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.
Comments
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.