For example, the first question I asked here was a CSS question and I got a rude and slightly off-topic answer: "if you say liquid that usually means percent based dimensions, start associating things like that in your head" (I had not even said "liquid", and in the end there was no satisfactory answer to that question, which suggests it was not dumb).

1
  • 3
    Follow-up comment on that answer: "then your solution is the same but with a new 400px div as child element of #rightnav (the terms liquid and fluid are interchangeable) " - none of this strikes me as terribly rude; if you don't find it helpful then ignore it / down-vote it.
    – Shog9
    Aug 13, 2010 at 18:49
4

I agree, thanks for bringing this up. I have at times been attacked personally just for making a logical statement. It's not always whether you are newbie or not, but it can be other subjective things such as if your question is liked or disliked (for example, Jon Skeet-related questions seem to get a lot of cheers here) regardless of its merits), which is why I brought up a related discussion in question Why is there a double standard regarding non-programming related questions at Stack Overflow?.

I am sensing a much higher civility in this thread, probably due to the way the question was posed.

3

The good things we do in this life reflect in the next. We should all help each other. No question is too small, and no question is too large.

Long live Stack Overflow, and I hope its good ethics rub off on the old school elitists. Let's all work together to make Stack Overflow what it deservers to be.

2

Is there a limitation on when the deadline for posting on a question is considered beating a dead horse? ;)

I have little reputation, am a novice programmer, but I'm not scared to be voted down even if I answer honestly thinking I understood the question. Nothing will show me the progress I've made throughout the years like documenting my failures.

While being downright mean to someone is not the solution, I would assume people don't really need to be pampered...just my opinion as someone from the 'trophy kid' generation, you shouldn't always be protected or even rewarded when you make a mistake.

I love this place, even if I still have a lot to learn.

Cheers!

0
2

I recommend some type of cookie-cutter response that we can just copy-and-paste depending on the mistake made.

I agree with Outlaw Programmer, but would add that it would be useful if there was a menu or similar to quickly (and politely) allow "problem post" identification.

For example, if you see that a post is a duplicate, you hit a button, enter the url/id of the post duplicated. Successive viewers can then agree or disagree. The question poster will get a canned and polite notification.

So instead of templating being a burden on individual users, have it be a function of the system for the most common problem posts.

Offhand, those seem to be:

  • Duplicate
  • Belongs in user voice
  • Offtopic
  • Not a question
  • Unclear question (not enough detail to respond, etc.)
  • ...More as post requirements develop

In essence this would be a votable, post classification tag?

Quick and painless for advanced users...just chose the classification from a list of canned ones, or vote up the existing classification(s) if you agree.

It would be friendly and helpful to the new(er)bies. They would see "15 people think this post belongs in the uservoice section. Do you want to move it there?" or "107 people think you should probably add more detail to your question. Edit now?"


I would definitely support a template-message approach. I haven't participated much here, I admit (yeah, I know, I'm a n00b commenting on a thread about n00bs), but I have over 2 1/2 years' experience on Wikipedia, much of it in vandal-patrol. The template message system set up there works pretty well, and what I see in the suggestions from Outlaw Programmer and ee is a kind of combination between Wikipedia's system and Digg's Bury menu. Am I right? If so, I'd be 100% behind that method.

1

I see a lot of discussion about "noobs" and such, but aren't we all technically new to the site. It's not that old yet (for example, if this site was slashdot instead, we'd all have really low UIDs).

I mean, the only difference between people joining now and people who "have been here since the beginning" is something like two months (if that). And most of that time was spent in private beta. I think the question itself promotes hostility to those who didn't join the private beta as it starts to create cliques of users in the community.

Pretty soon we'll have the group of guys who were in the private beta, the group who joined during open beta, the people who joined the first month, the people who know Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood personally, and it will be a mess of down votes and bickering in the answers and comments with moderator powers being thrown about willy-nilly.

Please, let's just ask questions, give answers, vote on the best of each and try and ignore who said what and concentrate on what was said.

1
  • 1
    It's all relative. I'm sure on the second day of the private beta, the people who joined on the first day thought the second day folks were noobs. Sep 18, 2008 at 13:23
-2

I'll add an example of what happened today. Today I've seen two quite "easy" questions. They are so easy that they could be funny.

