I actually like the strict style of Stack Overflow.

And i find the "Not Constructive" to be exactly that.

Yes, it can be annoying when a question is closed and you really wanted to discuss it, but the rules are quite clear on what is and is not classified as "Not Constructive", and the discussion should just move to some of the discussion threads instead.

And i don't know what you interpret as negativity? I have never seen unfair or non-objective use of moderator functions?

I spend a lot of time on that site, and like you I generally think the strict criteria are a net positive.

However, I'd just like to add that I've seen lots of abusive language and misuse of powers to close/put on hold. Flagging of unnecessarily negative/harsh language is not in general followed up, which basically means that it is encouraged.

Agreed, whenever I happen across a closed question, I always sit there and scratch my head "but that's a great question!". I think it's a similar phenomenon to the over deletionist problem on Wikipedia.

There's certainly questions on SO that should be moderated away, and WP articles that should be deleted. But there's so many of both kinds that are obviously genuinely good one has to wonder at the motivations of the people closing them.

A while back I started noting the times I came across a stack overflow link that I was interested in and then sad to see closed.

Here's the list:

https://pinboard.in/u:zpinter/t:stackoverflow/

Wow. This one pretty much has 7500 upvotes (counting favorites since they closed it). http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

With 822,000 page views, I guess it wasn't hard to get 5 votes to close it.

That's confirmation bias - you "happen across" them when they're linked to from here

I happen across them multiple times a week via Google. When I was actually active on SO, I encountered them daily. This and the more general malevolent attitude of Stack Exchange toward the "community" they hypocritically champion is why I pretty much gave up on SO.

> whenever I happen across a closed question, I always sit there and scratch my head "but that's a great question!"

So you're saying that every question ever closed that you have seen, should not have been closed? Then I think SO's moderators and users are not the problem.

Now you are jumping to conclusions.

It depends a while lot on your search skills I guess.

Am I? Read my quote, it's exactly what's being said.

No it's not. You even quoted me.

Or the moderators are just doing a bad job. I have the same experience as him.

And exactly because of this perceived negativity, SO recently changed their close criteria - right now, "Not Constructive" is not even an option in "close" voting.

While the reason was changed ("Not Constructive" isn't very descriptive and not easy to understand), the criteria for closing based on "Not Constructive" stayed around, we just split it into two close reasons that both have narrow-er focus:

1. Too broad - There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

2. primarily opinion-based - Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

These two close reasons capture the essence of what "Not Constructive" was meant to be, and are both much clearer to boot.

(Disclosure: I'm a diamond moderator on Stack Overflow: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/16587/george-stocker )

Expert opinion is useful; aka, constructive.

Primarily opinion-based questions are not welcome on Stack Exchange sites. By all means, use notconstructive.com for all of the subjective questions--and consequentially noisy answers--that your heart desires to read and ask.

> Primarily opinion-based questions are not welcome on Stack Exchange sites.

Yes, we know. Even the SE site created with such questions in mind was screwed over by Atwood's unilateral meddling.

You've mistaken disagreement for ignorance.

Well, if you disagree, then you're welcome to instead use notconstructive.com once it's up and running.

"Primarily Opinion Based" is the new "Not Constructive"

definitely a step in the right direction. it can seem heavy handed when a question is closed. giving clear reasons and rules why is good thing

Worse, when a moderator closes a topic, it stays closed, even when they're wrong. I recently asked a question, but moderators misunderstood my question so they closed it as offtopic. I explained my question in more detail, and it should have been apparently that it is clearly on-topic, but they didn't do anything about it.

I see this happening in a few comments, so I'll address it here (Full disclosure: I'm a (diamond) moderator on Stack Overflow).

Whether your question is closed by a diamond moderator, or by the community, it can be re-opened with five community votes (or another moderator stepping in an re-opening it, which happens).

If your question is deleted by the community, it can be undeleted by the community. The only time a question cannot be undeleted by the community is when it's deleted by a moderator.

There's a difference between moderators, and community moderation. I see people using the word 'moderator' when they mean that five members of the community closed their question, and this isn't really correct (it makes it seem like a band of 12 people runs Stack Overflow, which is the furthest thing from the truth).

In your particular case, if you improve your question to address why it was closed, it will automatically be placed into the review queue to be re-opened. If five members of the community agree, it will be re-opened. If it still doesn't get re-opened, you can always open a meta question about it ( http://meta.stackoverflow.com ).

I wanted to address this because it's incorrect to say, "When a moderator closes a topic, it stays closed." That's just not the case.

If you link me to the question, I'll be happy to take a look at it and re-open it if it should be re-opened.

I think that the single-person deletion allowed to mods is a big mistake. It's hard to correct and can be handed or really randomly. For example look at question 2380148 on SO. Years old, both question and answer have 10+ votes, there were other people both commenting and answering... But some one mod decided to delete, so it's gone. (He lost the diamond since then so now I can vote against it - it was not possible originally)

The post was closed because it is obviously off-topic as stated in the FAQ. We've recently implemented a substantial overhaul of the closing mechanisms, and so you'll see on that question (http://stackoverflow.com/q/2380148) that there is now a close reason that is very specific:

  "Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource
  are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract 
  opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem 
  and what has been done so far to solve it." – George Stocker

The question is still there and is still helpful to anyone who happens to land on it from some search; it just cant' be contributed to anymore unless the question is edited to raise its quality and the community reopens it (it doesn't take a diamond-mod to reopen). I can't tell that it was ever deleted, although it could be that a status change was backfilled after the flags updates.

It was not closed. It was deleted. Will was a diamond mod at the time he did it. After posting this message I voted to undelete which is probably why it was just closed by the time you got to it.

But doesn't that illustrate the problem enough? You don't see the history, mod's actions are unknown now. I agree that it can be closed according to the current rules. I was talking only about the deletion.

It's a very frustrating site. I take the time to carefully write up a question, and many things can happen to that.

  * it doesn't get answered
  * it gets closed pretty quickly (and usually in an offputting insulting manner)
  * it gets changed(!) and a question I didn't ask gets answered

I suspect there's a lot of frustrated wikipedians taking it out on Stack Exchange.

I have had similar experiences.

Generally speaking if I'm going to take the time to write a question on SO it's because I can not find the answer already, only to have that question not answered, or worse edited beyond the questions original intent.

Yeah, I've asked questions and found within 5 mins people are rushing in to change the wording and tags and so on. Pity they do not spend more time finding answers.

When the vibe turns to over-moderation I.E. strict enforcement to the point human beings are forced to act as functions with predictable output, it's tedious, Not Constructive (ironically) and overall unpleasant to even browse let alone ask questions.

reddit's AskScience[1] also suffered this fate.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience

The problem with community startups is that the community drives the direction of the startup as much as the company.

Companies can either choose to let the community go in whichever direction they want or they can step in and shepherd the community in the direction they want the business to go in.

Apple does this when pick the kind of apps they'll allow in their store, Stack does this with the kind of questions they allow and Etsy does this with the kind of items they allow to be sold.

Allowing the community to follow a natural path isn't without risk, especially as it's often the people at the edge of the community who end up driving the overall community.

For example look at how having at how adoption of Loopt in the gay pickup community affected it's ability to grow as a more general purpose social network or more recently the impact the Indian population is having on Quora.

it used to be way better some time ago, when it just launched. people posted fun questions, played code golf, etc.

I stopped seeding after politcorrectness nazis were chasing me because of swear word I used (shouldn't be too much to ask for - Microsoft has done much worse to me). now I'm just a leech there.

People still play code golf. It's just now on it's own site.

http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/