What do frustrates me is how I, as a newbie, am incapable of contributing to the site.
I can't upvote an answer that was particularly good to my case. Dozens (literally dozens) of times I clicked to upvote an answer that was just the right one for my case and it wasn't the accepted or most upvoted answer. Only to get this as a reply:
- "Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score."
What?? As a junior learning through an answer, I want to contribute it right away and acknowledge the person who helped it. As well as signalizing to other people that that answer is a good one. Why my upvote do not count? I don't understand the reason behind this design decision.
Then I try to comment on the answer to make it explicit how it helped me and I get:
- "You must have 50 reputation to comment"
This rule at least I kind of understand the logic (avoid spamming, flamewars maybe?), but it does not make it any less frustrating.
I cannot contribute to the site and to the people that helped me so much at the beginning of my learning path.
I can Ask, Answer and Edit without any reputation threshold. But those are precisely what a junior developer will most likely not want to do while learning the basic stuff through SO.
These design choices made me totally give up of any urge to participate in SO and I only consult the answers without engaging or recognizing any of the humans that helped me.
In short, only questions and answers add any real value to the site for the most part. If you really want to contribute to the community, consider diving in and writing questions and answers.
As for upvoting, I understand that it's frustrating not to be able to vote in a community that you spend so much time in. But on the flip side, realize that 90% of the value of Stack Overflow comes from its questions and answers. If you want to contribute to the site, it only takes 3 upvotes across all your questions (or 2 across all your answers) to gain the upvote privilege permanently.
For example, "I've read the answers to A, B, C (linked) and they get me this far, but now I'm trying to take that output and output it to YAML" etc.
As mods / queue reviewers, we generally assume someone has not read (or found) similar questions if they don't mention this. I don't vote to close many questions as dupes unless it's clear the asker didn't even try to look at the related questions. I tend to close vote only on low effort questions that don't meet the minimal complete verifiable example (MCVE) best practices for asking a question.
https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve
To the comment on the 50 rep threshold, I believe you can hit this more easily than you think. For example, writing one answer that gets accepted (+15) with 3 upvotes (3x +10) is worth 45 rep. Then giving 3 suggested edits (3x +2) that get accepted is worth 6 to put you over 50. Suggested edits don't have to be big — you can look for common aspects of aging popular answers like outbound links that may now 404 or fixing grammar mistakes. A lot of people on Stack Overflow do not speak English as their first language, so if you do, you can help improve the clarity of their questions or answers which benefits the whole community.
https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation
Here are some accepted edits I've made for inspiration. Many are simple one liners.
https://stackoverflow.com/users/149428/taylor-edmiston?tab=a...
There's plenty of simple question that you should be able to answer. Use what you know as tags, look out for new posts, and answers them using the best of your knowledge.
Do you get reputation over upvote on question? A few good questions should easily get 5 upvotes.
The reputation for commenting is way too high. I can't count how many times I could have contributed but for the silly reputation requirement. I've given up trying to contribute.
And based on the answers I've been seeing, it doesn't serve it's purpose anyway.
The easiest way to get 100 rep on SO, though, is to get 200 rep on any other site on the network. This is called the Association Bonus. Enjoy movies or cooking or video games or board games? Go post questions/answers on those sites and get some votes. There are 170+ sites on the network and because they're lower-volume, earning rep is often faster because posts are more visible.
I'm not sure which sites you've tried so far, but it is possible to do and even have some fun doing it.
15 rep is also a very small barrier. Asking good questions or editing are probably the best ways to start. Editing is certainly something a new user can do, simply fixing the formatting, grammar and typos in new questions will give you 15 rep in no time.
People see your low reputation and will automatically reject your edits with generic reason, even when I gave very detailed explanation in the note.
I'm assuming the edits are reasonable itself, there are some odd patterns that you see regularly like people using code formatting (monospace font) for emphasis. That kind of edit will get stopped.
Another option to get the basic SO privileges is to ask or answer on any other SE sites. There are many of them, and almost all are much, much easier to participate in.
And that's only a typo. There's so much stuff that could be fixed...
500 reputation for full Hacker News privileges, on the other hand, seems like quite the undertaking! I say this as a decade-long reader who still is far below that.
Answers are kinda the whole point after all; no shame in writing them...
You see it here occasionally, where someone is getting down voted and they don't know why, and someone will explain its most likely because they aren't acting within community norms (here it's back up factual assertions with sources, keep it civil, if you make a joke keep it topical or follow it up with something useful, don't just post memes, etc. Basically keep the signal to noise high).
Limiting new users for a while when their initial mode of interaction may not fit will with the site is a sane choice, IMO, and if those new users never make the effort to go past that initial hurdle, it may be that their contributions are high enough risk that it's not worth it (or the hurdle could be too high).