32 bit unsigned JavaScript bitwise operation is one short

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7388752/and-precendence-how-does-it-work-closed

Now... Everyone that has a little of knowledge of IT should be able to answer both of them without problems.

  • The first one was upvoted 8 times (at the time I'm writing).

  • The second one was downvoted 24 times and closed by a moderator for "closed as not a real question". At this time it's the fourth most downvoted question (the wood spoon). I'll add that the question wasn't badly formatted (there isn't any revision on it and its formatting is quite good) and the English is good.

I hope this isn't "n00b friendliness" :-)

5
  • 4
    The tooltip on the downvote button says, "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful." And a question about what && and || mean is about as basic a question as you can get. I'm having a hard time believing that question was asked in good faith.
    – mmyers
    Sep 12, 2011 at 22:20
  • @mmyers But I have read the various Q/A here on meta about "I'll google it for you" and "Could we please be a bit nicer to the noobs?" (it's this one) and it seems that we should be pro-noobs and not try to scare away them :-) (and in fact the I'll google it for you is auto-banned) (and note that I'm an elitist. I DO think that I'll Google It For You should be the response for at least 5% of the questions, an I DO think that not researching before doing a question is a mortal sin). What I don't like is hypocrisy. Should I vote for close every question that can be googled in 5 minutes?
    – xanatos
    Sep 13, 2011 at 4:53
  • Here is another example facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/11660523/… Please be nicer to new people.
    – pal4life
    Jul 26, 2012 at 22:58
  • stackoverflow.com/questions/7388752 is now deleted. Jun 22, 2013 at 15:23
  • 2
    "Everyone that has a little of knowledge of IT should be able to answer both of them without problems." I've been in the IT sector for 25 years and I can't answer either. -1 for making a crappy assumption. Nov 19, 2013 at 19:05
-2

We probably need to distinguish between two types of "new users":

  • New users to SO/SE
  • New users to a language/tool or whatever the subject of a question.

They are usually correlated, but we need to think about them separately. Personally, I prefer new user questions to questions so specific that they can be answered with a single line. But I understand that there are others different than me (and I do reply with one-liners from time to time).

My answer to the present question is to:

  • Establish a system of tags or ranks that allows askers to classify their questions as "beginner" / "real beginner" / "intermediate" / "advanced" / "postdoctoral". And allow potential answerers to search by difficulty level, of course.
  • Criticize questions according to the assigned difficulty level.
  • Guide users to become proficient in SO/SE as we are doing today: sweetly. Assume that question's difficulty is also an indication of SO/SE expertise level. Be lenient or demanding accordingly.
9
  • 2
    the issue is not with easiness. The issue is with laziness and the resulting immense duplication of questions and thus fragmentation of knowledge. Easy questions in obscure topics are fine. Easy questions already answered by the manual are not. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:05
  • I disagree. However, I'm not the owner SO. From discussions like these, there seems to be no owner in fact. My proposition allows both visions to coexist. The alternative is creating a completely separate site where askers and answerers expecting the same informality/difficulty level can come and interact. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:15
  • 4
    you are free to propose a site where heavily duplicated trivial questions are welcome. I don't want these lazy questions on SO. I will not use tha site as my source of knowledge. I might contribute with answers. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:18
  • I'm not saying such site is necessarily a bad idea. It would offload lots of questions from SO, and it's generally useful as long as you don't expect high-quality answers (if you do, post to SO - but show some research first). I'm pretty sure that some standard of required effort will arise even at that site, possibly just as strict as SO's current policy. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:23
  • I will probably not, because IMO that is not the prevalent vision withing the SO/SE community. Do you do that, BTW? What would be the preferred site to recommend? I'm willing to experiment for a while and do what you say. In fact, we should recommend exactly the same site to other SO answerers that like this kind of interaction and solve the issue from the root. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:23
  • 1
    I've been a Wikipedia editor and contributor for a long while, but I have encountered that SO is a lot more fun precisely because of the newbies. I'll follow them wherever they go. And come back to SO from time to time too, as well as Wikipedia. Aug 18, 2013 at 7:28
  • I think that the tagging idea is a great one. I just recently posted a question that was downvoted because I was not aware there were multiple versions of regex, and I immediately specified with an edit to my post as soon as I could. I spent hours making something work that I had never done before and was looking for advice on a specific regex, and to my knowledge I posted more than enough information to get a solid answer. I was then expected to be "knowledgeable" with 183 total votes and with my first sentence stating I was new with regex. There should have been some grace there. Aug 18, 2013 at 18:43
  • 1
    There have been several occasions where I wanted to abandon SO (except that it's the fastest place to resolve code issues/puzzles) because I would send an hour refining my question to make sure I had everything I could to inform the answerers only to be downvoted because of a lack of information. It's not laziness, it's not because I didn't read the FAQ or guides. It's because I'm new. I just don't know... that's why I post here! Aug 18, 2013 at 18:46
  • some of the tags (e.g. [beginner]) used to exist but now is categorized as "meta-tags" and they got removed (see here: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags). Aug 18, 2013 at 19:36
-4

