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.
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).