| > Some are also ferociously defending the system. It's some kind of religion to them, and they are fanatics. I think some are just more aware that StackOverflow as a whole is a complex functioning system and not just a collection of standalone questions. Therefore, their behavior is focused more on the well-being of the system rather than a singe question or a single user. > I have a problem with this site: some people pay more attention to form than to content. I would say, people pay an equally high attention to form as content, again because form really matters on a scale of million questions, which is sometimes hard for people to appreciate who drop in to ask a single question and leave. > If I post a question which doesn't really follow the rules, I very quickly get downvotes. Not more than 7 in my case.
> If I post a question which follows the rules, I may wait days for an answer, and I may never receive an answer, but I get no upvotes. For the first posts and questionable posts, there is a queue for "first questions" and you get some number of them a day (I get up to 80). Which means there are lots of eyes on such posts. You need a certain number of downvotes to close a question, that's why you tend to get a limited amount and get them quick. To be fair, the guidelines don't mention downvoting at all: How to work through this queue:
Edit or share feedback on questions that are good, but could use some help.
Choose Looks OK if the post is fine as-is.
Be sure to upvote good posts to encourage new users.
Skip the task if you aren't sure which action to take.
On the other hand, for your question to get on my radar and get an answer, you need to tag it 'oslc', 'rdf', or 'semantic web'. There will be a very small number of people monitoring these.> Even constructive criticism seems to be illegal there. I think it's a matter of perspective (i.e. lots of criticism says "it works poorly in my case" without considering if 100k developers did what they tried to do every single day), and to be fair, SO's platform-centric view could be a bit more user-centric. |
Totally agree with this. Stack Overflow has many flaws, but most users need to think more about the system as a whole. In that context, it becomes clear that the goal of Stack Overflow is not to answer your specific question, but to create a useful body of knowledge for the general userbase.