If you can't find a way to get 50 rep on SO get 200 on any other exchange site and that will credit you 100
I think this is an easy route to hitting 50 rep. See my other comment in this thread for more specific examples of edits that are likely to get accepted.
This. 100%.
My Stack Overflow account is approaching its 10th year, and I would credit a lot of my success as a self-taught developer to the welcoming almost overly helpful attitude of early Stack Overflow.
I hope it gets that back at some point (the recent rule changes have helped I think).
It feels to me like an issue of framing. There's definitely a way to achieve this but I think you have to segregate "the library" (where you get truth) from the "playground" (where you seek help) as the cultures of the sort of people that prefer either place clash horribly. I'm a playground person, for reference. I like to try to understand what problems people are facing as opposed to what they might be asking.
Learning and teaching are continuous processes and one that should be entered into in good faith by all. If you're tired of answering the same exact question hundreds of times a day, then you shouldn't really try answering the questions; maybe teaching isn't 'your thing'. My SO was a HS STEM teacher, it wasn't really my SO's thing, so my SO got a new job. It's not a big deal to not like teaching and it's better for everyone if you realize this quickly and leave it to those that do like teaching.
Pointing noobs towards already answered threads is not a good idea. That's basically saying RTFM. StackOverflow is literally the exact opposite of RTFM. It's explicitly a place to ask questions.
At it's core, StackOverflow is where teaching happens; you RTFM together.
A lot of people are going to disagree with you, including SO itself[1]:
> Please look around to see if your question has been asked before
When viewed in that context, it makes no sense to have multiple answers to the same question.
Just look at the number of "I don't quite understand your question. Do you mean <topic x>" comments that end up assisting the person without providing an explicit answer to their original question. I think that's largely due to answerers feeling that the useful response they are providing is not fit for filing away in the library.
Same boat here. I also have been a SO user for over 10 years and my account says "top 2%" (though this is entirely from my early participation, before I largely gave up on it). I've gone through spurts of trying to participate again by answering questions over the past 5 years but always come away depressed and demotivated about it.
There's a bunch of things that happen:
* Questions get closed as duplicate incorrectly.
I've tried to argue for the question on a few occasions. One of my attempts was by providing a detailed answer which, by being clearly different from the "duplicate" answer, I hoped would prove the question was distinct. A moderator soon deleted the entire question. That demotivated me from answering anything for a year or so.
Since then, I've only argued in comments the question wasn't duplicate, but basically always get outvoted and the question is closed and eventually deleted. It takes a lot of effort to argue the question should stay open, and it takes basically no effort to click "close" so really, this is what the majority want.
* Questions get closed as duplicate -- correctly -- but the marked duplicate is a very old question and no longer contains the "best" answer.
When there's already a half dozen answers, and the top one has tens or hundreds of votes, it's basically impossible to get visibility to a newer answer. This is so bad that when I'm looking at a question trying to help with something I'm doing myself, if I come across an old question I usually sort by 'newest' to find the best answer. More times than I can count, a recent answer with fewer than 1/10th the votes of the "best" answer is the current correct answer.
Likewise, I have answered these but it takes years on an old question to get even a few upvotes, and it's pretty unfulfilling.
* Poor quality questions
If you try to look for older, unanswered questions (eg, don't want to participate in the "who can answer this new question fastest" game) it's very hard to find decent questions. There really is a lot of garbage that gets asked. My experience is when you do find one, after going through a few pages, you run into the next issue:
* New users don't come back
You answer a question from a new user, and maybe get one vote. The original user doesn't come back and mark your answer as accepted or comment as to why it wouldn't work. No one else provides any feedback about it being bad. It's just "internet points" but it is demotivating to put in the effort and have it go nowhere. Maybe I really am just bad at answering questions (but was good 10 years ago, and the high level position and respect I get at work is a figment of my imagination) but even then I'd prefer to get feedback.
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These are just my experiences and opinions. I'm also not sure how to solve these issues, and I don't think it'll be easy to. Seeing as the rules governing the site are largely made by the community, and the "community" behaviour is largely the cause of many of these, the community is essentially saying they don't see these as problems or want to fix them. Getting past that hurdle is the first step to improving things, and honestly, I have no idea how I can help with that (other than posting long rants like this and maybe helping slightly shift some tiny fraction of people's mindset).
In its early stages, SO was an amazing site to learn from -- both asking and answering questions -- but I think the current policies and behaviours mean this isn't the case anymore. From what I can see, most new users are going to have a terrible time with the site if they try to actively participate. It's a shame.
However, most of the time is spent just finding a good question to answer. A lot of the bad questions are people asking you to do their homework or something hopelessly vague ("How can I create my own games?" or something like that).
