Timeline for answer to Should we stop closing questions? by Dalija Prasnikar
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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28 events
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| Jan 18 at 6:08 | comment | added | herrstrietzel | @Braiam: got me! I'm a covert Reddit spreading criticism like »curation is great – but there has to be something left to curate«. In hindsight, the answering mumbo jumbo was quite inefficient. Once, another agent with moderator privileges advised me to explain, why a frequently visited »unanswerable« question is not to expect a clean solution – to prevent subsequent posts. I also answered ‘unanswerable’ questions that finally got a valid solution due to recent advances. Glad you can profit from the recent »success« of a curators-only concept – the comments were never meant to be personal. | |
| Jan 18 at 1:04 | comment | added | Braiam | @herrstrietzel all of them reddit. We've had those users since a while. We need to start ignoring them harder. They do not have the site health in mind, they just have their own idea of how a successful site works. This site is successful despite all of that. It was successful before that. The current "situation" is not a bad thing for the site. | |
| Jan 16 at 2:01 | comment | added | herrstrietzel | @Braiam: not Reddit but the opinion of a less vocal fraction of SO users (or less prominent in this ranting gentlemen's club) concerned about the noticeable trend against constructive criticism in SO communication. None of us was born with any expertise. The aim is not to set the 'bar' lower, but to encourage people to become helpful contributors themselves instead of blocking them. As an old git myself it seems unfair to expect new users to meet current standards from the start where »veteran curators« actually obtained many of their priviliges in an era of non existent »bars« | |
| Jan 15 at 18:45 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @Braiam I think you are directing your criticism to the wrong person. If you see stats for my candidacy stackoverflow.com/election/15?tab=election#post-78088023 you will see that I am not the person who leaves crap on site. In the meantime I have cast additional 20.000 delete votes and 3.000 close votes. So when I say that we do have a problem with wrong closures and deletions, and that interpretation of our quality standards have completely gone out of control, then please believe me. | |
| Jan 15 at 16:38 | comment | added | Braiam | @DalijaPrasnikar which is still not a problem in anyone book that cares about the site. And look I've argued for reopening wrongly closed questions, I also argued for tossing the worst garbage out the site. I don't have any bandwidth to entertain arguments from the group that has actively made throwing garbage harder for users. Start deleting locked questions, try to show commitment to the quality of the site, and maybe you will get to the level of making a moral argument about the poor askers. | |
| Jan 15 at 12:14 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @Braiam Yes, we had unsubstantiated claims about closures, but it is a matter of fact that more recently as the number of questions is going down that moderators see the concerning number of bad closures from long standing curators. Now, it is possible that we also had those before, but only now they are more obvious. Nonetheless, we definitely have a problem and brushing it off as irrelevant does not help anyone. | |
| Jan 15 at 10:53 | comment | added | Braiam | @herrstrietzel that's just reddit speaking. The critics of the site has been around complaining about our "heavy" "handed" "moderation" since the site got some popularity. The harm of not having people capable of answering question because they have to wade through rivers of crap, is far far more damaging. | |
| Jan 15 at 10:52 | comment | added | Braiam | @DalijaPrasnikar yes, the site will survive without new content, because at some point a single user will figure out that "no, what's important is not who can ask a question but who knows the answer". And I hope we all know it. Content =/= questions. Content is the answers. Answers is the important thing here. And if we have to sacrifice a couple of questions to get it, it is worth it. | |
| Jan 15 at 5:12 | comment | added | herrstrietzel | @Braiam: more harmful to the site than a couple that got closed wrongly I'd argue this tiny minority of unjustified closures (or deletions) may have a more severe impact on this platform by discouraging competent users from contributing. To be clear: the vast majority of closures are reasonable but the aforementioned exception make you wonder whether some "SO haters" don't have a fair point. In my narrowed expertise bubble I can definitely confirm some closures where simply based on veteran-hubris. This wasn't a thing when there were enough users to dispute via reopen – nowadays no chance! | |
| Jan 12 at 20:24 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @Braiam I am not talking about crap questions with even crappier answers. The site cannot survive without content. And yes we want that content to have high quality, but what is happening is that those "high quality" standards are being interpreted to absurdity. If we keep like that soon enough we will be deleting Jon Skeet's answers because they are not good enough. Yes, I am going to extreme now, but even under current rules, the closures are getting out of control. And there is also whole range of good questions which could be asked if we just broaden a scope just a tad more. | |
| Jan 12 at 18:00 | comment | added | Braiam | Ludin coined the term crap hugging policy in his answer. Those are much more harmful to the site than a couple that got closed wrongly. meta.stackoverflow.com/a/437905/792066 | |
