
StackOverflow modding itself out of existence - pdeva1
http://movingfulcrum.com/stackoverflow-modding-itself-out-of-existence/
======
detaro
Outside of "how do I do X in JQuery again?", most times google directs me to
StackOverflow it is to a question that got closed for some reason or other. I
just can assume there are people for which it works better that way, but for
me StackOverflow is useless in most cases where I'd hope it could help me.
(EDIT: to add, the case mentioned by jrcii of "question is closed, but has a
useful answer" also happens)

~~~
elorant
On the contrary, as a C# developer I find tons of useful information there
especially in advanced issues. And the discussion is also useful because they
present solutions from different angles. Perhaps SO is better suited for those
on the Desktop frontier rather than mobile or web development.

~~~
67726e
Weird. In the past two years or so, I've answered almost every one of my own
answers after an additional day or two of work. Generally, when I think I've
exhausted all leads on solving a problem I'll distill everything down into the
smallest reproducible setup, do a detailed write-up, and list all what I've
done. At best I might get a token up-vote from someone who pities me, but I
never get any real attention. There are easier picking out there, after all.

I used to be pretty active on SO and Programmers.SE as a young buck, and back
when SO was still pretty new and shiny. Nowadays it just feels like a race to
the bottom as someone trying to answer a question. The winning strategy is to
post a shitty, incomplete answer and get the upvotes and while that is
happening, update to a better, clearer answer, oftentimes poaching content
from the guy or gal who took the time to do a detailed, "good" answer. I get
the notion of consolidating the answers into that one perfect answer, but
working on a good answer and having it poached by the highest voted answer
will leave a bad taste in most folks' mouths.

In the case of Programmers.SE, there was a shift in the site topic and, in my
opinion, some rather overzealous moderators along with the handful of folks
who just seem to sit on the site and close-vote any and everything that does
not perfectly align. Always be wary of those that seek power over their fellow
man...

StackOverflow and the surrounding sites are a good force overall, don't get me
wrong, but as someone who tried to be active and use the site, it leaves a lot
to be desired. I'm not interested in answering "How do I do X in jQuery" and
I'm not interested in having someone plagiarize me.

~~~
jlynn
This leaves me wondering how you might a site like SO that incentivizes
participation and quality answers, but disincentivizes poaching and incomplete
first answers.

Could you build an incentive strategy and reputation system around
collaborative answers?

~~~
vitd
One option is to either not show scores for some time after answers are posted
(at least to other viewers - maybe the asker could still see answer scores?),
and/or to randomize the order in which answers are shown for some period of
time. That would at least make it less likely that people read just the first
answer, up-vote it, and move on. Each person would see a different "first"
answer, at least for some time period. Maybe after an hour or 24 hours, then
they become ranked by votes? Just a thought - I haven't actually tried it.

------
ceejayoz
IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for
questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this
one had.

That said, the _question_ \- "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but
how can I use it in a real world scenario" \- is pretty much the definition of
"too broad".

 _That_ said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

~~~
jameshart
The trouble is, the question is completely backwards. "I have this solution,
what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally
asks.

For every answer to this question, SO would be better served with a question
asking "How does [Java internal or widely used library class] accomplish
[thing that seems impossible in Java]" for which the answer is "It uses
sun.misc.Unsafe in [this way]".

Yes, the information on this page is useful, but it's not _stack overflowish_.

Still, seems crazy to close it if more sensible versions of the question don't
exist.

~~~
troymc
> "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something
> a human being generally asks.

Either you're being sarcastic, or you have no familiarity with the history of
science.

The rest of your answer shows another aspect of what's wrong with Stack
Overflow: zealous mods who get an idea of _the perfect question_ into their
heads, and then who go out to purge anything that doesn't conform, regardless
of whether others find it (and its response) useful or interesting.

~~~
jameshart
We're not talking about scientific discovery, we're talking about programmers
typing questions into google. If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe
but I don't know what for - let's see what Google comes up with' you are
clearly up to no good.

This question is useful as a place for blogposts to link to, not as a primary
answer to a question you might Google. So it's 'wrong' for stackoverflow in
that sense. But no, I'm not agreeing that mods should have closed it, and I
didn't say it should have been purged from SO. Luckily, it hasn't been, so we
can stop worrying.

~~~
mistermann
> If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe but I don't know what for -
> let's see what Google comes up with' you are clearly up to no good.

I completely disagree. If you are a new programmer who knows nothing about a
certain topic/keyword/etc, googling "what would I use <x> for" is not only
_not_ being "up to no good", it's just plain common sense and curiosity. How
else might one learn about entirely new things?

