I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the early years. Most of the questions were interesting and not answered before. I almost stopped contributing in recent years because now there are so many trivial questions and questions that have been answered before. I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. And I never understood StackOverflow as having the goal to teach programming but to help solving non-trivial problems. Now there seems to be a ton of question like how do I open a file in Python. More and more people seem to just ask everything on StackOverflow instead of reading a manual, a book, a tutorial or at least look if there is already an answer that can be adapted to their problem.
I can not quantify this, it is only my personal understanding of what questions should be on StackOverflow and what should better be looked up elsewhere, but I can to some extend understand that people get annoyed be some questions.
Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.
Presumably SO wants to maximize its readership. What I've seen is that they allow any programming question, even of trivial nature, as long as it's objective not subjective. I like that and think it's a good way to maximize readership for objective stuff, because I often google for trivial things. For example, Powershell if/else/elseif syntax, if I haven't used Powershell in a while. I just found the syntax on SO within 10 seconds, with an example I can copy/paste/modify. I bet a lot of other developers use SO like that too, and I bet it's largely the reason people put trivial questions on there. My motivation is efficiency. Being efficient can be construed as lazy I guess!
There is value in duplicating documentation even wholesale and unmodified, if different duplicates are easier for some people to find and use, but there's even more value in "duplicating" documentation by presenting it differently, which is what SO is doing, even for many questions that you believe to be trivial. The more the merrier, if you ask me.
Now, of course, it would suck if you felt lazy people with already-answered questions were wasting your time. Then I would understand your point of view. But the fact is that you just don't have to answer their questions. If somebody else does answer it, well then that person probably didn't feel like it was a waste of time.
I too use StackOverflow as a reference manual. Often the #1 answer is the concise example I'm looking for. MS documentation is a last resort for me.
For instance, compare googling for "c# run sql query msdn" vs. "c# run sql query stackoverflow". The latter has the better example and it's closer to the top.
As for "simple" questions, to me it seems all just relative. Basically, as long as it isn't a dup then I don't mind it being there. In some ways stack exchange has evolved to become a code snippet library. I guess I can see why some people might not like it, but it has helped me many, many times.
Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? The user probably didn't understand how to use the answers for apples and oranges on peaches. This probably means that the answers could be improved by making it clear how to apply them.
The problem might be that older questions are locked even when their answers are not perfect?
Not necessarily. It could just mean that the person asking the question hasn't bothered to look at what has already been asked and answered.
Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that.
However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators).
But it's a pretty undeniable source of great info and I don't think I would be able to cut myself off from the site. I try to just not take anything too personally there - especially the actions of just one or two rude people.
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators.
Contrast this with...
Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers.
Regardless, the heavy-handed moderation and negative feedback cycle actually means that Server Fault is only meant for seasoned career sysadmins who shouldn't need a Server Fault.
Don't get me wrong - striving for excellence requires high standards. But in Meta, their best answer to the question, "How do I ask better questions?" is 1,780 words long.
Funny thing, besides the curtness, is that he's most likely not even technically correct, since performance issues on web sites are rarely due to the choice of CMS or in its code.
Also the pompous "design patterns" comment; a lot (30% ?) of web sites in the Internet run on spaghetti code (Wordpress, Drupal) and many are fine, if I had to I'd bet the CMS and its code is not the problem.
I've seen many noob questions on StackOverflow that go either way, and many on SF that also do the same. Every moderator is different -- there are plenty of overzealous ones on StackOverflow and plenty on ServerFault.
Same goes for any StackExchange site, really.
Can you elaborate? It seems most newbie questions on stackoverflow are closed, they get scolded in the comments about asking their question wrong, or someone posts a vaguely related link and claims without explanation that it is a duplicate question. Whether or not the system is effective, I don't see how it can be described as "kind".