I think a lot of users, perhaps especially "power users", should consider whether their comments and up and down-votes are productive or not. Am I commenting because I hope to get up votes? Because I felt someone attacked me and I need to defend myself? Is it really telling the asker of the question something they didn't already know? For some people it feels good to be on the majority's side. Especially if there is someone agitated on the contrarian side. Thus, you have situations wherein five different people explain to someone asking a question what's wrong with it. Four of those explanations may be redundant, but they all felt good when posting them so that's why they are there.

Perhaps the moderators could police comments more? If someone has a history of posting snarky, rude, or unkind questions the moderators could warn them or remove their commenting privileges if they fail to behave nicely? Perhaps remove the ability to upvote comments to remove one of the incentives of posting "piling on" comments?

4
  • 3
    If a comment is rude or unkind - well, we have a flag for it., likewise for redundant flag. Practically, even on the smallest site, its difficult to keep track of everything that happens, let alone SO or SU (for scale) and MSE (for verbosity). We rely on flags to be able to keep abreast of what's happening. If you see a series of comments devolve into argument, or redundancy, flag it. Jul 29, 2021 at 1:16
  • 2
    Downvotes are very productive. Close votes even more so.
    – Raedwald
    Jul 29, 2021 at 18:46
  • I know there is a system for dealing with individual comments. But the system seem to me to not be working for individual users that are consistently unfriendly and rude. There are certain SO tags that are dominated by such users. These users also have lots of points which perhaps makes moderators less inclined to intervene against them. Jul 29, 2021 at 19:29
  • Well I'm not an SO mod but a high rep user setting a bad example is more, not less a reason to take action Jul 29, 2021 at 23:19
-11

The point to be noted is that, downvoting isn't the only trick to teach the new user, how to not post syntactically ill questions.

The experienced user here are much more aware of all the guidelines and regulations of this community. But the new user is not.

Whenever a new user logs in, they don't bother to read the FAQs of community. Not even someone else would bother to do so, if they are using the site for the first time.

I don't think there is anyone who reads the FAQs of each and every site they open. Nobody thinks it as useful.

The new user should be made aware of the point that Stack Exchange sites works on some guidelines that should be followed strictly to wrap your posts into relevant words.

There are better ways of doing so. Comment with relevant links are powerful enough to direct the new user to the FAQs page instead of a heavy volume of down votes. Two or three downvotes are sufficiently enough to let the user know about how this site works.

Getting a large volume of downvotes in the initial stages are worth embarrassing, as I got in first post of mine.

