
Ask HN: Has anyone else had a bad experience at Stack Overflow? - suzzer99
I don&#x27;t want to go into the gnarly details, just say I&#x27;ve found their treatment of me as a fairly new user to be pretty bad. The seemingly infinite list of rules are opaque. You can lose privileges with only a guess as to why. No feedback is given to a new user as to what they did wrong. And finally any inquiry into this is met with open hostility from the &quot;meta&quot; community.<p>I&#x27;m just wondering if anyone else has had a good&#x2F;bad experience with SO.
======
a-dub
I've found it amusing that sometimes I'll be Googling around researching
something, generally with respect to making an architectural decision (should
I use library X or Y, what are the pros and cons) type stuff and on occasion
I've found a really nice detailed question on Stack Overflow asking for
opinions or experiences using X or Y and then there will even be a few
thoughtful and really useful responses that were starting to lead into quite
an excellent discussion of real wisdom coming from real world longer term
experiences people have had and then the moderators helpfully show up and
promptly close the question as "not constructive."

I don't think I've ever posted a question, nor really considered it to be
honest.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Stack Overflow to me is a Read Only resource. Just like Wikipedia.

Trying to contribute is a waste of time as both have been taken over by power
tripping mods who have zero interest in furthering the resource and instead
gain some form of enjoyment from petty drama and treating users like little
kids. The leadership of both seem to have no problem with this, so I search,
scrape, and leave, with no account on either and no desire to contribute
(despite being someone with endless spare time and a desire to contribute to
resources where I can).

~~~
nineteen999
All of this was fixed back in April
([https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-
ve...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-
welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/)).

(tongue firmly planted in cheek)

~~~
suzzer99
There's a big thread in the "meta" forum about this blog post:
[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373158/what-does-
ou...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373158/what-does-our-long-
term-community-need-what-does-our-long-term-community-need-t)

(but you need 50 rep points to leave a comment)

~~~
nineteen999
That almost reads as "we tried to be nicer to reach out to a wider audience,
but in the process we alienated our existing community of elitest
curmudgeons".

------
tylerneylon
I was a very early stackoverflow user. I was excited and loved the idea. I
still think it's a great idea, but I've come to abhor the police state
moderation culture. To directly answer your question, yes, I completely agree
that something has gone horribly wrong. I've forgotten more incidents than I
can remember, but a few points I do remember: many good questions are closed;
I've had questions hidden by people who (by their own admission) did not
understand the tech being asked about but decided incorrectly the question was
a duplicate; and I've seen some harmful cultural values widely supported on
the meta pages.

My general impression is that some moderators seem to think of themselves as
the gatekeepers to a promised land of knowledge, and the unwashed masses are
just trying to ruin their pristine gardens, and must be aggressively pushed
back. The truth is that stackoverflow can only exist because people like both
receiving and giving help with their expertise. The site would be much better
if it put this benevolence at its core rather than the guarded-perfect-garden
model.

------
jazoom
I tried to engage with SO when I first started programming about 8 years ago,
but I think I said something someone didn't like or that wasn't technically
allowed by their rules or something. I think they wanted me to ask a bunch of
my own questions to get up my points. I didn't have any questions to ask. I
gave up on it.

Over the last 8 years I've used answers on SO many times, as I've been
directed there by Google. There have been MANY times I could have provided a
much better answer or clarification than any others, but I don't because as
far as I'm aware, SO still won't let me. I don't really care since it doesn't
affect me, but I do like to help out others when I can. SO's loss really.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
Anyone can post an answer.

------
hazz99
Stack Overflow has always been good to me, if:

\- I detail my previous attempts

\- I talk about what I think is wrong, or admit that I have no idea

\- Check out the documentation before, fix small syntax issues

\- Provide minimal code, or additional code to provide context if its a
specific problem-related issue

\- Link to any other relevant issues, on GitHub or elsewhere

Basically, the more effort I put into my question, the more SO gives back.

~~~
H1Supreme
Same here. I don't ask too many questions these days, but have always got help
if I formed my questions as specific as possible, and provided relevant code.

I (try to) do some moderating each week on new user questions, and the biggest
issues are: Posts don't have code in them, and are entirely too broad. Them
number of times I've left the comment "please post some code" is in the
hundreds.

