Sometimes though it's deserved. The other day I saw a post with a title something like "Hey, help a newbie out". The post itself did not contain a description of any kind of problem, just a couple of links off-site. I responded with a comment, "Hey help us by using a descriptive title". Yes it was rude, but far less than the question itself deserved. I believe it was closed shortly after. I can no longer find the comment in my history, so I can only assume the question was deleted.
Sure if it's obviously spam, or some kind of ridiculous screed, it should be deleted asap-- without votes, answers or commentary.
The problem is when people write questions earnestly, but because they lack subject-matter orientation, aren't able to formulate their questions in a way that SO experts would like to hear. Too many questions are smugly dismissed this way. It doesn't help anyone and it pisses a lot of people off.
I think many of these earnest but "bad" questions just need answers in the form of heuristic advice or pointers to get them on the right track. Being able to formulate a question is half the battle. Understanding ALWAYS begins with some amount of confusion. Admittedly, that's not optimal for a site where well-defined questions are supposed to get crisp answers that others can use over and over. But that still doesn't excuse rudeness.
I'm not going to apologize. If you can't actually ask a question on a site that is all about asking questions, you get no respect from me. I actually LIKE answering questions, that's why I participate. It wasn't about formulating the question, I don't mind prodding people in the right direction for that. There simply wasn't a question, either in the title or the body of the text.
I am not defending that cherry-picked example question.
I am defending questions that are earnest but which are missing some foundational understanding of the subject matter which is usually needed to ask an answerable question. What you might call "prodding" can also take the form of polite advice or guidance. It NEVER HAS TO BE "prodding" by downvotes, VTC's and harsh commentary.
The challenge with Stack Overflow is making this scale to 8k questions per day.
The number of people who are willing to spend that time is small to begin with and trying to provide that polite advice and guidance can easily take a significant fraction of an hour per question.
Downvotes and votes to close provide a lower friction of providing that information. Neither of these are intended to be considered rude or unwelcoming.
Personalized advice and guidance for users doesn't scale well.
The Q&A format for Stack Overflow is poorly suited for people trying to gain that foundational understanding. This isn't a failing of Stack Overflow per say but rather the Q&A style. For such questions, other resources where more dense communication can be hand (forums are better for this) - Stack Overflow doesn't need to be and shouldn't be the one resource for all programming questions.
Downvotes can feel very unwelcoming, even when they aren't intended to be. Especially if they aren't followed with a comment pointing out how to do better. I try to reserve my downvotes for questions that seem hopeless, but I leave a lot of comments. It's funny that Stack Overflow is now attempting to make downvoting more common, after going on recently about how they wanted it to be more welcoming.
Votes to close are worse of course. There's no more direct way to say you don't belong here.
Neither of these are intended to be considered rude or unwelcoming.
OK, sure, that's not the "intent" but both downvotes and VTC's really ARE considered unwelcoming and are very harsh on new users especially when coupled with smug comments.
I've been on SO since the early days. I've learned to brace myself for hostility when asking or answering a question, but it still makes me cringe to see new people getting burnt to a crisp over persnickety stuff. There's a lot of people that find the harshness distasteful, but their reaction is mostly to ignore it (I usually do that). Others actually applaud the harshness and justify it with, IMHO bogus, arguments like yours about "scale" or not wasting expert's time.
The bottom line is it COSTS NOTHING to be polite and empathetic. If you don't want to help out an earnest newb, that's your prerogative, but you don't have to write anything, you don't have to spend a second to downvote or police the question.
Maybe "prodding" was a poor choice of words. What I meant was leaving comments that point out ways a question can be improved or providing background information, not downvotes or VTC. I also try hard to keep the commentary from being harsh, but I'll admit to being human in that respect from time to time.
I think many of these earnest but "bad" questions just need answers in the form of heuristic advice or pointers to get them on the right track.
This is true, but not necessarily the role of SO to solve. This seems more like a mentoring service.
