My main issue with SO is that it has become a rather "snippy" place. The "be nice" ethos just means that the nasty is more eloquent.
It's now quite painful to ask questions, there, because someone will pretty much always ding it. Usually, you have no idea why, or who. In fact, that happened to me just a day or so ago.
Also, I think that downvoters should be notified when the question/answer is edited, so they can review if the downvote still applies.
I once trolled a community (not SO) by writing an obviously inflammatory post, getting a gazillion downvotes, then editing it to be very reasonable, so everyone was on record as having downvoted a very decent post. Petty, but fun (They did not have edit records for posts, but you could see what users up/downvoted).
I like the idea of a "Thank You" reaction, but that's really just porcine lip gloss.
I think that it would be more valuable to require an explanation for a downvote, even if anonymously. I would have no problem telling folks why I downvoted a question or answer (in fact, when I do, I add a comment, mentioning the reason, unless it is blatantly obvious). As is evident by my HN profile, I am making a point of standing behind what I post. I got rid of my last anonymous Internet account months ago.
Standing behind my words has helped me to be a bit more careful about what I post, and that's a good thing.
My main issue with SO is that it has become a rather "snippy" place.
It's also true of other Stack Exchange sites. Sometimes you feel like in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy where you're sent from one site to the other and none of them think it's their job to deal with a question.
And I don't mean the low-effort questions, but well written interesting ones that are deemed to broad, too opinion-based, too whatever.
There is definitely an effect of territorialism, big egos and rule lawyering going on. As if people were playing a game of spot-the-broken-rule as some intellectual puzzle and going "heureka, there it is, you broke Rule No. 3, gotcha!!". Sites like SO and Wikipedia certainly attract people who get emotionally invested in this role and see themselves as powerful and enjoy feeling better than others.
That's why the debate is complicated. There is a problem with trigger happy moderation, but also with low-effort content.
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My main issue with SO is that it has become a rather "snippy" place. The "be nice" ethos just means that the nasty is more eloquent.
It's now quite painful to ask questions, there, because someone will pretty much always ding it. Usually, you have no idea why, or who. In fact, that happened to me just a day or so ago.
Also, I think that downvoters should be notified when the question/answer is edited, so they can review if the downvote still applies.
I once trolled a community (not SO) by writing an obviously inflammatory post, getting a gazillion downvotes, then editing it to be very reasonable, so everyone was on record as having downvoted a very decent post. Petty, but fun (They did not have edit records for posts, but you could see what users up/downvoted).
I like the idea of a "Thank You" reaction, but that's really just porcine lip gloss.
I think that it would be more valuable to require an explanation for a downvote, even if anonymously. I would have no problem telling folks why I downvoted a question or answer (in fact, when I do, I add a comment, mentioning the reason, unless it is blatantly obvious). As is evident by my HN profile, I am making a point of standing behind what I post. I got rid of my last anonymous Internet account months ago.
Standing behind my words has helped me to be a bit more careful about what I post, and that's a good thing.
It's also true of other Stack Exchange sites. Sometimes you feel like in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy where you're sent from one site to the other and none of them think it's their job to deal with a question.
And I don't mean the low-effort questions, but well written interesting ones that are deemed to broad, too opinion-based, too whatever.
There is definitely an effect of territorialism, big egos and rule lawyering going on. As if people were playing a game of spot-the-broken-rule as some intellectual puzzle and going "heureka, there it is, you broke Rule No. 3, gotcha!!". Sites like SO and Wikipedia certainly attract people who get emotionally invested in this role and see themselves as powerful and enjoy feeling better than others.
That's why the debate is complicated. There is a problem with trigger happy moderation, but also with low-effort content.