9
  • 9
    I surely do read FAQs of sites I participate at. Also, I browse around to see how others are participating. In other words: I do put effort in understanding the site I'm using, before I use it. And, as already pointed out to you twice: downvoting might be different here. So, even nice comments don't help make you understand? Then I'd say: good that downvotes do make some feel something was not appreciated, and feed the ban.
    – Arjan
    Sep 15, 2012 at 10:08
  • No matter, you read the faqs. but most users here are in hurry to ask questions and get their solutions. If someone is stucked with a problem and has few amount of time to solve the issue, he created account, asked the question expecting a rapid answer. would it be nice to ask him to first read all the faqs, then practice it and after a lot of time spent over it, ask their first question. Instead he could be conveyed to read the faqs for the next time he post a question. Sep 15, 2012 at 10:23
  • 8
    These sites are not some personal help forums, to get one's problems fixed. Why wouldn't a community be allowed to get rid of content they don't appreciate, by downvoting it?
    – Arjan
    Sep 15, 2012 at 10:28
  • I am a nob here to argue with you about this community as you are amomg the reputed users of community. but what i have learnt about SO is that everyone here is to help others and get help from others. Why wouldn't a community be allowed to get rid of content they don't appreciate, by downvoting it? for this, you are right, downvoting is good for content that is not appreciated by others, but syntactically ill content could be asked to review instead of large number of downvotes. Sep 15, 2012 at 10:33
  • 3
    Just for some perspective: the last two weeks Stack Overflow had an average of 5,428 new questions per day. That's one every 15 seconds.
    – Arjan
    Sep 15, 2012 at 10:38
  • 4
    I always read the FAQ and possibly even ask a Meta question on a new site, to make sure my question is not downvoted into oblivion. :) And... it works!
    – Alenanno
    Sep 15, 2012 at 10:53
  • 1
    @Arjan the link you shared (about page) leads to a page that (seemingly) can easily be construed as going against your point. Do you know if it has changed much since you made your comment?
    – Kröw
    Apr 29, 2023 at 7:52
  • @Kröw what do you know, the Internet Archive archived that very link on the very day I commented a decade ago, September 15th 2012. :-) And that archived version shows the About page was more about "How does it work" back then; key was: "We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers".
    – Arjan
    May 1, 2023 at 12:59
  • @Arjan oh wow, what are the odds! I see what you mean now. There is a large emphasis on quality questions and answers in the archived link. Thanks for digging that up. :^)
    – Kröw
    May 3, 2023 at 4:34
-13

The review queue has a great approach on this manner:

[just Downvoted a question] :"Please comment on the question to tell user how it can be improved".

But there isn't an mechanism like that on normal up/down voting. It is very interesting to see double to triple amount of downvotes on something, but only a handful of people active on the question/answer/comment. From people active, around 75% are users with rep higher than 1K and others are in between of 50 - 1K.

This brings a question to my mind: "If people who downvoted aren't part of question or answer, and don't participate in commenting... why did they downvote?"

I don't know why, but I can think of several mechanisms to safeguard new users from downvoting "just because".

  • You can not downvote without posting a comment why did you downvoted. This will discourage anonymous downvoting, or downvoting for personal reasons.
  • After months has passed after you've downvoted and been active on question/answer, SO (company)/SE should ask you "a month has passed, do you still have same opinion?" or something similar. This way if a user who asked his/hers question has proven themselves, cleared the question user who downvoted has a chance to be reminded to update their choice if needed.

Flagging and downvotes aren't bad per say; they are forgettable. It is too easy to hide behind a username these days, so what we need is a sense of choice to govern our behaviour. And many times it has happened for users to mention that they will be back to revise their opinion, but they never do. In many questions and posts on this topic (or similar suggestions) there isn't much discussing, but as there is defending. Many similar topics end up on a one-sided argument that has popular votes without any contra argument (or contra argument is lost somewhere among faded out questions).


After some more research:

https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1105415?Increment=1000&MinRep=25000&MaxRep=100000#graph

I've noticed that most of users that have reputation higher than 100,000 have a large upvotes-to-downvotes ratio - sometimes going as far as 450 upvotes per 1 downvote. But users below 100 K have a lower ratio, often going to 100 upvotes per downvote, with a peak at 150. I think this is interesting data to consider.

