Stack Overflow: How to cope with those -1's. | Hacker News Reader

Stack Overflow: How to cope with those -1's.

bigfatdigitalwedding.wordpress.com

20 pointscodecurve15 comments

"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.

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.

I agree. For what it's worth, my experience has been completely the opposite (disclaimer: I'm a SO addict with rep approaching 20k).

1. I've never got downvoted for asking something that could be found by googling and don't downvote anyone else for it (unless it's the blatant "give me the codez" type of question). In fact, usually such questions are considered a low-hanging fruit for those answering the question (and who know where to look).

2. My spelling/grammar errors get corrected by users with editorial powers (and I try to do the same).

3. I consider this the advantage of the site: incorrect answers get downvoted, correct answers get upvoted.

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.

"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.

Something I've noticed about my own behaviour is that when I'm tired or lazy or in a rush I'm quick to downvote. When I have the time and energy I'm more likely to post a comment asking "Isn't this wrong because...?" or "What about...?"

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.

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...

[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87305/how-to-build-a-webs...

[3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8077747/what-are-facebook...

> 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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

I don't really understand the point of that. The Q&A experience still exists, you just have to ask the search engine first, then a human if the search engine doesn't help.

The important things about a Q&A knowledge base is that the answers to real questions are persisted. This means that one answer can serve many askers.

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