I was pretty active in the first years of SO but over time essentially stopped answering questions and that mostly because the question became less and less interesting. Questions you couldn't easily find an answer to got more and more replaced with questions that are easily answered by just reading the manual of whatever you are trying to use or learning to code to begin with. Another factor is that I got more knowledgeable over the years and previously interesting problems now seem trivial but I am pretty sure this is not the main contributing factor.
Now it depends on what you want SO to be or what it is supposed to be. A source of solutions for non-trivial problems or a copy of or link to the manual of everything out there plus an introduction to software development? I thought of SO as a source of information that you couldn't easily get from manuals, now it looks to me more and more like a collection of manuals, so I lost interest.
EE.SO has rather brutal moderation in my opinion, but any solution has to take into account both sides of the equation.
* It's not even the asker's question anymore if another user edits it!*
Depends on how big the edit is, surely? Or are you claiming that having the readability fixed is humiliating?
> But here's the concept:
> Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. [...]
The goal from day 1 has been to foster a community that would be empowered to create something of lasting value. That doesn't preclude hand-holding... But it doesn't demand it either; whether or not that happens is up to the folks who make up the site, the folks asking and the folks answering.
In the 7+ years since that was written, many thousands of people have donated their time and knowledge to help their peers, both in the immediate sense of writing an answer to address a specific question, and in the sense of leaving artifacts for future readers with the same question.
But of course there's room for improvement. And if you're willing to step up, you can be a part of that improvement. Go find someone who lacks knowledge and gently guide them; encourage your friends to do likewise. The platform is there, empowering you to create the environment you wish to see... If you aren't doing it, that's on you.
Has anyone tried?
The main problem is posing as a question and answer site, yet wanting to be the go-to reference on the web for getting accurate helpful solutions.
The people asking for help are not there (most aren't) because they heard about this fantastic site that wants to be the go-to reference on the web for getting accurate helpful solutions.
The people asking for help don't want (most don't) to build the go-to reference on the web for getting accurate helpful solutions.
They want programming help.
It's a trick SO has been playing for years. Not that they'll ever realize it. The founders may not deep thinkers. Or they realize what they're doing and don't care.
After all these years, the founders have not fixed the SO problem. They have failed to address the conflict of asking knowledge-needy users to help build the go-to reference on the web for getting accurate helpful solutions without subjecting them to cruelty.
It's conceptually simple, and a bit of a bait-and-switch.
They pitch the site as a question-and-answer site. In the field of education, it is extremely counterproductive and cruel to subject someone lacking a bit of knowledge, and for whatever reason they lack it, to berating. It's just not accepted. If someone asks a question you simply do not humiliate them or berate them, or 'close the question', or edit the question they asked! It's not even the asker's question anymore if another user edits it! Curation by humiliation.
In any normal, respectful setting that promotes itself as a source to get help -- a "question and answer site" -- if an authority figure in that setting berates someone who lacks a bit of: - knowledge - or even the style or manner of how they ask questions
that authority figure would be fired, dismissed.
It's extremely unfortunate that the founders of SO are not brave enough (or deep-thinking enough?) to realize that failing to disclose to Users the truth about the potential cruelty, embarrassment, and humiliation they might suffer using the "question and answer site" -- is shameful.
If a school or university allowed any educational authority figure (like moderators, etc.) to berate and humiliate people with less knowledge than they, the institution would find itself in trouble.
Some of us believe the founders realized that if they told the truth -- "we're casting a big net, a lot of you who fall for the 'it's a question and answer site' are going to be humiliated by the moderators and other users who know more than you do" -- the founders probably realized if they had full disclosure of the "curation by humiliation" process, no one would use the site.
The fact is, the majority of SO users have been subjected to this "curation by humiliation" but are hesitant to speak out about it.