Prepare for a lesson in not making yourself look silly on the internet. Yes, I’m talking about discussion forums. As an average person with no real online presence as yet, I am used to people just simply ignoring or scrolling past anything I put online. Up till now i have remained largely anonymous. This culture does not exist on Stack Overflow. I posted what i thought was a reasonable question that i had been pondering over for a while on the forum. I left the page open in my browser but my heart told me that it would either be answered in a couple of days, or just be ignored. I was wrong. Within four minutes two people had responded to it.
In order to appreciate how amazing this is, I shall share this thought: there are millions of people subscribed to youtube, and an averagely good post on youtube would take around a couple of days to be noticed and if it was really good, it would take about a week and a half (maybe longer if “rayWilliamJohnson” is on holiday) for it to go viral. There are probably near to that amout of people on Stack Overflow, and it took me less than five minutes to get two comments and more arrived shortly after.
These replies however, came with a sting. One simply stated that I should just RTFM (read the f*ing manual), and the other was an two paragraph report on why my question was ambiguous (bear in mind someone had spent a good five to ten minutes crafting something that was meant to scold … rather like a food critique; they should really take a look at this site …). To be fair to these people, my question was rather unworthy of the forum and after doing a little more research I realised that they did have a point.
“Well” I thought “I won’t let a couple of bad comments get me down”, so I started scrolling through the questions looking for something that looked like I could answer it. I eventually found something in the PHP tags filter of the site that looked like it was “remedial” enough for me to answer, and i spent a while putting together a nice paragraph of what i thought was an acceptable and practical solution to the problem. Again, in two minutes time I was hit with a barrage of -1′s and comments as to why my answer was irrelevant when there was “obviously” a better way to do things. Again, they had a point. After doing some googling i found that there was intact “obvious” better solutions to the problem.
The conclusion I have come to about this famous discussion forum ultimately boils down to these four rules :
1. Posting a question on Stack Overflow should be your absolute last resort, when google search has been scoured clean, and nothing suits your needs, when there are no other people with the same problem on different forums and when there is no other place to go, only then do you disturb “The Stack”.
2. Upon realising that the requirements stated in rule 1 are all met, you then go about carefully crafting your answer. Firstly there should be no (really; no) spelling mistakes, it does nothing but attract trolls (people who’s lives are a misery, so they take it upon themselves to make other peoples lives a misery), and angers people. Secondly use good grammar and leave no room for interpretation about what you are asking, or you will get an irrelevant answer that won’t help at all.
3. Only answer a question on Stack Overflow if and only if you are sure that you know the solution.
4. If you have no answer after a day or two, try to rephrase your answer. Take time to structure your question so you are sure that it relates to your problem.
I hope those three rules lead to you having a better experience on the forum, and hopefully saves you from looking silly.
Beware of the -1′s.
I always found stackoverflow a warm and welcoming place, full of knowledge which is to be respected.
It’s hard to judge whether your question deserved downvoting when you haven’t posted the link. But of course you shouldn’t post a question before checking Google, and doing your research. Why would you expect someone else to do exactly that, to find your answer for you!
Give it another go and you’ll find it a really useful community, when you find your feet.
You are right, and since I have joined and learned to structure questions in a better way, I have found it a helpful community.
Thanks for the comment!
I would amend #3 to say “and if it’s been several days and nobody else has answered”.
I’m sick of answering questions on SO with the right answer, and being downvoted for a correct answer, while some other idiot answer gets upvoted. (I don’t care about the votes for me — heck, if we both answer correctly at the same time and the other guy gets all the votes, great. The question still got answered correctly. It’s just depressing to see wrong answers upvoted so much.)
agree. I’ve written software for close to 17 years and been an IT Network person for the same. I’ve provided “feedback” and answers that were technically superior and I still didn’t gain the correct upvote or award. Check this thread out as an example:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/905/what-is-the-benefit-of-compiling-your-own-linux-kernel
The top/accepted answer is just plain wrong. And look at the 2nd answer where the respondent goes on about what “most users” need or don’t need; clearly going out about such things is pointless and doesn’t answer the question. I hate when people will not simply answer the f***ing question as it is without going on about how they think you may not be up to it or how difficult it is. The whole reason the question is being asked is to learn how to do something in the first place.
I should comment that this is not a rant on SO, since joining I have felt them to be a very helpful community.
Thank you to everyone that has commented!
One of the big issues with a site like Stack Overflow is the variety of opinion you’ll find. It’s both good and bad. For instance if you talk about “what I know about cryptography” on a question, you’re more than likely to find a cryptographer come along and correct you. But there still are a lot of trolls around on it.
That said, one of the most common things I do is to vote up answers that are technically correct. As much as I am a grammar/spelling nazi I try to reign my instincts in. I never vote someone down based on anything but the technical nature of their answer.
If you’re giving an answer and aren’t sure that it’s the best, go ahead and say so. Your saying so won’t bother anyone. However, phrasing your answer as one of the best when you aren’t sure is a sure-fire way to get you voted down.
But don’t give up. If you don’t answer, who will?
I agree. You really have to be overcautious while using (asking or answering). I was an active member initially, some 1 yr back, and enjoyed answering the questions. But then slowly I feel that the people out there are first trying to find ways to downvote, and if they cant then they respond. The admins should do something about the downvote trollers. I feel that the person giving some answer should not be atleast demotivated by downvotes. Simply delete the answer if it is wrong.
Just a comment about “spelling mistakes do nothing but attract trolls (people who’s lives are a misery, so they take it upon themselves to make other peoples lives a misery), and angers people.”
Most of us do a few mistakes here and there, I surely do, so we have to be tolerant to one another. However, we should care. The attention and reading speed decreases when stumbling over spelling or grammatical errors, it taints the pleasure. Some people are unaffected, others are. All in all, mere politeness asks that people try to write correctly.
I do agree with you, eventually you end up correcting spelling rather than answering the question that was asked.
You didn’t address my main SO complaint. I answer a question with a good, helpful answer that is probably the solution the poster is looking for, then 5 hours later someone rewords the answer, adds some formatting (omg bold text), then downvotes my answer so theirs is on top and looks more legit. Which one is the poster going to accept? Bah.
Your experience on Stack Overflow will depend entirely on what you tag your post with. [PHP] posts will lead to the experience you describe. Read some posts tagged [Haskell] to see a whole different side of Stack Overflow.
+1
I really wanted to click on that up-arrow.