While nobody should be treated with disrespect, I wish people would keep these issues in mind when mods act with a heavy hand in closing questions.
The problems are, 1. New comer don't search. 2. The don't spend 2 min of their time to read the menu. 3. Entitlement, I asked, and I shall be answered. 4. Do the (home) work for me. They really expect you might as well do it all for them.
All of us were beginner at one point or another. And we know the path possibly better than many. If you have done any research on the topic before you asked, most of the time it would have shown / hinted in the question. So we know aha... you did spend time but you overlooked or never thought of xyz.
Most of the time people overlook the quality of questions were declining.
Stack Overflow is an excellent resource when you access it from a search engine. If you're looking for a particular bit of programming knowledge and you type your query into your search engine of choice, chances are excellent that Stack Overflow results will be plentiful on the first page and that more than one will be relevant and helpful.
Stack Overflow is good enough when you have a very concrete problem that nobody before has asked about before. For example, if you don't know how to do X in the framework Y, you can expect one of the following: 1) someone who did it before will tell you how, 2) someone who had the same problem and found that it actually has no solution will tell you that, or 3) nobody will answer.
Stack Overflow is absolutely terrible when you're trying to learn something new just because you want to learn it or you're asking for advice of any kind. If you're trying to become a better programmer, Stack Overflow is categorically not the tool for the job. The less practical your question , the more it's likely to receive votes to be closed.
My favorite example is a question that outlined a thing you can normally do in .NET and Java because they are executing bytecode and can do certain checks before deciding whether to allow the code to execute or not. The question then proceeded to ask whether there are any pre-existing solutions to do so when working with native code or whether you would have to do it yourself. It received a downvote and a vote to close within 2 minutes of being posted. The voter posted a comment recommending Software Engineering Stack Exchange as a better site. The same question posted on Software Engineering Stack Exchange got a bunch of comments, only one of which actually addressed a question to a certain degree, the rest being ideas on how to change the requirements, snarky sniping of other comments, one idea that was already outlined in the question, and one snarky recommendation to "brush up on your understanding of [concept]" where the [concept] is not the primary concern in question.
I wish I could say that last anecdote is an exception, but it's simply the most egregious example of what's prevalent on Stack Overflow and programming-related Stack Exchange sites. Interestingly enough, I haven't seen it on any non-programming Stack Exchange site, so it's definitely something in our culture as an industry.
I've seen this pattern happen on so many Internet forums, going all the way back to the WELL, where eventually they develop this surface crust of long-time users who systematically chase anyone new away by informing them that the thing they want to talk about, whatever it is, has already been talked about. At first, it might start with a chatty response that provides a link to the old conversation and also provides a summary or some other additional input. And, when done that way, it generally is helpful and friendly.
But, with practice, the procedure is optimized down to the point where the post is little more, and sometimes less, than "We've talked about this before: <hyperlink>" And that's toxic. The only way you could send a clearer message that someone's contributions are not valued is to come right out and say, "Your contribution is not valued."
Stack Overflow has, unfortunately, stumbled upon a way to accelerate this process by gamifying it.
Example: Wikipedia has similar social problems regarding new contributors.
"Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in common with Wikipedia than a discussion forum." Jeff Atwood, "What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?", 22 October 2018.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-does-stack-overflow-want-...
There should be an auto block feature. If you have it on and they downvote you, they get blocked and can't see your posts anymore.
Second thought about gamification. A downvote should cost the person a point or two of their own karma.
If anything, what SO needs is a way to "fade out" old questions in favor of new ones.
edit: Thought I was coining something here but it was actually coined in 2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9870816
I just checked and I've been a member for 10 years and 6 months. I used to answer questions. A lot. In the early days (at one point it was Jon Skeet, Marc Gravelli then me) and I'm kind of surprised how much karma I still get form those old answers.
But I haven't really answered anything in 8+ years. Even one year in I commented on and started several threads on Meta about the "mod problem". And it's only gotten worse.
To riff on a phrase, "those who can, answer, those who can't, mod", which is fine, but there is a particular kind of toxic personality that gets attracted to the authority of being a mod that then appoints itself the arbiter of content. You are fighting a constant battle to keep these toxic (but well-intentioned--mostly) souls out. I saw even then the trend of closing interesting questions as "subjective".
My opinion then--and now--is you can ask a question like "what are the advantages of React.js vs Vue.js?" in an intelligent way without it being a flame war. The fact that it doesn't have an objective answer is (IMHO) irrelevant. You can divine useful information from the answers to that question that will help you go one way or the other.
There is a lot of subjectivity in programming and a lot of not strictly better solutions. Giving people some points to consider as a starting point is incredibly valuable.
This is a hard-to-solve problem for any community. Having lax regulation leads to scammers gaming the system. Having strict rule enforcement leads to a culture of punishment and death-by-process.
There is a place for people like this in organizations (controlling, lower management) -- here they actually can provide value being a process-oriented control-freak. In communities these roles can become toxic if they start to dominate the culture.
SO is dead to me since the bureaucrats have taken over, Wikipedia too for that matter.
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[0]: people who value 'processes' more than outcome.
Stack Overflow's issue is fixable though IMO. I don't see the same level of aggressive moderation towards those who answer. So from a community attitude, it seems like answerers are recognized as the content creators who you shouldn't drive away. So the solution in my head is to do what you can to recognize the askers as content creators as well. Because they are a vital part of content creation!
There should be a name for this law by now (could already exist, may have missed it).
StackOverflow is actually an example of this rule. Questions get downvoted and closed because they're supposedly not constructive. Yay, more constructiveness, right? But in the long run it creates the environment that feels like a clique hostile to all newcomers.
Making demands on users, writing multi-page lists of rules and banning/locking/deleting does nothing to attract good people. It can only preserve something you already have, and even that isn't guaranteed.
Way too many websites forget this, go all in on "corrective measures" and mandatory positivity, while not doing anything constructive on their own.
An example of constructive moderation is running contests where people get recognition for doing something good. (This is no the same as having karma, which also leads to cliques in the long run.)
Another related thing: a lot of larger websites pay moderators to ban stuff, but don't have anyone on staff whose primary job is to "lead by example" via answering questions and providing help.
"Seeding" a website with good people and content is absolutely essential, and yet this is a topic I've never, ever seen discussed when someone writes about community management.
And another thing. Beyond certain scale people stop perceiving website as a place with people and start looking at is as a service with users. This completely changes the tone for everyone. Larger websites need to put efforts in "federating", i.e. creating sub-spaces that still feel like a place where people can have a conversation and get to know the "regulars" to some extent. This might seem like it's not applicable to StackOverflow and YouTubes, but it is. A lot this is about visual design and ways information is structured.
I believe he's acknowledged this problem many times on his blog in the past, and discussed possible ways to improve things.
"You have reached your question limit Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more."
There might be a discussion to be had about how to teach users what a bad question is, or how many is too many, but I don't understand why we should let people who repeatedly fail to clearly ask a question keep asking. Most people have no such problem.
In fact, when experienced posters politely point out what the rules are and where to read more about them, you start to see new posters fall into 2 categories:
1. The people who say, "Oh, I didn't realize that's how it works. I'll update my question/do better next time/etc."
2. The people who insist that no, it's their platform and they'll ask whatever they want however they want.
And of course, there are experienced users who are jerks and don't point out rules or don't do it politely. They should not be excused. But letting new posters continue to pollute the site with terrible questions isn't going to help anyone - especially not the people posting the question.
Have you noticed? When you start to be angry and hate a bit, somehow it spreads and sucks all these bad energies like a sponge. And if you don't know how to recover yourself and clean your mind, it is easy to become a hateful self-centered person. I wish we could change the direction.
I remember one of my first interactions with other developers was the #php.dk channel on Quakenet in the start 00s, I had shared a PHP script with them that didn't work, and had included my development database settings, and back then NAT wasn't really a thing, so one of them figured out that he could login to my MySQL database and change the password!
And I didn't know how to reset it, so they made me beg to get the new password, so they showed me how to change it to something new and they showed me how to protect myself from such things in the future.
It was a nice life lessons, and I guess that IRC channels needed some strict moderation, but I'm not sure the shenanigans that went on back then (and likely still happens) is all that great for learners and newcomers.
I had stopped attempting to answer or ask anything on the site due to the behavior I observed. It was pure gamesmanship for people trying to rack up their SO score and then summarily abuse it with enforcement of opaque, draconian rules. My favorite was when a question would be marked as a duplicate incorrectly, so what was the takeaway? That solution was barred from discussion on the site?
Since then I simply look at SO when it happens to come up in a search. I'm not ever logged into the site anymore. If I want to describe how I fixed something, I do it in my own space, and only reference answer when linking to SO.
1. https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/07/20/kicking-off-the-summer...
>
> I care a lot about this. Being a developer gives you an unparalleled opportunity to write the script for the future. All the flak that Stack Overflow throws in the face of newbies trying to become developers is actively harmful to people, to society, and to Stack Overflow itself, by driving away potential future contributors. And programming is hard enough; we should see our mission as making it easier.
It's good to see that acknowledgement coming from Joel. I wasn't one of those newbies facing that snark, but as an earlier contributor it was really depressing to see the general attitude shift from "yeah OK this question's not the best but it was asked in good faith so I'll answer" to "you're a worthless human being for wasting our time with imperfection".