------
encoderer
Totally agree. Recently I asked a specific question on ServerFault, mentioning
only that I run a SaaS monitoring service to give context. My question was
closed, and I was accused spam. My question didn't include a link nor even the
name of the business. I was offended but mostly just disappointed I couldn't
find the help I needed.

~~~
wordbank
ServerFault is super aggressive against any additions and "admin panels".

My detailed question was closed because I mentioned Webmin installed.

------
nikic
After seeing a couple of posts like this, I'd like to provide an alternative
perspective:

I no longer actively answer questions on StackOverflow, because it is too hard
to find worthwhile questions between all the noise. If someone specifically
asks me to answer something, I will do it, but trying to find interesting
questions on StackOverflow has become impossible due to the high influx of
very low quality material.

There was a period where I'd try to help moderation by closing an deleting
questions, but at some point you just realize it's a loosing battle and give
up.

~~~
detaro
What is SO "noise" for you? E.g. would the question debated here be "noise",
and why? (To me, it appears to be clear what information the person asking
wants, and it isn't already answered elsewhere)

I don't think many people are arguing against moderation of questions in
general.

~~~
nikic
I wouldn't consider that particular question to be noise, even though it does
not really fit the SO format. By "noise" I'm mainly referring to exceedingly
simple questions, which could have been solved by even minimal research or
debugging. Questions that have already been asked many, many times and only
vary in your precise code.

My point here is that, in my experience, the main problem of StackOverflow is
too little or ineffective moderation, rather than the other way around.

~~~
detaro
Thanks for clarifying.

------
BWStearns
The link to his question seems now thoroughly deleted as opposed to just
hidden from all but direct links.

EDIT:

Also reading that question (thanks for the archive link!) that looks like the
kind of question I would like to see more of actually. Sure it's somewhat
subjective since it'll be experientially dependent but it certainly moves the
ball forward in terms of helping someone understand a technology, language or
language feature.

~~~
AgentConundrum
When a question is deleted on StackOverflow, it's hidden entirely - direct
link or not - except to users with at least 10k in "reputation", and I think
to the question asker.

I suspect the link was provided mostly for the users that can still see it.
There is an "undelete" link[1] for users with that privilege level, but it
takes ten votes to restore the question, with no guarantee that it won't be
blown away again right after its restoration.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/3utyRM9.png](http://i.imgur.com/3utyRM9.png)

------
superbatfish
StackOverflow took on a tough challenge in getting its members to self-curate
the body of questions on the site. They were smart to recognize that "more
isn't always better", and thus gave moderators an incentive to identify and
close off-topic questions.

There's nothing wrong with that idea, they just have a bug in the
implementation. Somehow they've incentivized the closing of _good_ questions
that are frequently _on-topic_.

Here's an example of a plainly on-topic-yet-closed question that annoyed me
recently: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2847655/find-threads-
runn...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2847655/find-threads-running-for-
a-particular-process-in-linux)

~~~
DCoder
It does happen, but you picked a bad example. Read the close reason: "
_Questions about general computing hardware and software are off-topic for
Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used primarily for
programming._ "

StackOverflow is for _programming_ questions. That question, as it was
formulated, is not about programming. It belongs on either Unix&Linux or Super
User instead.

------
nlawalker
As I read this, I was thinking, "man, it would be great if StackOverflow could
serve as sort of a wiki platform so information like this has a place to live
even though it doesn't meet SO's 'question and answer' criteria."

Of course, it does [1] (as an aside, read the comments on the answer there,
most of them are people bitching that they can't earn rep on community wiki
posts). The first link in the answer there points to an old blog post about
"The Future Of Community Wiki" [2], which I highly recommend to anyone
interested in this controversy as food for thought.

I see a _lot_ of parallels between this problem and the problem that Reddit is
having right now. It all stems from the question of how much these sites
should be considered "communities." To what extent is StackOverflow really a
"place"? Do fun, off-topic or poorly-formatted questions really ruin the
reputation and mission of StackOverflow if they are but a subset of pages that
happen to be hosted side-by-side with other pages that include content that
can be found with a search and that many people will find invaluable?

