Comment by digitalPhonix
9 hours ago
> That isn't what happens. I know many, many people believe it to be what happens, but I know from years of seeing the process on the inside that it's absolutely not what happens in the overwhelming majority of cases.
If quite literally every person I interact with professionally has an anecdote about this happening, your anecdote about it not happening is not very convincing.
Have you/SO staff/SO mods considered why this impression is so prevalent if you’re confident it’s (as you claim) not actually true?
Many people come to Stack Overflow carrying preconceptions about how the site is supposed to operate and are surprised when reality does not agree with them. Since admitting to being wrong would be too hard, they prefer to come up with quasi-conspiratorial explanations of inflated egos, secret motives and admin cliques. Same thing happens to Wikipedia, really.
"But you said you want to build the sum of all human knowledge! Why can't you accept this piece of alternative history I just made up?"
"So, Stack Overflow is for the computer stuff, right? I have this Word document that... what do you mean this is not a programming question?"
"Since I have no idea where else I could go with this, you must allow me to post it here!"
I mean, it's not like either project is free from power-tripping moderators and overzealous application of procedure; in fact, it's not even particularly rare... but still rarer than the loudest naysayers keep insisting. I have witnessed plenty of dysfunctions myself, and yet whenever I hear others' complaints, I tend to suspect this is yet another case that boils down to "how dare you delete my stuff". With many such anecdotes, I notice they only speak of the situation in the vaguest of terms, omitting details that would have enabled me to identify the actual problem... which I cannot help but wonder if this is because if I were to see the situation myself, it would have made the complainer look much worse.