

Stack Overflow: How to cope with those -1's. - codecurve
http://bigfatdigitalwedding.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/stackoverflow-how-to-cope-with-those-1s/

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brohee
"3. Only answer a question on Stack Overflow if and only if you are sure that
you know the solution."

Well duh. It seems the blog author just discovered that he's not entitled to
waste volunteers time, with either unresearched questions or ill fitting
answers. I would call that being polite.

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mooism2
The author doesn't link to the question and answer they posted, so it's hard
to know whether they posted a reasonable question and answer, and were
unfairly disparaged by the denizens of the php tag, or whether they posted a
clueless question and a misleading answer and can't cope with the downvotes
without blogging about it.

~~~
tkellogg
Deep down inside he's probably scared that Stackoverflow users also roam
Hacker News & the Internet at large and doesn't want his blog post to become a
honeypot for scorn. Honestly, I understand completely where he's coming from.
I've posted answers to SO and received lots of "well that's obviously wrong"
kind of comments - it took me _months_ to realize what was so wrong about
those answers (why couldn't they just tell me). The SO crowd can be extremely
purist & hostile. But I suppose that's what drives quality in their answers.

~~~
brohee
"I've posted answers to SO and received lots of "well that's obviously wrong"
kind of comments - it took me months to realize what was so wrong about those
answers (why couldn't they just tell me)."

So in retrospect doesn't it show you weren't qualified to answer, and that the
downvoting, by lowering the visibility of your answer, is doing its job? I.e.
that the system is working as intended?

As for not being told why you were wrong, surely you could have asked in
comments and gotten an answer.

------
jnorthrop
A good post, and I think what this blogger is feeling is what anyone who has
publicly commented on the internet has experienced. It can be discouraging,
but the psychology of online communities is such that people view votes of
approval as precious but those with an ulterior motive (trolling, promoting
their own post, etc.) freely vote negatively. This leads to a tremendous
imbalance and perception of a lack of worth.

I see this on my site often. Something will catch on a site like this and it
will drive thousands (sometimes many thousands) of visitors to the site.
However, on the originating site itself, I'll receive positive votes from only
a very tiny fraction of visitors. Certainly more than that tiny percentage
liked the post, but yet they don't vote.

That's just the nature of the beast and it has always been this way. I doubt
it'll ever change.

~~~
david_a_r_kemp
I think the issues with Stack Overflow are:

1\. People don't search properly before posting

2\. There are a lot of "low quality" questions that could be answered by
reading documentation (also see 1)

3\. Most of the questions that apply to 1 & 2 have already been answered on
StackOverflow.

4\. It's overwhelmingly (US) English, so people who are not fluent pendants
are down-voted.

5\. The people who need the most help are those who are least suited to post,
as they rarely give enough detail ([example][1] - where to start?), ask very
generic questions ([how to build a website][2]), or ask questions that have
been answered before

When StackOverflow started, I spent a great deal of time on it as it felt like
a good way to help and share knowledge (or just show off). Nowadays, I'll vote
when I find an answer (usually via Duck Duck Go), but [the last question I
asked][3] is still unanswered (allowing Facebook to use this as a support
forum is a joke).

I feel that it's become a victim of its own success, and is getting to the
point where it's as bad as the sites it tried to replace.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9395670/dataset-
getting-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9395670/dataset-getting-
manupulated-in-betwwen-two-webservice)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87305/how-to-build-a-
webs...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87305/how-to-build-a-website-with-
a-backend)

[3] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8077747/what-are-
facebook...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8077747/what-are-facebook-ad-
group-keyword-stats)

~~~
bradleyland
> 2\. There are a lot of "low quality" questions that could be answered by
> reading documentation (also see 1)

This is a problem that plagues virtually all discussion media. All new
discussion systems that are focused on Q&A trend toward what can only be
called a knowledge base.

What the citizens of these forums overlook is that the very design[^1] of
these sites attracts individuals who are either unwilling or incapable of
finding the answers on their own. Thus begins the vicious cycle toward user
hostility that results in a closed community.

1 - Design as in structure and purpose, not design as in color, layout, etc

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tomblomfield
I posted on the OP's blog asking for a link to the offending SO posts and he
deleted my comment!

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keymone
so many times i had to -1 the answer and even more than that i had to -1 the
question. there was a question about PHP basics and a claim that author could
not find any tutorials for PHP beginners - how ridiculous is that? -1s are not
the problem of SO - it's the influx of low quality questions and answers that
is. SO is not the tutorial collection, more over it's not the place where
people should expect someone to create a tutorial upon request. you do have to
google your question before asking on SO.

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5h
I agree with the other comments here,

but

The -1's that trickle in from time to time, on questions/answers from a year
ago are just, well, annoying.

I wont delete them, as I guess they serve as a testament of what not to do &
generally have helpful comments thatcan be useful for future searchers .. but
if an answer is at -1 on a question from march last year, with an accepted
answer ... what are people getting from distributing further downvotes?

------
nvk
The problem is that any "Q & A" site is great when is new because it's _empty_
so all Questions get answered, as soon as you are not asking anymore, just
looking for previews answers its not a Q&A experience anymore.

One solution for this sites would be to purge old answers or encourage
repeated questions, I can support that because there are always new users
eager to answers those repeated questions.

~~~
Bootvis
But what's the point of answering already answered questions except to get new
users more reputation?

Luckily for those new users there will always be new programming languages,
libraries and problems.