SO was conceived as a long-term repository of questions and corresponding answers that are worth archiving for several years, so explainers don't have to rehash the same explanations many times and explainees have quick access to expert knowledge collected over a long time.
Remember the bulk of users are the passive readers of the vast question bank of SO, they come to SO because the questions and answers are relevant and helpful. The primary user is therefore not necessarily the novice user who cannot formulate a question well and cannot search for similar questions or break down their problem into pieces, explain what they did etc. We also need to make sure the site remains high-quality for the readership, people who read answers from months and years ago.
I agree that there needs to be some place for novices to get coarse-level guidance of what terms to search or what fields of CS may be of interest, etc. It's definitely true that formulating the question the right way is already a substantial step towards solving it.
But "I'm confused in a vague way about this specific file I was tasked to work with and I'm getting an error message I was too scared to read, so plz help" is not worth archiving in a question bank.
It sounds more like a support help desk for programmers, but you'd have to pay for it because answering such questions is exhausting and not really rewarding. The people who go to SO do it for free because they like the puzzle solving aspect of thinking and solving interesting questions. Rehashing the same thing gets old and you can not guilt trip people into doing it as some sort of unpaid community service.
This is true, but not necessarily the role of SO to solve. This seems more like a mentoring service.
SO, I agree, is not a mentoring service. The format of SO is a poor way to pick up foundational knowledge. It's ~usually~ awesome if you know exactly what you need and are able search for it. Or if needed, formulate a precise question. (to be fair, that is often NOT enough to avoid smackdown votes, VTC, dupe marking, and dismissive put-downs).
That said, it happens many times, that people end up having to do unfamiliar tasks in their work, and they might need to just get something done without having much directly relatable experience in the task. RTFM is not a realistic option as the F-ing Manuals's would typically be hundreds of pages of dense material. Often a push in the right direction and a little orientation is enormously helpful.
And, by the way, many people really do enjoy helping out individuals-- they take joy in helping someone out even if the help they provide doesn't take the form of "a canonical answer" (god, I hate that pretentious word, "canonical"). It doesn't detract from the quality of the site to loosen up on the strictness of the rules.
Comments
Sometimes though it's deserved. The other day I saw a post with a title something like "Hey, help a newbie out". The post itself did not contain a description of any kind of problem, just a couple of links off-site. I responded with a comment, "Hey help us by using a descriptive title". Yes it was rude, but far less than the question itself deserved. I believe it was closed shortly after. I can no longer find the comment in my history, so I can only assume the question was deleted.
No question "deserves" rudeness.
Sure if it's obviously spam, or some kind of ridiculous screed, it should be deleted asap-- without votes, answers or commentary.
The problem is when people write questions earnestly, but because they lack subject-matter orientation, aren't able to formulate their questions in a way that SO experts would like to hear. Too many questions are smugly dismissed this way. It doesn't help anyone and it pisses a lot of people off.
I think many of these earnest but "bad" questions just need answers in the form of heuristic advice or pointers to get them on the right track. Being able to formulate a question is half the battle. Understanding ALWAYS begins with some amount of confusion. Admittedly, that's not optimal for a site where well-defined questions are supposed to get crisp answers that others can use over and over. But that still doesn't excuse rudeness.
I'm not going to apologize. If you can't actually ask a question on a site that is all about asking questions, you get no respect from me. I actually LIKE answering questions, that's why I participate. It wasn't about formulating the question, I don't mind prodding people in the right direction for that. There simply wasn't a question, either in the title or the body of the text.
I am not defending that cherry-picked example question.
I am defending questions that are earnest but which are missing some foundational understanding of the subject matter which is usually needed to ask an answerable question. What you might call "prodding" can also take the form of polite advice or guidance. It NEVER HAS TO BE "prodding" by downvotes, VTC's and harsh commentary.
The challenge with Stack Overflow is making this scale to 8k questions per day.
The number of people who are willing to spend that time is small to begin with and trying to provide that polite advice and guidance can easily take a significant fraction of an hour per question.
Downvotes and votes to close provide a lower friction of providing that information. Neither of these are intended to be considered rude or unwelcoming.
