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Comment by rendaw

5 months ago

I asked a question for the first time mid last year. It was a question about "default" sizes in HTML layout calculations, with lots of research and links to relevant parts of the spec.

It was immediately closed as off topic, and there were a bunch of extremely vitriolic comments offended that I'd ask such a question on SO. It was briefly reopened weeks (?) later and then I guess closed again and now is deleted, so you can't even view the question any more.

I'd long heard of abusive moderation but... experiencing it first hand is something else. Anecdote of one, but I know I'm never going to ask there again.

In case anyone's wondering, I ended up asking on the WhatWG or W3C or something github project (via an issue?). The TLDR was rather eye opening, that basically the spec only codifies points of contention for browsers and old behaviors are generally undocumented. With some pointers I figured out the default size behavior through code diving, and it was complex (as in, hard to use) and very unintuitive.

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rendaw

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nerdbert  5 months ago

Very similar to my experience. I never managed to either ask or answer a question on there. Everything I did was "bad" for reasons that were never explained to me in a constructive way that made me feel empowered to get a better outcome.

I used it as a reference when someone had a similar question to mine, but over time the bad taste in my mouth caused me to avoid it in google search results.

I fell into using an early — and I would say, far superior — form of ChatGPT, which consisted of carefully and clearly laying out my question, point-by-point, in a blank text file, and then usually having an insight as to what my particular stumbling block actually was and thereby being able to move forward.

brabel  5 months ago

Questions are never really deleted , post a link so people with enough reputation may have a look and maybe resurrect it if the question is really good.

  • fabianholzer  5 months ago

    Why would anyone with an ounce of self-respect try to beg an stranger with enough internet point to look if their question is worthy of being asked? Do you not realize how the proposal must sound to someone who is not already in the SO in-group?

    • matsemann  5 months ago

      It's not about if it's "worthy of being asked", but mainly that many of us doubt the stories presented here without evidence. Time and time again examples are asked for in HN discussions about SO, but they're never presented.

      One other thing often missed is that people answer these questions on their spare time to be nice. A closed question wouldn't necessarily have gotten any good answers anyways. And if you've ever taken part in moderating the review queue, you would've seen the insane amount of low-quality questions flowing in. I saw probably ten variants of "how to center my div" daily being closed as duplicates. The asker might be miffed about getting their question closed (but with a link to a solution..), but if you want to actually get answers to the high quality questions, the noise has to be filtered somehow.

      Of course, SO is a bad fit for helping beginners figure out their syntax errors or how to apply a general solution to their specific issue. And you may not like SO for it, but to not want to be a site for that is their prerogative.

      17 replies →

    • brabel  5 months ago

      Hm… as the person was new to SO it’s very possible they don’t understand what a good question looks like and I thought it may be helpful to give feedback on what may have gone wrong… but if you see that as “begging” and you don’t think you need any feedback, you have it all sorted out after all, then yeah it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

      13 replies →

    • gn4d  5 months ago

      >Do you not realize how the proposal must sound to someone who is not already in the SO in-group?

      The fact that you even have to point this out to them, and how they still don't understand the root of the problem, is precisely why SO is finished.

gn4d  5 months ago

>I'd long heard of abusive moderation but... experiencing it first hand is something else. Anecdote of one, but I know I'm never going to ask there again.

And it was a real gut punch when this would happen (or getting suspended/banned) to long-time users, as well. They largely precipitated their own demise, so I say good riddance.

dent9  5 months ago

its not just you, I saw this happen to others' posts many times and it happened to me several times

I gave up on Stack Overflow when my jobs started requiring me to use Terraform and suddenly every time I posted a well researched and well formed question about Terraform, it would immediately get flagged and closed with responses that "Terraform is not programming and thus questions about Terraform should not be posted on Stack Overflow", which was insane to me because Stack Overflow has a "terraform" tag and category. If you visit it, you will see tons of users trying to post valid questions only to have the mods shut them down angrily.