| Jan 12 at 17:44 | comment | added | Braiam | Those are a drop in an ocean. The ones that I'm talking about are those that even by a reasonable reading of the scope of questions that we allow, should have been not just closed, but deleted. Instead they were locked, which then serves as example of "why is that one closed but mine isn't" | |
| Jan 11 at 19:01 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @Braiam Maybe you got me wrong. I am not talking about allowing questions which are only superficially related to programming. I am talking that we barely allow asking how to questions, even when they are well defined. The moment someone asks what is better to use in particular situation - bam - closed. We have a problem that current closure reasons are extremely strictly interpreted and many questions which should not be closed are getting closed for rather arbitrary reasons. | |
| Jan 11 at 16:22 | comment | added | Braiam | "Some of the problems come from rather narrow scope of what we consider on-topic questions"? What. If anything the problems stem from an ever encompassing scope that we try to apply. Programming on a boat was a warning sign, and yet many questions that generate strong arguments are in that vein. | |
| Jan 10 at 19:11 | comment | added | Thingamabobs | @cafce25 " you claim people don't go to Software Recommendations " it's about a broader audience. All those special sectors of programming seems pointless to me. | |
| Jan 10 at 18:58 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @cafce25 I don't know how such content works on Software Rec, but I don know that we allow answers which point to libraries, provided that the answer itself is not merely a link to the library. So you can ask a question where sone of the answers might be a library suggestion, but you are not allowed to directly ask a library suggestion. This does not make much sense. | |
| Jan 10 at 18:32 | comment | added | cafce25 | @DalijaPrasnikar if like you claim people don't go to Software Recommendations then how can you say questions there work? Content that doesn't attract traffic isn't worth keeping anywhere and much less worth throwing between quality content as filler here. | |
| Jan 10 at 18:04 | comment | added | Thingamabobs | @cafce25 look at stackoverflow.com/q/245792/13629335 and stackoverflow.com/q/47789/13629335 we don't do these anymore even though here is where the experts are. | |
| Jan 10 at 17:40 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | I don't understand how SG and the q-ban duration relate to each other. | |
| Jan 10 at 17:29 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @cafce25 That was what I used to think. But the fact is that people simply don't go there. To me this seems like rather random restriction. If earning reputation for such questions and answers would be a problem here, they can easily have separate space and rules and still be visible on the same list of questions. | |
| Jan 10 at 17:25 | comment | added | cafce25 | Reddit, too has quality control in the form of votes. If recommendations have a space on the network then why should we allow them in multiple places? That just makes it ambiguous where to ask/look for an answer. | |
| Jan 10 at 17:20 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @cafce25 For instance we don't allow asking recommendation questions because those are opinion based and could attract spam. So you cannot ask for a programming related library that cab solve a problem. Yet there is a whole site (Software Recommendations) dedicated to such questions. If such questions and answers work there, then they would also work here and the truth is that most people who can answer those are here, not there. We can easily close poor recommendation questions which don't properly specify requirements and remove poor link only answers. | |
| Jan 10 at 17:09 | comment | added | Dalija Prasnikar Mod | @cafce25 Because we would still have some quality control. I don't think all programming related questions should have a space here, but there is still a whole range of questions in between which we now deem to be off topic. | |
| Jan 10 at 16:39 | comment | added | cafce25 | @Thingamabobs Why should that content be here? Why would that same discussion here instead of on reddit be any less rubbish? | |
| Jan 10 at 15:31 | comment | added | Thingamabobs | "Now, there is a question whether we could change some of the closing rules and allow asking some questions which would otherwise be deemed unsuitable for Stack Overflow in regular Q/A." -- The opinion based questions needs some sort of space here. In reddit or discord there is just rubbish answers about when to us a tech for example. It is still interesting to read those old questions where they discussed that sort of thing, nowadays strictly offtopic. | |
| Jan 10 at 14:56 | comment | added | Thingamabobs | "Being visible in the question list for all users would make them visible to subject matter experts who can either give more precise feedback, publish, and answer questions if they are good enough." -- They don't do that already ? What a waste.. now we have to look in different corners to find the same thing we are interested in ??! | |
| Jan 10 at 14:54 | comment | added | Thingamabobs | " Not all questions are and will be stellar and we have absolutely great answers given on meh questions." - Most often the askers don't know how to ask better, because they don't think the Q&A from the end, instead of the beginning. However, thus leads sometimes to phrases and duplicates, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. | |
| Jan 10 at 14:06 | history | answered | Dalija PrasnikarMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |