| In limited topics I took part on SO, what frustrated me the most were the "users". I deliberately put word users in quotes because I worked as a consultant and often saw guides on how to ask questions on SO (i.e. use an account with female name and picture, deliberately misspell words/interpunction). There was this Magento company and I was consultant for their (UK) client, one of the devs gave me the tour of how they use SO. What was frustrating is that day in and day out, similar questions were asked - ones that are googleable. One day I received a comment from such "user", under a question I answered and explained in detail. The "user" went to discredit me, without arguments or links and was pretty rude through all of the misspellings he did to avoid some automatic triggers. I replied rudely as well, asking him to read other people's answers before discrediting and providing no info. Result was that I was sent to "cool off" for 2 weeks, and was given a speech from mod as if I was a child. At that point SO changed their ToS and claimed that all content was theirs, including answers I provided. And that's where I departed from SO because from my experience - I was free debugging service for various agencies who went a little bit overboard with claims of their experience and in case someone was rude to me - I get no protection, however if I'm rude to "users" then I get slap on the wrist. Working for free, being patronized, interacting with people who are too lazy to read - that were my reasons for abandoning SO. Besides, when it started - all of the big questions about nearly every language were covered fast and there was very little to do except write SQL for other people and get praise for it as form of payment. |