| It overlooks that Stackoverflow has its amount of trolls and people who are too lazy to do their homework on their own. Rating, closing, deleting, etc. is a way to deal with those. I'll try always to leave a message why I downvoted or voted to close a question. That way the person gets some feedback what to do better. It's absolute essential that programmers learn to deal with such feedback. There are also a lot of XY problems. To get those problems addressed may create some frustration (why is my question not answered directly). Be prepared that sometimes the answer is not what one expects. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy... Also essential: There needs to be a way to keep signal/noise ratio to a certain level. It may sound mean, but when you can't format code, can't read a manual, can't formulate a question, can't provide examples, can't provide an error message, or even can't code at all, then you should not participate in a forum for programmers. Better learn quick - this helps also in the job as a programmer. If I see that somebody has put ZERO effort into the question, then I'm really not motivated to help that person. There are many people on Stackoverflow who post great questions and many who post real programming problems. Let's support those and let's help people reach the level of a competent programmer. |