[1] [http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-
commu...](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-
wiki-posts)

[2] [https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/the-future-of-
communi...](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-
wiki/)

~~~
lnanek2
There used to be a programmers.stackexchange.com stack overflow site where the
more general questions and discussions could go, but the moderation on that
has been just as misguided lately, so I think the owners forgot the purpose of
it.

------
et2o
This question is basically the textbook example of "too broad" – is it any
surprise that it was deleted?

Perhaps you can take issue with the fact that StackOverflow doesn't allow
overly broad questions, but personally I find it helpful. When I find
something on StackOverflow (or more commonly Cross Validated), it's almost
always someone solving or pointing to a way to solve a problem very similar to
what I encountered. Allowing extremely broad questions would diminish the
likelihood that these results can be easily accessed.

------
alextgordon
archive.org link since the question appears to have been deleted (?):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150404191857/http://stackoverf...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150404191857/http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/using-
sun-misc-unsafe-in-real-world)

------
sakopov
I'm on my second account on SO. A few years back I was fed up with the "SO
police" and asked Jeff Atwood to close the account for me. I've been back for
almost 2 years now but I'm not an active member by any means.

Having said that, SO has been nothing short of amazing when you look at the
vast amounts of information it provides. However, I never really had a good
experience receiving responses on anything I've ever asked. I'd typically get
a comment or two but answers are rare.

------
dm03514
undeleted because of OP article and it received 10 votes to undelete
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/using-sun-misc-
un...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/using-sun-misc-unsafe-in-
real-world)

Funny that [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GDm_cAxYInmoHMor-
AkStzWv...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GDm_cAxYInmoHMor-
AkStzWvwE9pw6tnz_CebJQxuUE/preview?pli=1&sle=true) is top post too.

------
MCRed
Stack Overflow incentivizes bad behavior by its users. For instance, I've had
questions marked as duplicates with links to entirely other questions... but
the person who had the right answer for that other question, along with others
on the point gravy train for it were the ones who voted to close my question.

Appealing after adding additional info showing how the questions were
different didn't improve anything as the "reviewers" got points by "Reviwing"
the appeal-- and denying it, of course.

That was the last time I used Stack Overflow.

You cannot have a community generated content site with community moderation
where bad behavior is incentivized and rewarded. (Something that was a serious
problem on HN in the past.)

~~~
misnome
Finding questions via google marked as a duplicate, which aren't a duplicate,
but subtly different is really common - and really annoying.

------
Tyr42
I mean, I have some sympathy, but that wasn't a question, it didn't have a
definitive answer, so it clearly was in violation.

Put the information up in a blog post, or anywhere else. It doesn't have to
live on SO to be useful to everyone. SO is really terrified of turning into a
reddit or a forum full of "What's the top ten coolest ...?" type questions.

------
beenpoor
My experience w/ SO has been mixed. Some of the moderators act like quality
police and shut down genuine, but potentially basic questions. Yes, amazingly
some of the answers are so deep! So mixed opinion for me.

------
jakub_g
I find myself from time to time having questions that I know would be
immediately closed at SO by hyperactive mods, though probably many users,
potential googlers etc. would like to find the answer to the same question.

What is a good place to pose such questions? I don't believe Ask HN is one,
since time-on-frontpage is very short, and if thread does not get upvotes
quickly, it goes into oblivion, and also, while too broad for SO, they're
probably too specific for HN :)

Any recommendations?

Maybe there's a business case for a portal "TooBroadForStack.com" or sth like
that ;)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
If you aren't already in the SO club, and aren't willing to commit a lot of
your time carefully getting there, then just treat the place as read-only.

Here are some _other_ places. Each has their own problems. I'll leave it as an
exercise to the reader to determine if they are better.

reddit, /g/, IRC, lobste.rs

------
jeena
That is one of the main reasons to own your own data and not to trust some
company with it. Just post it on your own blog and link to it instead.

~~~
arfliw
If you have a solution, this is the best way to do it. You won't get the
reputation points for it but when somebody is Googling for that problem, they
will be happy you stuck it on your blog. That is the goal, isn't it? To help
people?

~~~
nlawalker
The frustrating thing about this is SO has the potential to be much more
valuable than a blog post. An SO answer will get a lot more eyeballs than a
personal blog, and has built-in and well-understood capabilities for community
collaboration and updates.

Say you find a bug with Product X v1, create a workaround, and post it to your
blog. In V2, the problem has been fixed, or exists in a slightly different
incarnation with a slightly different workaround that someone figures out only
after reading your content. Maybe they'll leave a comment on your blog about
it, but you don't really have any incentive to update it. If your post was an
SO question, they could post another answer or make an edit, and the page
becomes the canonical source for information about the bug.

~~~
bravo_alpha
I agree with you in theory, but it's also important to understand the SO
perspective on this issue. It seems like they believe allowing the community
to "drift" by not modding things defined originally as off-topic will be
harmful to the community in the long haul.

How many times has HN discussed the digg/reddit/HN decline in quality as the
population grows?

In their minds (and I have to give them the benefit of the doubt given their
awesome accomplishment!), keeping strictly on topic is one way to prevent the
point of the site from drifting.

It may be that the SO people "want" is a better one. But that's the decision
that Atwood & co. have made. To wish for a SO that allowed off topic responses
is to ask for a different product.

------
jtwebman
Seems like it would be much better to move the content to a blog post then.
The thing with sites like StackOverflow, Facebook, and Youtube is they can
change and you have little to no control over it. If you write a blog post on
it and then maybe just briefly answer the question on StackOverflow with a
link to your blog then you get to control the content.

~~~
DCoder
Link-only answers are discouraged on StackOverflow - the mods will ask you to
copy the relevant information into the answer so that it can be useful even
without following the external link. The justification about "the sites
change" goes both ways.

~~~
jtwebman
That is why I said write a brief answer to the question and then put the full
detail in the blog post. After 6 months you will be up at the top for searches
of that keyword and StackOverflow can do what they want.

------
cbaclig
> This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope
> defined in the help center.

After reading through the help center info linked, it seems like this question
would fit all the requirements in its current form. It's hard to look at past
versions since the page doesn't exist on SO anymore, but how was the question
originally stated?

~~~
pdeva1
the only difference between the current version and the original was that the
original had the title "Interesting uses of sun.misc.Unsafe"

~~~
cbaclig
I'd agree that the original question is not very SO-like IMO, but phrasing
aside, the content is still valuable. Still don't think deleting was the
correct option.

------
minitech
Mods were never involved with this question; it was closed by regular users
([https://stackoverflow.com/posts/5574241/revisions](https://stackoverflow.com/posts/5574241/revisions)).
It was also never locked – locking is significantly different from closure.

------
zackmorris
I wish that StackOverflow rewarded unanswered questions. Most of my questions
are open-ended without satisfactory answers because they hint at oversights or
weaknesses in methodologies. I've had people comment that they refuse to
answer my new questions because my answer selection rate is so low.

~~~
the8472
Maybe you should answer your own question and accept it if you arrive at a
conclusion at a later point in time.

------
voidz
I wonder if there's an archive available. You know, for the many deleted but
useful questions and answers.

~~~
JeremyBanks
[http://www.stackprinter.com/deleted](http://www.stackprinter.com/deleted) has
an archive of many high-scoring deleted questions from Stack Exchange. (You
need to click the printer icon on the left to see their copy.)

[http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/224922](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/224922)
has previous Stack Exchange data dumps, which include many of the deleted
questions. With sufficient effort somebody could use to construct a partial
archive. (Provided that they follow the requirements of the Creative Commons
license: [http://s.tk/attribution.](http://s.tk/attribution.))

~~~
voidz
Nice. Thanks so much for posting this!

I wonder if the people from archive.org are interested in long term archival
of these data dumps.

At the very least, overall it's.. inconvenient for our tech community to
regard information as volatile so often. Especially Q&A. Take threads on
forums for example, that get closed simply because they are old. What's the
word again? Necroposting?

Sometimes I find an old solution to something I'm currently struggling with.
And that goes to show that age says nothing about quality. So it's a real
downer to me when I see people complain to someone who responded to a three
year old topic when at the same time it's clearly still relevant to someone.

When someone has a problem, searches for a solution, finds that same question
asked 4 years ago on a forum and unanswered, later finds a solution, and
decides to share that solution by reviving the 4 year old forum post, they get
nothing but thumbs up from me.

Information simply does not expire. Wish people (moderators in particular)
would stop acting like it does. In most cases, if someone replies on topic, it
is clearly still relevant.

Sorry for the digression, it's just a pet peeve.

------
ExpiredLink
It's very difficult to maintain a site like SO after it has become successful.
HN has the same problem. Basically you need to keep out troublemakers and
boring repeaters and but at the same time you want to preserve broad and
lively discussions.

------
diminish
Isn't this SO modding a great startup opportunity? Or did someone already do
that?

------
brudgers
_Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been
reopened!_

Anecdote is not data. StackOverflow is pretty well designed in regard to the
sort of problem the author of the linked article encountered.

------
weinzierl
I have a question on SO with nearly 80000 views and it has been closed and
reopened at least six times. Occasionally I check if it is still there.

