

StackOverflow is full of children - sethvargo
https://sethvargo.com/stackoverflow-is-full-of-children/

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pdkl95
StackOverflow - like many popular forums - is a place where a lot of
_inexperienced_ people end up spending their time. This is almost a tautology:
"pop-forums full people that act inexperienced" end up that way because...
inexperienced people end to flock towards popular sites full of like-minded
people.

Given that most people will at least try to helpful, you end up with a lot of
people re-distributing the bits of knowledge they've learned. This often
starts as cargo-cult behavior, and - if left to grow in isolation - it can
turn into groupthink[1].

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that some form of moderation or judicial
process is needed; if the greater resource is to be saved, the
trolls/n00bs/"children" need to restrained so they can't make a mess that
pollutes the community. I think this approach fails to address the actual
problem: that some people need a lot more _education_ before they can progress
past the "inexperienced n00b"/"child" stage.

The mechanics in place at StackOverflow - even with its flaws - can be a very
useful tool. If enough people who _are_ experienced (in technical or social
areas) spent some time there regularly, the extra role models would help this
greater social problem a lot. Answer the same n00b questions over and over is
annoying, but that's the kind of effort it takes to maintain a community
across generations.

[1] Regardless of what you think of the language itself (or this well-known
rant against it), the article "PHP: a fractal of bad design"[2] is a good
case-study of what happens if that groupthink is left in isolation far too
long.

[2] [http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-
design/](http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/)

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paulhauggis
I see this on Reddit, StackOverflow, Youtube, and pretty much every other
community site. I'm not sure if it's because there are actual kids posting or
socially inept and immature adults.

Either way, the mob mentality is startling and shows me why we need a proper
judicial system.

~~~
sethvargo
Definitely. I see this a lot, but this one affected me personally, which is
why I felt the need to talk about it. I'm not sure where the level of
immaturity happens. Maybe it's because we aren't interacting with humans
directly?

~~~
jborn
I suspect a similar hypothesis.

The analogy I like to use is traffic. Imagine any other setting where if you
make a minor mistake or go too slowly for someone else, people start yelling
and cussing at you.

When in traffic, you can just drive away and odds are you will never interact
with the same person again. The whole time your interaction was machine-to-
machine rather than human-to-human.

Large, public web sites are quite similar. We don't interact on a human scale,
but with a machine. Most of the people we interact with we'll never interact
with again.

When you remove face-to-face communication and add a sense of anonymity, you
remove a lot of the subtle social forces that normally keep people in check.

