Don't get me wrong, we need to police and remove / flag off topics and dups. But sometimes the flaggers don't understand what they're flagging and nuances get lost.
Make it harder for people to do what can amount to useful information being lost, which in my opinion is a costlier risk than a duplicate question or whatnot.
My idea on this same problem is to make downvoting harder on questions by brand new users.
1. Can't downvote to less than 0 if the question is asked by a user with less than 20 rep
2. Someone with enough rep can adopt the question, which temporarily makes it only possible to be edited by them and the questioner -- the purpose is to improve the question. The adopter cannot answer the question (perhaps only with a wiki answer -- so they can't adopt to get rep)
3. Downvotes past -1 should cost the downvoter a LOT more rep to stop pile-ons.
There are many times where I think the best course of action for a question is to just help the questioner and close the question as being off-topic. I am fine not getting rep if I do it -- I just hate the way new users are treated -- I am not in SO to help build a database of useful questions -- I am more interested in helping newbies.
People are just too lazy, SO became a replacement for many references, docs and trivial things.
At the current state, it's not possible to judge a developer by the SO points, we have to check the profile, browse through a few given answers and eventually create an opinion based on the quality of the answers.
It's simply because they might have answered a question called "How do I fill an array with 4 elements". Thousand of people are lazy and voted that question up and also the answer.
What we have now, is a guy who got a ton of points by asking a stupid question and a guy who answered a trivial stupid question and got 120 up votes on that.
Why should we change that?
SO is a great huge site, developers can show what they have to offer, you can set up resume and you can search for jobs over SO.
SO just establish itself as an important tool for recruiter and companies looking for top notch developers but the points are misleading, someone who has answered lots of trivial questions isn't necessarily a good developer because of those trivial answers to trivial questions.
On the other hand, we got many people with below the 3k mark, who just answered really hard questions with 3-4 up votes.
What I'm afraid of is that someone with more points gets preferred in a decision between two developers from SO for a job position.
On the other hand, there's always been a tension over how simple a question is appropriate. Spolsky and Atwood fell on different ends of the spectrum...See Spolsky's "How do I move a turtle in LOGO?" [1].
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the...
That was its original purpose. It wasn't meant to be a place for answers to detailed questions. It was designed with the aim of being the first Google result for things like "How do I collapse border tables?". Trivial questions where the answer is buried deep inside technical documentation.
As my anecdote, I was trying to learn a new framework last month and team into what should have been a trivial problem. I spent days scavenging through the docs and finding nothing. Finally, I gave up and went to stackoverflow, where some other poor soul had asked my question before and been given -10 for their troubles.
The question had several comments about hours the site has deteriorated with questions from people too lazy to read the docs. Thankfully, there was one answer that explained the solution (the framework authors had overloaded a non-intuitive operator to handle this functionality) and a link to the homepage of the documentation with an admonition to read that before posting to stackoverflow.
In the month since, I still haven't encountered a single reference to that behaviour in the docs, despite referring to then quite regularly.
On the other hand, more and more lazy questioners are just hiding the fact that it's a homework question. Confusingly, of course, there is the help-vampire/point chaser feedback that encourages this whole mess.
Furthermore, the rules that require MVC (minimal, verifiable, complete) examples don't work in all areas. The [algorithm] tag, for example tends to attract speculative questions where the questioner naturally hasn't written any code because they don't have an algorithm yet!
Finally, it might be nice to be able to combine answers to make one comprehensive one where two different answerers have different parts of the answer.
To your point: Today, many of the questions devs encounter are already covered, and covered pretty well on SO Q&A. This is obviously good for devs looking for solutions. But combined with the fact that most new questions - that haven't been asked before - are answered quickly,it's hard for users trying to get involved and contribute. That'll all change with Docs.
There will be tons of need for contributions, plus the system has more checks and peer support baked in, so it'll be easier to know your contribution will help, even if you're not sure it's complete, etc. We're really excited about how Docs will let more devs like you who want to pitch in be a part of it. I hope you'll give it a try.
The easy questions get answered quickly because it's a game. I don't play that game, I work for a living. I have the knowledge to contribute the long tail value of SO if I was able but I am not. I'm not sure there's a solution but that's the gripe I have.
http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-posts
Checking now, it seems you can answer without even logging in.
Now I am confused as well.
I understand why, it's a spam prevention method, but it also keeps me from contributing.
I see moderators complaining about an endless stream of low quality questions.
By requiring users to lurk or something they get an idea before being allowed to "spam".
A monetary voluntary "tip" system (or cash "bounty" system) would be nice too. Talented people would be more willing to contribute if it supplemented their income. Wrought with unforeseen consequences I'm sure...
Many times there are a ton of duplicate questions just because the information on existing posts is not well organized and people cannot find it.