28
  • 6
  • if this was just ordinary feedback element i would agree. This way i am forced to deconstruct each point of the question at hand point by point.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:23
  • Downvotes are, first and foremost, a content rating system. - true but content is defined by its benefits to the community not anonymous grudge. And this works as long as there is a clear logic behind it. Usefull or useful topics are something that isn't of importance in present, but what is of importance in future. More quality an topic has in future, more value there is for community. So rating system needs to have an revision element to keep up with the times.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:26
  • In the vast majority of cases, nothing needs to be clarified. - this has faux logix. Most of the time we need clarification for bad grades than for good ones. Otherwise we won't advance in our expertise. Saying something is wrong, doesn't help the asker or answerer how she/he can improve on such. But saying something is good means that neither should try to improve it. That is why most of rating systems have gradation to them, not boolean logic.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:28
  • Any requirement could be trivially circumvented I completely agree. That is why i suggested an month revisement period. And that is why this suggestion isn't the same as "leave a comment" since i first sometimes forget on which questions i did comment and why. As for "this is bad" argument, i also agree that it doesn't help anyone... therefore "not helpful flag". Which could be automatised that if answer/comment has less than 20 characters bot would automatically accept it.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:31
  • It may not feel that way to you at the moment, but downvoters are doing the site a service, and making voting more difficult would impede the site's most important quality-control tool. ** If a vote is in error—which can always happen—the expectation is that the "swarm intelligence" of future viewers will eventually correct the problem.** and even though the answer does recognise its own fault. Leaving fixing problems for the future doesn't help anyone. It doesn't prevent "swarm intelligence" but enforces it.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:33
  • Scale. This is true, and i agree with it. But the issue is... noticing that we have problem and defining a problem as such doesn't mean that problem is fixed - or some measures have been implemented for it. Perhaps increase number of mods, or find a way to be nice/polite and still route new users to the chat or something similar before asking the question. Scale will always be the problem due to the natural growth - but if we don't develop mechanisms to grow at desired rate ... this problem will keep happening.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:36
  • If downvoting is made more difficult, then upvoting would need to be made correspondingly more difficult. - Not true. Since no student or worker ever has asked "Why did you give me an A?" or "Why did you give me a rase?". Positive enforcements don't need clarification since they are positive by intent. Negative enforcements do need clarification because they imply that someone has done something wrong.. To ensure growth as community we need to be able to point out what is wrong.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:38
  • Documentation on how to ask a good question is made easily available for those willing to read it. No issues here. Leaving a comment accompanying a downvote can lead to negative consequences, like revenge downvoting and even off-site harassment. That is the point of "why we don't explain downvotes" but who is protected here? If site is protecting downvoters, how they are awarding upvoters? My point is: if you are not willing to place your name/rep on your decision - that decision isn't worth making.
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:42
  • Stack Overflow (the community, and the company) is actually doing a hell of a lot to make the place feel more friendly. This is valid, but it is shooting the air while target is an apple. Sure these kind of topics are never easy - that is why we need an consensus - an poll. If community isn't "friendly" it isn't enough scrolling through rage fueled questions to decipher what is wrong. We need an google doc form or something with precise and concrete questions about SO/SE to get an public vote. Asking veterans or newbs is just ... why?
    – Danilo
    Sep 3, 2019 at 11:46
  • 6
    I'd recommend you posting your comment stream above as an answer if you want it to get noticed at all. No promises that it will be received well, but if you want a chance at people seeing it, putting it in the comments is not the way to do it. Just note that many of your objections have been repeatedly brought up by others so you may want to give a thorough read through first to make sure you aren't retreading ground. Sep 3, 2019 at 16:06
  • 3
    Meh. Any change to downvotes has to be accompanied by the same restriction on upvotes as well. So if it's too unreasonable for upvotes, it's too unreasonable for downvotes as well.
    – fbueckert
    Sep 4, 2019 at 2:59
  • 2
    Because downvotes are arguably one of the best ways to curate the site, bar none. It signals content that should be ignored, to save readers time, or, if they do read it, to take it with a grain of salt. Upvotes do none of that. Furthermore, it is already unbalanced; downvotes on answers take 1 rep from the voter, and I can guarantee that has a chilling effect on downvoting answers. We need less barriers to vote on content, not more to skew votes positively; that just makes it harder to separate the chaff from the wheat.
    – fbueckert
    Sep 4, 2019 at 13:42
  • 2
    Again, meh. It's already skewed positively, for the reason I just mentioned. therefore, I stand by my statement: Any change to downvotes has to be accompanied by the same restriction on upvotes as well.
    – fbueckert
    Sep 4, 2019 at 13:56
  • 1
    Easily, @Danilo. The more barriers you put in the way of one action, the less that action happens. You're raising the bar to make that action happen, and many people won't want to put in the effort for it, thinking it's not worth it. There's already one barrier in the way of downvotes; imagine what would happen if that same barrier was in place of upvotes. Do you honestly think it would stay the same or cause more to happen?
    – fbueckert
    Sep 4, 2019 at 17:00
1
2

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .