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MechMK1

8:37 AM

@NicHartley I think if fleshed out, this would be a fantastic question for the main site

What a very bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

Sara Chipps on July 18, 2019

“Caustic community for new users. There is no excuse for not being kind!” – 6 years coding

“It feels too scary and unaccessible for new developers” – 3 years coding

“People could be less brutal” – 6 years coding

“The attitude is not beginner friendly. Askers are expected to have done a lot of research before asking a question (re: both question format and content), even if they are completely new to the community or topic. Not everyone can understand or even know to look for documentation when they’re completely new to programming.” – 12 years coding experience …

I disagree with the statements there, as in that StackExchange is "a bad experience for newcomers". My first questions were really bad, and most of them got hit with a "is a duplicate of...".

And you want to know what it taught me? How to search better and how to ask better questions.

I broadly disagree with this idea that newcomers to programming are fragile eggs that start to break when you click downvote, ask for a [mvce] or point out that OP didn't even bother to google the title of the question.

I don't mean we should all be assholes to newcomers, but I believe that most can handle a downvote or a comment asking for clarification. And if someone is so fragile that they can't deal with someone saying "I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you are trying to ask. Could you please try to formulate a clear question?", then I think those people will have to learn how to deal with that.

MechMK1

8:57 AM

And finally: People come here, because they want something from the regular audience at Stack Exchange. And I think it's not too much to ask from them to put the same effort into the question, as they expect others to put into their answers.

2 hours later…

Luc

11:15 AM

@MechMK1 Without having read more than the excerpt of the link you posted, and while totally understanding (and somewhat agreeing with) what you said, I do see a lot of harsh handling of bad/mediocre questions. When I was new, I didn't know that closed questions could be reopened after editing. Or that you should edit your question so that the question is clear, instead of answering questions in the comments.

An example might be if someone asks about password hashing in some product. Instead of slapping on a "closed" label with a comment "X is off topic here", one could comment something like "Welcome to the site! Product support is off topic here (you should consult the help files or contact your vendor), but if your question is more about password hashing in config files in general, you could edit your question and ask for it to be reopened."

That signals (1) what the issue is, (2) that it is not a final decision, and (3) how to correctly resolve the situation (if they wish to)

MechMK1

12:10 PM

@Luc Isn't this what's being done here anyways?

Also quick question for everyone: What's the actual risk of supporting "weak" ciphers, such as those based on 3DES?

@Luc And to quickly get back to your point: When you were knew, you didn't know questions could be re-opened. That's fair enough. But you are not new anymore. You have been quite active here, despite seemingly nobody caring if you were being handled harshly or not.

The most common response I can hear to this argument is "Well, if we are so much more friendly to everyone, then many more people will be active!". I think this is a myth. The "fragile, but super knowledgeable developer/pentester/cook/etc." is in my opinion a myth.

On the flipside, if people spend months answering just absolutely abhorrent questions, by people who could give less of a **** if their question is well-formatted, grammatically correct or even a question, then it's understandable that those answering questions will sooner or later demand *some* form of quality baseline from new contributors, however low that baseline may be.

And if the response to such requests is always "Nuh-uh! Can't be mean to the newbies! Asking for good questions is so rude, you're scaring them", then I think sooner or later they'll just become less and less incentiv…

I spent quite some time on the "Triage" queue in StackOverflow, and the questions I have seen there were abhorrent! Some questions felt as if a pakistani turtle on psychedelic mushrooms hit its head against a Dvorak-style "ergonomic" keyboard again and again until something akin to a "question" came out.

And then the Stack team is telling people that downvoting or closing this question as "Unclear what the user is asking" is somehow "mean" or "discouraging" for the average newcomer. To me, it's just a big joke.

And literally any closed question comes with a link to the Help Center, explaining what makes a question good, etc.

In Summary, I feel as if Stack values newcomers with no interest in contributing quality content more than long-time users, who do their best to provide high-quality answers.

Luc

12:45 PM

@MechMK1 right, survivorship bias. You're saying about yourself "but I stayed" and are saying about me "but you are still active here". Talk to the people that didn't stick around (i.e. a random sample of anyone who ever visited the site, because they either have been treated a certain way or refrained from participating because they saw how things go here) and then draw a conclusion about whether we should change the perception.

> downvoting or closing this question as "Unclear what the user is asking" is somehow "mean" or "discouraging" for the average newcomer. To me, it's just a big joke

You're not presenting a logical argument here. I don't really see a point talking to you about it because you seem to feel very strongly about how awful people in the internet are and would like to rant about it, rather than reasoning about a certain problem that you are facing on the site.

1 hour later…

MechMK1

1:47 PM

@Luc I did state the problem quite clearly, at least in my opinion. I feel as if more value is placed on people unwilling to contribute, than on those who are willing to contribute.

@Luc I agree that this argument is flawed in the sense of survivorship bias, but I can only speak from personal experience here anyways. I know a lot of developers. Most of my friends are developers. And most of their friends and colleagues are developers too. All of them use StackOverflow, and none of them ever complained how supposedly "toxic" the place was.

But what I did hear, at least from those who also care to answer and not just ask questions, is how mindboggingly bad some questions can be.

Rory Alsop

2:06 PM

@MechMK1 to be fair, I think we are soooo much more welcoming here than SO, and that really is a scale thing. Many millions of visitors, huge number of questions, so even if the %age of dross is small, that's still a high number to triage, so it's not surprising reviewers get less tolerant

and SO maybe attracts more low effort questions anyway

I do miss the old days, when the internet first appeared, when you would lurk first to learn the culture of a site, before posting anything

@NicHartley yeah

I have been asked so many times why I don't stand for mod there, and I reckon the 7 sites I mod is easier than just modding SO

I think I prefer the growing and developing, rather than looking after an existing juggernaut

new sites are interesting

@NicHartley I kept meaning to visit - I did latin at school - informally, at lunchtimes, as I had an amazing teacher who volunteered to teach me. But I have never found time, and I'm not really going to be useful for anyone there so...

AndrolGenhald

This. I thought the post was a very good description of the problem, it's not that everyone is mean to newbies, it's that being a newbie and having lots of people nicely point out what you're doing wrong and what you could do better can _feel_ bad even when no one is attacking you in any way.
Not the best reaction to have to people trying to help you, but humans are humans, and taking criticism can be hard, moreso when there's a lot of people giving a lot of it at once.

(btw, how are italics in chat supposed to work? I've never figured out chat's formatting...)