Does anybody else have a love/hate relationship with Stack Overflow?
okay, so if you're learning a programming language or trying to solve a problem, you're almost sure to find a posting on Stack Overflow from someone who's had the same problem before. Admittedly that's pretty amazing especially when the documentation on the subject matter in question is... less than user friendly. In fact, I spent many an hour browsing Stack Overflow while I was learning PHP.
One thing I couldn't help but notice is the number of questions which get voted down and closed (some for valid reasons, and a great many which are simply mind boggling).
I feel that the condescention and outright hate coming from the seniors on that site is almost unbelieveable. For every question you come across that gets justifiably closed, you simply lose count of the ones that are closed because:
*five trolls voted to close them (it only takes five member votes),
*some supposedly tenured developers who think they're the only valuable huma
n beings on the planet think the question's below them, so how dare the lesser mortal put finger to key,
*a google search would reveal another site which could answer the question (that one's at least legit, however SO claims to desire to become a sort of one stop shop for programming questions so that kinda defeats the purpose).
The worst part is some of the wording that's built in to the canned close reasons. Worst of which being "Not a real question". Really? Just because my question is too simple, too complicated, too vaig, too specific etc to you makes it "Not real" as in "Fake"?
Sure, sometimes things get posted that truly are not real questions like actual requests for precoded solutions but this condescending message is thrown around the site freely and even targets legit and perfectly reasonable questions- questions you wouldn't be afrade to ask your prof.
What do people think? If you asked a question and
got told that your question is "not real" even when you feel it's valid, would you take this as belittling? To me, this is no different than if you have someone over for dinner and they tell you "This is not real food". Sure it's real food, all be it not pleasurable as per your own tastes but still it's still real human food.
I think this is deliberate public humiliation. Even if the question doesn't fit the site's quality standards which are highly subjective to begin with, there are better ways of wording than "Not a real question". This just prompts arguments like "It does include a question mark" and cannot be reasonably considered constructive chriticism at all.
Then there are questions which are closed for spelling and grammar mistakes. Most development resources are written in English and this is a huge barrier to entry for foreigners who's mother tongue isn't English but yet some guys who t
hink they're the best thing since sliced bred feel that it's appropriate to obstruct one's ability to learn based on this alone?
If you're good enough to be welcomed there, then you should be above asking for help anyway; at least that's the energy the community gives to an outsider.
Any thoughts on this?
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