Timeline for answer to Why the backlash against poor questions? by Oded
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| Jul 28, 2014 at 17:55 | comment | added | Parthian Shot | Also, I don't think anyone mentioned it, but... These sites. They're free to use (well, discounting ads), but they aren't free to run. The more bytes on the sites, the higher the cost of storage media. And, as the sites get worse, fewer people visit, so advertisers pull out / pay less, and lower income combined with higher expenses means a serious hit to revenue. Ignoring all the other, fantastic reasons to kill bad questions with fire, the economics involved would be disastrous. | |
| May 26, 2014 at 0:39 | comment | added | Chris Marshall | Well, I often give feedback on what I try. However, this is how I find questions that need answers. Some folks sit breathlessly, hitting "Refresh," so they can be the first to answer. I stumble into them. Here's an example: stackoverflow.com/questions/349779/… (Need to learn how to properly embed URIs). | |
| May 25, 2014 at 20:33 | comment | added | Oded StaffMod | @MAGSHARE - I can't tell if you will write a new answer (even on an ancient question) even if you got an answer there? Or your answer is not as good as an existing one? | |
| May 25, 2014 at 20:30 | comment | added | Chris Marshall | Of course, failing in finding a good answer, I start to ask my own question. I look at the suggested answers, to see if I missed the answer. If nothing fits, I complete the question. I don't care whether or not someone makes fun of me. That's their problem; not mine. There are folks that are absolute experts in one tiny, narrow field, and get their jollies in berating others that aren't experts. An example is SQL. I am not an SQL expert, but I know my way around a whole bunch of other technologies. Sometimes, I need to ask a stupid SQL question. | |
| May 25, 2014 at 20:28 | comment | added | Chris Marshall | My workflow: 1) Try to fix it myself. 2) Failing that, I Google it. The top responses are usually SO. If the question fits what I want, and there's a good answer, I upvote the question, even if it's a crappy question and a good answer. I also upvote the answer. If it's a question I can answer, I will add an answer, even if it is an ancient question, and my answer will be swallowed by the mists of time. I absolutely don't give one damn about impressing any of you. I just want to be a good citizen, but don't have the time to trawl for new questions. | |
| May 15, 2014 at 11:59 | comment | added | Andriy M | @SebastianLange: Fame or not, a good, thought-out question is just more interesting, more attractive than a bad, lazy one, plain and simple. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 21:21 | comment | added | R. Martinho Fernandes | And maybe I provide high quality answers to high quality questions driven by a desire for fame. So what? In that case the end result is: 1) fame for me; 2) a high quality answer for everyone else. Answering low-quality questions gives us a much different end result. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 21:19 | comment | added | R. Martinho Fernandes | @SebastianLange I do not want to help if helping consists of explaining why "'ascii' codec can't decode byte" three times a day. I do not want to help if helping consists of providing yet another link to another question that explains why "'ascii' codec can't decode byte" three times a day. Doing that makes me feel like I'm doing a machine's job, and as a programmer I abhor that. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 5:55 | comment | added | Sebastian Lange | It (the comments) basicly reads as: I do not want to help but gain fame by havin high quality answers to high quality questions. Sure a lot of duplicates are bad, but i think this now goes far beyond the intention of the SNR. (a single tag loyal user) | |
| May 14, 2014 at 5:53 | history | rollback | BoltClockMod |
Rollback to Revision 1
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| May 13, 2014 at 14:15 | comment | added | Matthieu M. | @R.MartinhoFernandes: Being a fellow C++ follower, I can only agree. I guess we should start watching C++1y/C++14 now... | |
| May 12, 2014 at 19:03 | comment | added | Henrik Erlandsson | Since we're apparently doing parables... This answer would be more relevant if you could share in which domain the signal is... Also, measurement is hopelessly complex, so even if you establish the domain you have only the few tags and a few key word or phrases to work with. Lastly, while I haven't done any measurements to prove it, I suspect that what constitutes the "signal" for most visitors is whether the question makes it to the top ten in Google search results, and no-one's equipped to prove that a (from fuzzy human judgment) poorly written question would rank worse in Google. | |