Personalized advice and guidance for users doesn't scale well.
The Q&A format for Stack Overflow is poorly suited for people trying to gain that foundational understanding. This isn't a failing of Stack Overflow per say but rather the Q&A style. For such questions, other resources where more dense communication can be hand (forums are better for this) - Stack Overflow doesn't need to be and shouldn't be the one resource for all programming questions.
See also:
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/268779/can-we-make-...
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/353845/stack-overfl...
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/357198/mentorship-r...
Downvotes can feel very unwelcoming, even when they aren't intended to be. Especially if they aren't followed with a comment pointing out how to do better. I try to reserve my downvotes for questions that seem hopeless, but I leave a lot of comments. It's funny that Stack Overflow is now attempting to make downvoting more common, after going on recently about how they wanted it to be more welcoming.
Votes to close are worse of course. There's no more direct way to say you don't belong here.
OK, sure, that's not the "intent" but both downvotes and VTC's really ARE considered unwelcoming and are very harsh on new users especially when coupled with smug comments.
I've been on SO since the early days. I've learned to brace myself for hostility when asking or answering a question, but it still makes me cringe to see new people getting burnt to a crisp over persnickety stuff. There's a lot of people that find the harshness distasteful, but their reaction is mostly to ignore it (I usually do that). Others actually applaud the harshness and justify it with, IMHO bogus, arguments like yours about "scale" or not wasting expert's time.
The bottom line is it COSTS NOTHING to be polite and empathetic. If you don't want to help out an earnest newb, that's your prerogative, but you don't have to write anything, you don't have to spend a second to downvote or police the question.
Maybe "prodding" was a poor choice of words. What I meant was leaving comments that point out ways a question can be improved or providing background information, not downvotes or VTC. I also try hard to keep the commentary from being harsh, but I'll admit to being human in that respect from time to time.
This is true, but not necessarily the role of SO to solve. This seems more like a mentoring service.
SO was conceived as a long-term repository of questions and corresponding answers that are worth archiving for several years, so explainers don't have to rehash the same explanations many times and explainees have quick access to expert knowledge collected over a long time.
Remember the bulk of users are the passive readers of the vast question bank of SO, they come to SO because the questions and answers are relevant and helpful. The primary user is therefore not necessarily the novice user who cannot formulate a question well and cannot search for similar questions or break down their problem into pieces, explain what they did etc. We also need to make sure the site remains high-quality for the readership, people who read answers from months and years ago.
I agree that there needs to be some place for novices to get coarse-level guidance of what terms to search or what fields of CS may be of interest, etc. It's definitely true that formulating the question the right way is already a substantial step towards solving it.
But "I'm confused in a vague way about this specific file I was tasked to work with and I'm getting an error message I was too scared to read, so plz help" is not worth archiving in a question bank.
It sounds more like a support help desk for programmers, but you'd have to pay for it because answering such questions is exhausting and not really rewarding. The people who go to SO do it for free because they like the puzzle solving aspect of thinking and solving interesting questions. Rehashing the same thing gets old and you can not guilt trip people into doing it as some sort of unpaid community service.
SO, I agree, is not a mentoring service. The format of SO is a poor way to pick up foundational knowledge. It's ~usually~ awesome if you know exactly what you need and are able search for it. Or if needed, formulate a precise question. (to be fair, that is often NOT enough to avoid smackdown votes, VTC, dupe marking, and dismissive put-downs).
That said, it happens many times, that people end up having to do unfamiliar tasks in their work, and they might need to just get something done without having much directly relatable experience in the task. RTFM is not a realistic option as the F-ing Manuals's would typically be hundreds of pages of dense material. Often a push in the right direction and a little orientation is enormously helpful.
And, by the way, many people really do enjoy helping out individuals-- they take joy in helping someone out even if the help they provide doesn't take the form of "a canonical answer" (god, I hate that pretentious word, "canonical"). It doesn't detract from the quality of the site to loosen up on the strictness of the rules.