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Comment by burnished

4 years ago

You haven't seen a question closed as a duplicate when it was clear that time or details had made the linked question not an actual duplicate?

4 comments

burnished

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JadeNB  4 years ago

I think the idea is that it's better to err on the side of too-strict moderation than too-lax. People can always come back to re-try a question at another time, but, once the spirit of the community is lost, there's not much you can do about it.

(Not to say I like the StackExchange community much. It's far too top-down directed for me. But I'm very much sympathetic to the spirit of strict moderation.)

threatofrain  4 years ago

I’ve never seen it develop into a serious problem, just as I’ve never seen rule driven Wikipedia have problems with rule obsession.

There are all sorts of community websites around the world. Which have developed into a serious SO contendor? IMO many things are threatening SO’s relevance, but they don’t look anything like it, which suggests that what SO is doing wrong isn’t the small details.

For example, I’d argue that Discord has become the next place for beginners to get answers, but chat rooms are very different from SO. For one thing, the help is better because someone else can spend their brain power to massage your problem. And another is that knowledge dies almost instantly.

  • burnished  4 years ago

    EDIT: I removed quoted portions and snippy replies.

    Forgive me if I wasn't being clear. It seems like your core point is that SO's rules are on the whole good for keeping it focused, and it seems like you are assuming I'm a beginner programmer who is frustrated with SO for not being more beginner friendly and thus advising me on what I should do instead. I feel like you are shadow boxing a little.

    I think we probably mostly agree; I think SO gets an unfortunate reputation as a good place for beginners (as opposed to a sort of curated wiki of asked and answered questions on a topic, a data store of wisdom), and that in general beginners are probably best served by smaller 1-1 intervention. I usually suggest people seek out a mentor, it had never occurred to me that Discord could be a good way to go about this.

    The original point I was trying to make is simply that you can see overzealous rule following on SO and that a form of that is in inappropriately closed as duplicate questions.