| May 12, 2014 at 18:31 | comment | added | Cypher | Perhaps more in-depth search tools are in order so that experts have something better to use rather than wade through the myriad of questions manually? There has to be some value in being able to filter out questions by user reputation, votes, and other metrics. I'm actually fairly surprised that the SE search is so simplistic. | |
| May 12, 2014 at 15:00 | comment | added | R. Martinho Fernandes | I jumped from the C# tag out to the C++ tag when I was learning C++. Soon I ignored the C++ tag and started looking only at the C++11 tag when C++11 was coming out. Boy, was that awesome. Most people interested in C++11 were the experts and the SNR was definitely in the 80% range. That was some three years ago. In between I gave the Unicode tag a go. I found it was impossible to ever not find a "python - 'ascii' codec can't decode byte" question in the first page so I left that tag as well. Now I'm this close to leaving the C++11 tag as well as the SNR seems to be about in the 20% range. | |
| May 12, 2014 at 14:25 | history | edited | Dennis Jaheruddin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Minimal edit for clarity
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| May 12, 2014 at 13:06 | comment | added | Marko Topolnik | @JohnSaunders I'm on the Java tag. Recently I have been only checking out the Java-8 tag, where the quality of questions is still quite good (but deteriorating every day). | |
| May 12, 2014 at 13:02 | comment | added | John Saunders | @Marko: in which tags are you searching? | |
| May 12, 2014 at 8:27 | comment | added | Marko Topolnik | Another worn-out user chiming in. These days it may easily take a full hour of periodically refreshing the question queue to find a mildly interesting one. Since two weeks ago I have completely stopped trying to answer because the effort of finding a question is not worth it anymore. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 22:42 | comment | added | luk32 | @schmop I think the problem is, that because you do not perceive a problem, it does not mean it doesn't exist. Thus I arguments like "I see no harm." or "Everywhere I look, good questions still get good answers." have a little value IMO. Trust me, when it will become visible, it will be too late. And it already starts to be. Most reputable people are getting tired and worn out. They are the experts that make most value of this site. Unless SO wants to take a change into a noob-friendly help-desk, instead of expert-friendly knowledge sharing resource, it must meet and maintain their standards. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 19:40 | comment | added | schmop | @Oded I tried to measure what you are describing and put it in the question. The numbers confirm what you are saying. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 15:26 | comment | added | Monolo | @schmop For what it is worth, I do look for what I think are good questions. On my homepage (filtered by my favourite tags) and specifically for a few tags I like to follow. If there are no good questions visible without having to scroll, I usually leave (often by voting to close a few questions in the close review queue, with the extra "motivation" gained from a wasted visit to the home page). | |
| May 11, 2014 at 15:06 | vote | accept | schmop | ||
| May 11, 2014 at 15:06 | comment | added | schmop | You mean looking for good ones to answer I imagine. Yeah I get it. Check. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 14:37 | comment | added | Oded StaffMod | @schmop - and if we don't stop the tide of bad questions, people looking for good ones, will not be finding them, not easily. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 14:22 | comment | added | schmop | @Qantas94Heavy Yes, I see how that can have an actual negative impact. But you will admit it is hard to observe in practice. Everywhere I look, good questions still get good answers. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 14:16 | comment | added | Qantas 94 Heavy | @schmop: generally, people who want to find questions to answer will go through posts with tags that they are interested in to see whether they are answerable. If all of the questions they find are ones that they are not willing to answer (for some, low-quality questions are a deterrent), they then might give up on trying to answer. I don't know any other way to find posts which haven't been answered yet that can be answered -- if you do, please enlighten me! :) | |
| May 11, 2014 at 14:02 | comment | added | schmop | I mention it in my question and fail to see it as more than rhetoric. No one actually browses the list of questions to find good ones, I think. | |
| May 11, 2014 at 13:58 | history | answered | OdedStaffMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |