Timeline for Should Stack Exchange in general care about “effort” spent before asking a question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 18, 2021 at 11:45 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://blog.stackoverflow.com with https://blog.stackoverflow.com | |
| May 23, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/ | |
| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/ | |
| Mar 17, 2017 at 18:50 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Mar 17, 2017 at 19:17 | |||||
| Apr 24, 2014 at 13:52 | history | edited | CommunityBot | Migration of MSO links to MSE links | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 16:51 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @TheGrinch I was thinking of recent months when I wrote this, as far as I can see closing for lack of effort has gotten more frequent. Yes, you're right, the low-quality filter did make a difference. But that's unrelated to closure — it's primarily based on downvotes, which is fitting for something that judges askers rather than questions. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 16:42 | comment | added | user102937 | "the moderation of questions on Stack Overflow is focusing more and more on the effort made by the asker to conform to the group norms." You must have missed the time when the low-quality filter was put into place. I noticed a dramatic difference. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 16:41 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @TheGrinch I can't blame you for finding this answer too long and rambling. Liam's answer summarizes the gist. I don't “accuse SO of adopting group-think”, whatever that means. My objection is to linking effort with answerability; I disagree that any close reason should be related to lack of effort. I don't know what you mean by “the days of Stack Overflow when the site was flooded with low-quality questions”, I haven't seen a marked difference since the close resaons changed or indeed since I joined 3 years ago. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 16:31 | comment | added | user102937 | I'm trying to figure out exactly what your position is. On the one hand, you accuse Stack Overflow of adopting group-think, but on the other you essentially agree with the current crop of close reasons in principle (as specific proxies for what essentially comes down to lack of effort). Would you prefer the days of Stack Overflow when the site was flooded with low-quality questions, everything was subject to many shades of gray (including the close reasons), and the proper use of Community Wiki was argued and debated endlessly? | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:48 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @Stijn Maybe the awkwardness is in the juxtaposition of the two sentences? The first one is a requisite condition, the question is closed because the condition is not met. The second is advice that may or may not be applicable to any specific case. Most close reasons have this requirement/advice juxtaposition, and it feels natural when you're used to the format, but it does sound odd in isolation. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:44 | comment | added | Stijn | If closing is all about answerability, I feel that Questions asking for code must demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. is worded awkwardly. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 10:17 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @IlmariKaronen The compensating upvote also happens on answers, I don't think this phenomenon is relevant here. If you're complaining about “free rep to people to post bad questions”, this happens more relevantly when a no-effort question is edited into something good. Regarding footnote 3, I've seen them all: screenshots, scans, photos… It's more common on Computer Science where many askers don't know how to typeset math. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 9:45 | comment | added | Mikhail | This is a long post, and I didn't have time to read it all but I would like to point out that USNET is a much better model then lets say reddit. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 6:50 | comment | added | Vitruvie | One way to solve the question ownership problem is to have multiple questions in the same thread, with users of moderately high rep being able to propose alternate wordings of the question that deviate too far from the purpose of the original question to be edits. Still has a confusion problem, however. Alternatively, you could just turn all such questions that get the great answers and then get edited to be a good question for the great answer into community wiki. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 6:31 | comment | added | Benjol | Excellent analysis. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 5:04 | comment | added | BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod | @Ilmari Karonen: That's a funny way to spell "photograph". | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 3:16 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | Ps. For footnote 3, replace "scan" with "screenshot of a PDF". | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 3:13 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | A problem I've noticed with downvoting (in general, not just with questions) is that if you downvote something that isn't obviously terrible, often someone else will shortly come along and upvote it just because "it's bad, but not that bad". So the net effect, regrettably often, is just to give some free rep to people who post bad questions / answers. Posting a comment explaining the reasons for the downvote does help sometimes, but not always. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 2:18 | history | answered | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | CC BY-SA 3.0 |