Stackoverflow website sucks because of its moderators and Top Users

[Zan Lynx]

Oh yes the "simple question." Like one I saw today (paraphrased), "I am using pthreads. Something is wrong because when my thread finishes I notify my main thread but it never gets notified." Oh yes. Like I can answer that. No, that question vaporizes in less than 2 minutes with 6 downvotes. Because it is useless.

[Jadoti]

Why not post a link to the question you asked over there and got treated so harshly for so we can point out exactly why your question got pounded. SO is a community, and they're very newbie friendly, they're just not lazy, stupid, or redundant friendly. If your question could have been answered with a simple search, you're going to get pounded. If your question could have been answered with a little research on your part, you're going to get pounded. If your question shows you haven't thought about it at all, you're going to get pounded. If your question looks to be a valid question, but you have such little concern for those you're asking help from that you can't include sample code, full error text, ample description of what you're seeing, or any other relevant details, you're going to get pounded. Thought out questions that clearly state the problem including errors, what you've tried, how to recreate (if possible), etc., generally get answered. "Experts" answering questions on SO are just like you and me, and many of them do it to help the community. While they might start out helping every random user with their "how do I double click a file" questions, they will quickly grow tired of it and degrade to "RTFM" or just not answering the question altogether. Now, as far as part 2- why you get downvoted and deleted - SO is a community. The questions they are ignoring and not going to answer for above reasons need to get cleaned up somehow. So again, post a link to your question and I'll be glad to point out why you're seeing the reaction you are.

[Rio Rico Rick]

Hey if you have the card in your deck, might as well play it, especially if it makes no sense whatsoever!

hatfok King Yiddum's Castle Pegasus Galaxy

[pandu web dev]

People have complained in meta many times that the website users are rude like here, but no use SO is continuing in the same way. Top users try to prove that whatever they are doing is right. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161539/rude-responses-from-the-community[^] There are many questions where they post disrespectful comments or downvote etc. It is not a new thing. Since, stackoverflow comes in top of google search results, it has a good set of QA, that doesn't mean whatever they do with new users or beginners is correct.

[Dan Neely]

Not true. Any edit to a closed question automatically adds it to the reopen queue. (On the assumption that the edit was an attempt to fix what was wrong.) You could also try leaving a moderator flag or asking why it was closed on Meta. However the Moderators aren't likely to summarily reopen it unless it was obviously closed by mistake or has ended up the subject of a close war; ditto for asking on Meta.

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt

[_CodeWarrior]

I have never had any issue on SO. Most of the downvoted questions that I have seen have been because OP asked a question that is covered by 10 other previous posts, did not show any work, is vague, or is asking for recommendations that are often going to be biased. If, however, you do research and ensure that there are no other answers on SO that fit your situation, AND you create a well written post that shows what you have done, shows where you are having the problem, explains what you THINK is going on, etc, it will get answered. I have found that if I write my post, and look at the right hand pane there are a bunch of suggestions, and often I have found my answer there without posting, maybe 10 our of 15 times.

[luiggixd]

I'm a happy user of StackOverflow community, I highly participate in Java Q/As mainly by answering questions. After seeing this thread and similar questions on Meta StackOverfow[^] I start thinking on what can possibly be the root of all evil (like premature optimization ;P ). Anyway, let me try to provide a personal opinion on all the topics covered in your post:

Quote:

if a new one asks a simple question, then the top users starts down voting, ranting

Define simple question. For example, if somebody in Java asks "how can I create a hello world app" then I would post a comment saying "that's covered in a tutorial" and vote to close. This question lows the quality of the site. Ok, another (not that) simple question: "this piece of code doesn't work code that doesn't even compile I appreciate your help." ok now this is unanswerable at all, first because the code doesn't compile, and if it does compile but there's no stacktrace, then I usually have to read through a wall of code to tell OP: "you didn't initialize foo variable, thus you getting a NullPointerException...". There goes another simple question that lows the quality of the site. And a last example of a simple but too broad question: "how can I create RESTful web services in Java?". Again, this is an unanswerable question that can is already covered in plenty tutorials. No need to reinvent the wheel in stackoverflow.

Quote:

If someone don't have knowledge on particular topic or another then the regular users start insulting them.

I'm ashamed of this, and I see stuff like that for one of the following reasons (AFAIK): - OP is really lazy to understand the answer. You spot a question like "how can I foo the bar" then an answer posts "Use quo, it will foo the bar as you expect: Here's a sample code fulfilling the answer" and I upvote it for showing a good example, but then OP raises a comment like "ok now I need to baz the bar from foo, how can I do that?" and I reply in a comment "OP please read about how foo and baz are very close you just have to change one line it's not that hard" and OP starts complaining about me insulting and giving him the bad eye. Then, another user reads all that and provides a new answer with the line to change and he gets the accept

[_CodeWarrior]

http://stackoverflow.com/users/1535478/jennifer-marsman-msft[^] http://stackoverflow.com/users/471760/julie-lerman[^] http://stackoverflow.com/users/148870/amber[^] To be fair, I am not a woman, and I don't know the discrimination of women firsthand. But I am a StackOverflow user, and have had a number of very good and useful answers from the women there, and have never seen anything to suggest there was a discrimination problem. Just write good questions and the answers will flow.