I'm still convinced that the answers are interesting and useful. At the moment
it's locked because of "historical significance" which makes me little proud
even.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/961942/what-is-the-
worst-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/961942/what-is-the-worst-
programming-language-you-ever-worked-with)

------
alfasin
By definition, this question _is_ off-topic. That said, there are exceptional
cases where SO community appreciates the valuable information provided by the
answers and marks a question as protected. For example:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-
single-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-
influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)

This is one of these rare cases. I'm glad that this question was re-opened and
got protected - I think that was the right thing to do.

All that said, I'm sick and tired of all the winning I hear about SO lately,
so many complaints, yet, everyone keeps using it.

I do not encourage a vicious behavior as sometimes seen in SO but I also don't
like to watch people post again and again the same questions that have been
answered multiple times and could be found in a simple google search (and
which probably show on the right bar when they compose the question).

I'm also tired of people complaining about closing questions - dudes, if you
don't want your question to get closed pretty please put some effort in it! do
your research, post what you're tried, compose a minimal working example that
reproduces the error, post a FULL stacktrace and show which line triggered it.
But no, people don't like to "work hard" so they put all the burden on the
people that are here to help them. This is NOT cool. So yes, fuck yes - I will
keep voting to close poor questions, and even (potentially) good questions
that the author didn't bother to give a fuck about making it clear, readable &
reproducable (but please do not _dump_ all your code and expect me to read it
if only one small method is relevant) and no - this is almost always NOT a
language/culture issue - regardless of what some people say.

Bottom line: they say "in rome act like romans" \- well when you join a
community you should follow the community rules. Take a few minutes to go
through the help center, see if what you're asking is on-topic. Learn how to
post a new (good) question. Hell, even ask someone you know to read what
you've written and give you the feedback if it's clear and if it makes sense.
You want help? so put the time and effort so that _we_ won't waste _our_ time
& effort when we try to help you!

Have a nice weekend!

P.S. Those who know me, know that I like to help people regardless of what I
just wrote (example): [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31358932/is-there-a-
payme...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31358932/is-there-a-payment-
processing-company-that-i-could-use-for-a-0-25-average-
trans#comment50699206_31358932)

but I really _am_ tired of hearing all the criticism. It bothers me especially
when I recognize that it comes from intelligent people that I'm not sure if
they're just "playing dumb" or being a "smartass".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Help us help you!

~~~
beachwood
Your comment is so ironic that this long time lurker needed to create an
account and reply.

I'm not sure if your typos are "dumb" or ignoring "autocorrect". See how we
can both be pompous dicks?

The worst part about SO is pretending like you are trying to help people
learn, when, as other commenters have called out, the answers are spread
across multiple replies. If a person asks how to do X, and your answer fails
to do that, you are part of the problem.

~~~
dang
> See how we can both be pompous dicks?

Please don't do this in HN comments. It's true that upping the ante is common
on internet forums, but as you probably know from lurking here, we try not to
be that way.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
mmphosis
I think that there is an opportunity for a different exchange like when SO
started, without so many mods. I used to post on SO because it was new,
exciting and there were lots of answers and comments, and most of all:
activity.

------
anonymousab
Why not have a 'request move' flag on SO posts? Keeping a discussion alive and
having it moved to the right place seems more useful and friendly than just
shutting it down.

~~~
ceejayoz
People with enough reputation can do exactly that.

~~~
JeremyBanks
For reference: [http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-
migrat...](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-
and-how-does-it-work)

------
novaleaf
There's nothing wrong with StackOverflow's modding system, just post a blog
complaining and get it to +100 on HN and it will be undeleted.

------
curiousjorge
The community of moderators are extremely toxic, heading over to SO's
chatrooms gives you a glimpse at the type of people responsible for moderating
the content. Hazing new comers when they just have a need to fulfill their
curiosity is shut down.

All in all, I've moved onto just reading the documentation and figuring things
out occassionaly asking a very narrow question on SO.

If anyone is thinking of disrupting SO's space now is a perfect time. Ironic
that people are now searching for stackoverflow alternatives.

~~~
rancur
> disrupting

the largest barrier to this is user training-- informing and getting people to
move over. I originally conceived of this barrier 5 minutes ago when reading
about HappyFinder or some other fuzzy finding tool that made it to FP-- why do
we have to have a complex name that redefines a word to fit the solution
space? The most efficient would be 'AHelmAlternative'. Similarly the
competition to 'StackOverflow' would be 'StackOverflowAlternative1'

sounds horrible, but uses encoding to efficiently replace extensive
time/marketing to gain mindshare. Oh, Alternative1 didn't work, we don't like
it so we're going to start our own, it'll be called Alternative2. 'Hey, we
made it, we're going to rename in 6 months. You can start using the new domain
name now.'

