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You know what? I'm starting to think Stack Overflow has an elitist attitude problem. I post an earnest question in meta and 3 out of 4 guys ridicule the idea and are rude. Only one person seemed willing to even consider my question. The other 3 just posted rebuttals of my idea. This is a Q&A forum, not the U.S. presidential debates, damnit!

Comments
  • 32
    Yeah, stackoverflow is a great resource but community is shit. Many have attitude issues. I posted a code solution and this high score old professor of some university comes and flags my code saying it does exactly same what other codes do. So what? My code's logic was little bit different even though it does same thing. Is that big of a deal to flag?

    Fuck you old man. I hop you rot in hell
  • 17
    Couldn't agree more. Questions and answers get down voted without any constructive criticism. If yo do get comments, its in the line of 'why the hell do you want to do that' . God forbid you actually receive some feedback that will let you improve and grow. The community is saltier than that of LOL
  • 8
    I agree, SO is entirely based on the efficiency to find a good answer not the sociability. The first rule of a good question is to not "polute" it with some "Hello, how are you ?", "Thanks for your help" and other polites stuffs like that. In my opinion, they define an efficiency way to communicate by sometimes forgetting what make us human, but it's really not a platform to get some friends!

    The reputation points system is good, but it encourage you to be rude with others by tagging questions which may looks stupid... It's like denunciate your neighbors if the cops promise you some money for your help...
  • 4
    You know what? I'll share a link to my SO post: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/... Maybe I should still run with my idea, but recruit from the (very friendly) devrant community rather the SO community. We could build a better SO than SO.
  • 3
    @wmhilton I have to agree with the most of what's written on the meta, especially with Makoto's answer.

    What for do you want a page about errors? If you want a list, google it, it's there in the same shape as server errors or exit codes or many more. Even somewhere on wikipedia.

    Such an idea would just generate a useless website, where make-my-homework kids will cry again. As Tomabolt wrote above me, SO is not a site to get friends. No hello, no thanks is necessary or sometimes even welcome. It's a website full of answers (and small amount of idiots).

    On the other hand, Meta isn't really a good place to post your ideas about new, separate parts of SE web, that's what Area 51 is for and how the Docs happened to be recently. Go get some points and you're welcome to post it in Area 51, there's nothing that could forbid it, but you'll see the same thing as on Meta in probably much worse rep result.
  • 5
    Maybe devrant should have a section for code questions/review
  • 3
    @wmhilton To me it seems like a feasible idea, also when I came across your idea on devRant (yesterday I believe), but the sheer number of downvotes and comments on SO and other comments are probably signs that we're missing something... I feel for you
  • 0
    @JBSnorro I don't think we're missing something. I think @SweetHuman and a couple others from yesterday were quite excited about the idea.
  • 4
    I don't know. My experience with SO has always been of walking on egg shells. But honestly it makes me really think about my question before I post. I really do my research before I post. I ask directly and succinctly. Yes it hurts when I get flagged, yes it hurts when I feel like I'm not getting any good feedback. But those moments when I do get great feedback and my question was meaningful, I cherish this because it meant I did the right thing, and I will always try to replicate that same process.

    Let's look at it this way. If stackoverflow were an IDE and the flags and down votes were bugs, as developers we don't complain about the bug, we change our approach and squash those bugs.

    I guess what I mean to say, is that its easy to bash something for its imperfections rather than whats its really for. In going through stackoverflow's tour I understood a little bit why the community is the way it is. It's meant for answers. That's why Googling for past answers and bugs is so fast.
  • 3
    Went through to Your post. I would completely agree with you that it would be cool. I also feel the odd element with duplicate question, why should it be penalized? Why not combine them ? This might make the question clearer or linking to the root cause better.

    I at least agree with you and think your comments were valid and good!
  • 6
    I mean, obviously its useful, SO has saved my life before lol. But I totally agree. The thing that bugs me the most is when you ask an earnest question and you get a response like, "you shouldn't do it that way". Bitch, you dont know the constraints of my system! Or the context of my problem! And I don't have time to explain them. I went to college also, I know what most "best" practices are, I didn't come here for a lecture from daddy. I mean, if you have a gajillion points on SO doesn't that mean you spend more time answering questions than actually coding? Its classic gamification gone wrong. Once the "good" players dominate the community it becomes toxic because they're always the ones that are hyper competitive and tend to be assholes. Thats whats great about devRant, the points don't matter, at least it doesn't cause someone with a million rants to be treated better than someone with one. We're all just trying to rant and stuff, keeping the judgment to a minimum.
  • 1
    Wow, thanks guys! I'm definitely inspired to create this site more than ever now.
  • 1
    Just an update: This site is happening! It's not going to be a part of Stack Overflow but its own forum. It might take a few months to get the site written, but it's going to be pretty cool.
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