[Br Bill]

Perhaps if the more powerful users who are being dickish had a way to get downvoted for their dickish behavior, it would help make it a more friendly environment. Newbs on the site have no power at all. They're encouraged to ask questions to gain reputation and then are often slammed for asking inappropriate questions. Sure, they should read the FAQ. But they're newbs. It's their job not to know what they're doing. When one of the dickish power users inappropriately punishes a newb for being a newb, or punishes an experienced user for doing something the power user just doesn't like personally, we "rabble" should have some way to vote asshole points on that power user. SO should put some effort into preventing the the site from becoming exactly what it isn't supposed to be - a bully den.

[jibalt]

No, it's you who suck. StackOverflow is an extremely helpful place; questions only get downvoted when the poster hasn't followed the site rules and is lazy.

[jibalt]

I appreciate the people here complaining about SO for self-identifying as morons. The software industry is better off without them.

[jibalt]

Er, no, the goal of SO is to have good questions with good answers. That's why it is the go-to place for professionals to find answers. Several times every week I google a technical issue and almost always the explanation or answer is already posted at SO.

[C Grant Anderson]

Yes, I've noticed the attitude over there as well. Since CP wants to compete with SO why not build a Knowledge Tree of posts and answers that they could quickly search and browse (and link to articles)? I have yet to see a proper Knowledge Tree structure implemented anywhere yet. And I've haven't had the time to write about it. But it's a proper and significant next generation step in the evolution of knowledge structures (another concept that needs writing about). If anyone is significantly interested I will do a CP article on this.

[jibalt]

You rolled back grammar corrections? What a jerk.

[Matthew N Davis]

This is the kind of request you'd make on the Meta StackOverflow site. Be forewarned, though, phrasing such a request the way you just did will elicit the same kind of venom you are decrying.

[Matthew N Davis]

Did you read the answers to the question? They make it perfectly clear that rude answers are (1) a minority, (2) impossible to rule out altogether, and (3) can be flagged.

[Dmitry A Efimenko]

SO works by the following rule: garbage in - garbage out. Lets have a look at the question that you asked and we might figure out why it was down voted and how to improve your experience on SO.

PersonalityMatch.net - online dating without Profile Pictures

[nategoose]

I like stackoverflow.com, though I have seen some limited behavior like you described. Many users are way too quick to down vote both questions and answers. I've used the site for several years and have only down voted once or twice. I reserve that for extreme circumstances such as abuse or repeating the same problems many times while ignoring question asking advice from other users. There are a few recurring issues that people have with asking questions on there that could be helped with better research and communication skills by the askers of questions. Sometimes there are disagreements about exactly what does qualify as a suitable topic for SO (or it's sister sites) as well as the tags used for questions. Once I asked a question on there about the using sed. Some people may have considered that question to have not been on topic because it wasn't enough of a programming question, but it was answered. If I had been asking a general user question, such as "How do I run a program on Windows 98?" then I'd probably have been down voted because it wasn't a programming question (and because it mentioned "Windows 98"). Asking a question on SO should almost never be the first thing anyone does when a question comes to mind. When you post a question there it takes up other people's valuable time to read, consider, research, and answer (ignoring the time that it takes for someone to down vote), so if someone asks a question on SO that could easily have been answered by Googling then people are likely to down vote that question because they take it as disrespectful of the value of their time. If someone does look for resources and is still confused, or even confused by the resources, then cite those resources in your question. If no resources can be found, mention what you've searched on (the keywords). It is quite common that people are calling a concept the wrong thing or at least something other than what it is commonly known as, which can make searching and asking questions not work out well. SO is in English, so make sure that you're English is readable. It would be nice if native language wasn't an issue, but it is. If you're question makes no sense grammatically then it will be misunderstood, ignored, or down voted. People on SO will try to help fix up questions like this, and the asker needs to check back to read the changes, suggested changes, and pleads for clarity that other users have posted. Personally I often find it easier to read broken English if I know what the writer's native la

[RafagaX]

I've been on Stack Overflow both making and answering questions, and I have found it a great community overall, however, to get a good answer, you should ask a good question, this is more evident on newbies, who often ask either, to give them the code, something that has been answered multiple times before, or you realize that they don't even understand some basic concepts; most of the time I try to help them (even when they should not ask that, do a quick search or it's not the purpose of SO), but when you're on the 100th question of the same style you may start to loose your temper, in the end we're all persons, so please don't be quick to judge the whole community just because someone freaked out.

CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

[Jadoti]

"Since, stackoverflow comes in top of google search results, it has a good set of QA, that doesn't mean whatever they do with new users or beginners is correct." So what would be correct? How do you handle the large inflow of questions from users who won't bother to read FAQs, or lurk long enough to understand the etiquette? How would you handle the users who can't be bothered to do their own research? Or search? Or think for two seconds? How about the users who just post their homework questions? Literally, post their homework questions? Whatever your answer is, I'm certain you'd probably do that for a little while. Maybe even a little longer than a little while, then you'll get tired of it and just start employing the mechanisms available to start cleaning up the environment. You still didn't link to your question. With that we could help you understand why your question was a low quality question and how you could make it better. Yes, SO as a public forum has to deal with issue of every person with an internet connection. Yes, sometimes people are just rude, or your perception of their text is that it's rude... but that's life. Do you go to SO to feel loved or get an answer to a question/problem? Focus on the latter and the former becomes moot.