[zahlman]

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to the other question will answer yours as well. This also means you are responsible for overlooking irrelevant details, reading the answers, making your own attempts to apply them, etc.

If the other question is actually different, you are expected to edit the question to make this clear - not by adding an "Edit:" section like in a forum post, but by fixing the wording such that it's directly clear what you're looking for and how it's different. This might mean fixing your specification of input or desired output.

It's difficult sometimes, and curators do make mistakes. Most frustratingly, it's entirely possible for two completely different problems to be reasonably described with all the same keywords. I personally had a hell of a time disentangling https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9764298 from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18016827, while also explaining that https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6618515 really is the same as the first problem despite different phrasing.

But curators much more often get it right. Not only that, a few of us go out of our way to create artificial Q&A (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/426205) for beginner issues that beginners never know how to explain, and put immense effort into both the question and answer. Some popular examples in the Python tag:

"I'm getting an IndentationError (or a TabError). How do I fix it?" (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45621722) was written to replace "IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level, although the indentation looks correct" (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/492387) and a few others, with reasoning stated there.

"Asking the user for input until they give a valid response" (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23294658)

"Why does "a == x or y or z" always evaluate to True? How can I compare "a" to all of those?" (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20002503) was written largely as an alternative to the organic "How to test multiple variables for equality against a single value?" (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15112125) after the latter was found not to help beginners very well (the original example was quite unclear, although it's since been improved).

[surgical_fire]

> "Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself.

If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question?

It may sound a silly question, but what you are describing is the reason why I never actively interacted with SO (never asked, answered, nor upvoted). Either what I was looking for was already there, or I completely ignored the site.

Maybe it is the reason why it is dying. It's just not that useful after all.

[zahlman]

>>You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself.

>If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question?

You are expected to be able to analyze the problem to the point where you have one specific question, get the answer, and solve the problem now that you have the answer.

That is: we will not do the analysis for you. We will fill in the gap in your knowledge. But you have to figure out where that gap is.

> Either what I was looking for was already there

The goal is to maximize the chance of this (and that you find what you're looking for promptly). When you don't find it, you can help by contributing the question part of what's missing. But, in turn, this is supposed to improve the chance that the next person can promptly find your question - and understand it, and be confident that you have the same question, and read the answer, and go on to solve a potentially very different problem.

[surgical_fire]

> You are expected to be able to analyze the problem to the point where you have one specific question, get the answer, and solve the problem now that you have the answer.

> That is: we will not do the analysis for you. We will fill in the gap in your knowledge.

I see. That makes more sense, I misinterpreted your original reply.

That said, many times I did find the specific question I had, but the question was closed as duplicate (or whatever jargon you use), but the existing answered question was for whatever reason not exactly what I was looking for. Not really encouraging for me to interact with the site, and would probably just sink my time furter.

> The goal is to maximize the chance of this (and that you find what you're looking for promptly).

This used to be more common, many years ago. I can't orecise why, but it has been a while that I found the answer I was looking for on SO.

> When you don't find it, you can help by contributing the question part of what's missing. But, in turn, this is supposed to improve the chance that the next person can promptly find your question - and understand it, and be confident that you have the same question, and read the answer, and go on to solve a potentially very different problem.

I suppose I could. But asking a meaningful question takes effort, and I have no idea if the powers that be will share my idea that the question is meaningful, or if it will be marked as a duplicate to some similar issue. Not exactly encouraging to participation.

[zahlman]

>was for whatever reason not exactly what I was looking for.

See: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/384711 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254697 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/385343 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/426205

Not to dismiss you - but it's important to understand what the standard is for "duplication". This has changed over the years because the original (very narrow) interpretation turned out to be unviable - it doesn't scale. (And "it doesn't scale" is a big part of why Stack Overflow was created - where "it" is the traditional discussion forum model.)

>but it has been a while that I found the answer I was looking for on SO.

Because your search query is equally suited to find a bunch of garbage questions that should have been closed (and then deleted when they weren't improved) - often ones that are about something completely different, but click-bait because of the words in the title (often a result of OP completely misidentifying the problem and not producing a proper MRE).

>asking a meaningful question takes effort

It does. In fact, when I've written self-answered Q&A to share knowledge, I've often found the question harder than the answer.

The reputation system was very poorly conceived. It incentivizes terrible behaviours, while the best results will come from intrinsic motivation anyway. (Plus it carries the implicit assumption that answering questions demonstrates an understanding of site policy, when the opposite is often true: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/357021 )

> my idea that the question is meaningful, or if it will be marked as a duplicate to some similar issue

Duplicates are not inherently bad. They help others find the original, and the duplicate count statistics help identify important questions and topics. Furthermore, it's 100% in keeping with policy to close something as a duplicate of a newer question (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/404535 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258697 ). If you ask something well, and get a good answer, and then someone notices that it was asked before, your version is likely to stand instead. (And the target for a duplicate closure must have an accepted or upvoted answer.)

[soco]

Your point makes totally sense and it also sounds like a robotic overlord from some SF dystopia: cold and following its own programmed rules to the painful detail. As the other commenter pointed out: you are definitely right and we see your point. But it's a also because of it that I stopped using SO years except for maybe causally searching. Let me draw an inaccurate parallel: security, if done perfectly, lets nobody achieve anything.

[zahlman]

Having to say the same things repeatedly wears on one. I shouldn't really be participating in these threads, I should be blogging about it instead.

[yuzzi]

Yes. This

[NBJack]

> "Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself.

Your response to what was intended as a light-hearted joke tells me how passionate you are about the site. For what it's worth, thanks for all the time you've taken with a genuine interest in helping those in need.

Evaluating how much effort a user has put into their research before a post is really, really tricky, and difficult to quantify. I also know, first hand, the things that seem obvious with the experience I have aren't always the same way others (particularly beginners) see the same problem. For the (few) areas I feel remotely qualified to help in, there are hundreds of others that humble me. Getting a question effectively shut down as a duplicate (with seemingly little recourse) has been both frustrating and disheartening to the point I often just continued my journey elsewhere.

[zahlman]

> Evaluating how much effort a user has put into their research before a post is really, really tricky, and difficult to quantify.

There's another common misconception here - one which I held myself for years, and one which the community expressed for years in poorly-conceived close reasons that eventually got fixed. Or you could say: over time, we realized that something didn't work right for the purpose.

As you say, you can't easily evaluate or quantify that research simply by looking at the question. But that's exactly why it doesn't actually matter: because it isn't seen in a properly written question.

The purpose of the research is not to earn the right to ask a question. The purpose, rather, is to optimize the question for the format. If the question meets standards, it meets standards; doing the research is a means to that end, and it's only "expected" because it's usually necessary.

So, for example, if your code doesn't work, you're expected to do your own debugging first, until you find the part that actually causes a problem that you don't know how to fix. And then you're expected to not talk about that debugging process, and not show irrelevant detail from your code. Instead, isolate non-working code as best you can manage into a MCVE, SSCCE or whatever else you like to call it (our documentation includes advice: https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example), and talk about the example, directly.

>Getting a question effectively shut down as a duplicate... has been both frustrating and disheartening

Why? Someone just directly pointed you at an already existing answer. You got helped even faster than if someone had to write that answer from scratch. Which is a big part of the point.

Yes, that does mean that you need to apply an explanation of the same problem from an abstracted context, to your specific need. But that was supposed to be part of the expectation anyway. Because we aren't interested in the problem that motivated you to ask - you are not required to have actually had a problem at all, in fact. We're interested in having a question whose answer can help everyone in a similar situation.

But we don't provide a discussion forum, help desk, or debugging service.

> (with seemingly little recourse)

As it happens, I once asked a question that was closed as a duplicate. Here's the advice I'm still shown if I go back and look, in the blue banner at the top:

> This question already has an answer here: (link to the other question)

> Your post has been associated with a similar question. If that question doesn’t answer your issue, edit your question to highlight the difference between the associated question and yours. If edited, your question will be reviewed and might be reopened.

"Edit your question" is linked to https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21788/how-does-edit... .

> Find out more about duplicates and why your question has been closed.

Links:

https://stackoverflow.com/help/duplicates https://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions

Note that even the moderators don't get to control this form message - they can at most petition the company staff for a change. The "closed-questions" link tells me about the close reasons in a fair amount of detail, and eventually links to "What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?" (https://stackoverflow.com/help/reopen-questions), which also mentions the option of taking the matter to the meta site.

If I were to edit the question, the form now has a checkbox to "Submit for review", with additional popup help including a link to https://stackoverflow.com/help/review-reopen . As described in the above documentation links, the question would be put in a review queue, giving it more attention for those who can cast reopen votes.

(The reveal: actually, I closed it myself, using my gold-badge privileges - either I eventually found what I couldn't before asking, or someone pointed it out to me in a chatroom or something. The title for the Q&A I wanted was reasonable, but very different from the title I came up with. So now it's easier to find.)

[slyfox125]

Even if you - and the stance SO takes/took - are correct, that doesn't erase the fact that the decorum is unpalatable to a vast majority of the user-base.

Being correct does not necessarily engender popularity or success. Often, humility, patience, and kindness are key.

[s1ph3r]

I think the appeal of SO to its users (besides getting help for programming when you find someone willing) is that its also a source of narcissistic supply for the powerusers that can be maximized due to SO's gatekeeping policies.

[zahlman]

It especially hurts to see words like "narcissistic" used to describe my friends who volunteer copious amounts of their time to try to be polite to hordes of others who clearly don't give a damn about what they're trying to accomplish and seem to assume that their usual way of interacting with web sites that have a submission form is the only way that exists.

[zahlman]

My experience has overwhelmingly been that people object to being told that they can't just ask the question they want - not to the specific words used.

We don't allow anyone to use insults; we expect each other to be patient; we use our "please"s and "thank you"s in comments (even as we remove them from questions) - and if you see otherwise, please flag it; moderators take code of conduct violations seriously.

But none of this seems to make a difference. And people come to the site with expectations about politeness that simply aren't conducive to getting people to stop doing things they aren't supposed to do:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366889 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/368072 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373801 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/334870

Meanwhile, a major reason why people aren't required to explain in a comment why they downvoted a question, is because of the history we've had with downright vitriolic replies from OPs who seem uninterested in the rules:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/357436 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/352575

Rudeness happens all around, really:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/326494

Related: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/309018/523612

(And, of course, all of this really blows up once assumptions start getting made about who is or isn't especially sensitive: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665)

[yuzzi]

How ironic. For years you've been enforcing the dehumanization of human communications (e.g. basic gratitude and courtesy are taboo) and then you object when AI comes along and people prefer it to your dehumanizing platform.

[zahlman]

> For years you've been enforcing the dehumanization of human communications (e.g. basic gratitude and courtesy are taboo)

This is so far from true that it's frankly insulting.

> and then you object when AI comes along and people prefer it to your dehumanizing platform.

I do not object in the slightest to people preferring to use an LLM. I have even explicitly suggested in threads like this that people who prefer to do so should continue to do so.

What I object to is the idea that other people should get to decide how Stack Overflow works, or should get to denigrate Stack Overflow on the basis of their idea of how it ought to work.

[AlexeyBelov]

I don't know why you engage with anonymous cowards anyway. They are just trolling.

[solongso]

It's absolutely true. I've had my posts edited to remove phrases like "thanks for any advice which you can provide". I've had people leave comments and ding my reputation because I've expressed gratitude. Maybe you don't think eliminating gratitude from basic communications qualifies as "dehumanizing". OK, let's agree to disagree. (BTW - to the guy who called me a "troll". If you can't disagree with a fellow of your species, without branding them a troll, you've just made my point. Thank you.)

[zahlman]

>I've had my posts edited to remove phrases like "thanks for any advice which you can provide"

Yes. Doing this makes your post better, because it means everyone who reads it later saves time. Your post is not there to talk to people. Your question is there to ask a question. Your answer is there to answer the question.

This is explicit policy:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131009

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/403176

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/328379

https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/behavior ("Do not use signature, taglines, greetings, thanks, or other chitchat.")

And it follows directly from it not being a discussion forum (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107).

> Maybe you don't think eliminating gratitude from basic communications qualifies as "dehumanizing"

What you miss is that it is not communication between the person who asks and the person who answers. It is publication of a question and answer so that everyone can benefit.

When you see someone say "thanks for any advice which you can provide" directly to someone else, does that feel welcoming to you? It doesn't to me. It feels like suddenly I'm unintentionally eavesdropping on some conversation, and that I'm not supposed to be there. But I only came to learn (or teach) something.

> BTW - to the guy who called me a "troll". If you can't disagree with a fellow of your species, without branding them a troll, you've just made my point. Thank you

You appear to be making multiple throwaway accounts rather than risking your HN reputation. From the guidelines:

> Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.

[mvdtnz]

If the entire internet is telling you you're hostile, aggressive and hard to work with it would pay to stop explaining why you're right and start looking inwards.

[zahlman]

It's not my responsibility, as a Stack Overflow user, to make Stack Overflow a site that gets lots of users posting and viewing lots of content.

It is correct to be "hostile, aggressive and hard to work with" when you are inundated with requests from others to "work with" you on something that is radically different from what you are trying to accomplish.

I will not look inward because I am objectively doing nothing morally wrong here. It's fine if people think I'm "hostile" because I politely tell them what they aren't supposed to do while they think they should be entitled to do it anyway, because them doing it actively harms things I actually care about.

I disagree with the choice of "aggressive", though. This is a purely defensive posture.

Stack Overflow has a community which is trying to create something useful and is not trying to cause harm to anyone. As such, that community is entitled to have and pursue goals that aren't aligned with those of others, and should not be expected to change those goals simply because other people don't share them, or because they want to use Stack Overflow's time, space and other resources to do something different.

That community is a separate entity from the company (Stack Exchange, Inc.). The community owes nothing to the company, as it has been paid nothing, and is exploited to drive traffic and ad revenue while their content feeds AI.

[Karrot_Kream]

You are a volunteer. You can stop volunteering. If the job is becoming corrosive to your mental health and you don't have the emotional energy to engage with the job in manner that involves empathy, then I think the healthier option for everyone is to stop volunteering and let someone new come in who still has the empathy to handle it.

[mvdtnz]

ok man

[jemmyw]

The last time I used it I was asking a math question that was somewhat beyond me. I'd already spent hours researching it. Part of the problem was I knew I didn't know the right terminology but I could describe the problem in detail. I asked on SO, got one slightly snarky comment that answered the wrong problem. It did give me a clue to the right wording to look for though so in a way I got my answer. But the general attitude, and your attitude, is "why are you asking this question?"

SO didn't come about until I was already working as a programmer and I'm more used to using docs or reading source to find answers. I participated a lot on language specific mailing groups and IRC at one point and they were much friendlier. At least I treated no question as a stupid question.