------
yesenadam
Absolutely, it's toxic. Especially asking questions! This was very disturbing
each of the 4 or 5 times I tried, on several SE sites. Only once got a helpful
answer, but that was the question I cared least about. Having questions closed
immediately is the norm. By people who don't understand the question. Once I
was shunted between several different sites, as it was deemed to fit better
somewhere else. I never bother any more. Similar to wikipedia (although toxic
in a different way) - great to look at from the outside, but better not to get
involved asking questions/editing - life's too short to wrangle with such
people and the system they inhabit.

The best question/answer pages on there were almost universally closed for not
fitting the site.

But they're a wonderful resource for googling quick answers to questions! The
TeX/LaTeX one is particularly awesome - the most active people answering
questions are the very same people who wrote the best books and packages.

------
thinkingemote
If I can be a representative of the majority of users, I'd say I have a
positive experience just consuming it, logged out.

------
tpot13
The organization is aware of and open about this complaint - see their blog
post from earlier this year.

[https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-
ve...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-
welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/)

I've never had complaints myself, but after reading the linked blog post I've
started noticing the bullies (especially in the question comments) when I'm on
the site.

------
milesvp
I’m reluctant to use SO to ask questions based on most of the responses here,
and rarely have the opportunity to contribute, but I did have a surprisingly
good interaction a couple years ago. I’d googles around for some esoteric
solution, and eventually honed in on a 95% solution on SO. After figuring out
the last piece I went to add a comment to the accepted answer with my details
based on my setup, but didn’t have enough karma. So I added my solution and
apologized about not having the karma and it belonged as a comment to the more
complete answer, and forgot about it. Next time I’d checked back, I found
someone had given me the karma to comment. I didn’t even know anyone could
give karma, but it certainly wasn’t from upvotes. So that was maybe a rare
nice event on SO.

------
fancyfish
Like others here I use it as a read-only resource now despite having an
account. It is tremendously useful for when I get stuck and there are enough
questions that generally the answer you need is on there.

I no longer contribute because the community is toxic. Some of it is due to
the condescending attitudes. Look at any beginner question and see the "Why
didn't you just try XYZ?" comments from self-described experts. SO has also
gamified the reporting system, so people abuse the feature to flag questions.
Then there are the debates within the comments about the merits of solution
ABC vs DEF.

I've wanted to ask questions or provide answers but the culture was too off-
putting.

------
rurban
Sure, and Wikipedia and Facebook. Community censorship will never work out.

~~~
rurban
Thinking about it, on the other hand Quora is excellent so far. Much higher
quality, no jerks, no unneeded censorship. Maybe it's too young.

------
suzzer99
FWIW I made a meta post about my experience which I realize now that I've seen
it - sounds exactly like the 'Welcoming" blog linked below - word for word. It
went over about as well as you'd expect.

At least someone is aware of the issue. SO is such a great resource. I'd hate
to see it die. The community just needs to take themselves and the content a
lot less seriously imo.

------
potta_coffee
The userbase at SO is one of the most toxic I've ever encountered. I've
answered questions for people, and other users on the site treat it like an
extreme competition to have the accepted answer in order to accumulate fake
internet points, I guess. Got really nasty messages from some of the users and
will never interact on that site again after having this happen for a few
weeks.

------
russfink
Each board is its own Community. Making a blanket comment like this without
naming the specific board is actually not that useful. I have seen some of the
meta discussions by aggrieved users, and it usually comes down to something
the user did without first looking up the answer themselves, trying to find
the answer themselves, or even clicking on some of the suggested articles that
will appear after they've simply typed a few words in the subject line.

People on this board are volunteers. Many of the boards expect you to try to
solve the problem yourself before asking. When you asked, it is very useful if
you spend time formulating the question correctly, so that others after you
that have the same problem can understand the answers in context.

~~~
EpicEng
I think it's pretty safe to assume he means stackoverflow.com.

------
amai
Not on stackoverflow, but on some other pages of the stackexchange networks my
comments sometimed got deleted without any feedback by whom or why.

------
downrightmike
May be just me, but the quality of the answers usually sends me back to google
to try another site.

------
BugsJustFindMe
If you don't post details of your SO account so that other people can go
evaluate your post/comment history for themselves, then this just comes across
as evidence-free whingeing, which is the worst kind of whingeing. "I did
nothing wrong, honest!" is very easy to say.

I was so close to flagging this post, but I figured I'd be generous and wait
to see if you come back and give any information at all.

~~~
type0
> I was so close to flagging this post, but I figured I'd be generous...

How generous, what is your SO account details?

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
I'm not the one who posted complaining about maltreatment.

