Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late? - <AUTHOR> http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/252077/321731 <comment><USER5> When I first started programming, I could use SO without asking a question because everything I needed to know was fairly basic. It was great because many of the answers I came across helped me to understand more of the "broader universe" of issues I would encounter during development, and so encouraged me to research and learn more about the language.

Once I started asking questions, I was careful to respond to comments and accepted and upvoted the best answers. I wanted to be a good citizen of the community. And reciprocity was a part of that: eventually, I found myself able to respond to questions and I remember how great it felt to see the first +25 on my profile because someone accepted my answer.

These days, if I ask a question it's because I've spent a good amount of time on it and haven't been able to resolve it myself. Here's what happens when I ask a question on SO:

1 - I ask the question, post the code, and the error message I'm getting

2 - Question downvoted

3 - Respond to comment that says my question is a duplicate (it's not, which I clarify to avoid "closed as duplicate")

4 - Respond to comment about a missing semicolon that got deleted when I was cutting/pasting/formatting my code. (Despite the error msg making it clear that the missing semicolon isn't the issue)

5 - Question upvoted

6 - An answer! Says that I need to read the docs and provides a link to a non- relevant section (I've read the docs)

7 - Finally, a helpful answer! Looks pretty good, so I test it out and it does the job. I accept and upvote the answer.

8 - Notice a duplicate answer posted less than 1 minute after the accepted answer. Duplicate answer person complains that their entry was posted first. I advise them that the timestamp indicates the other poster was first and they reply that it is a time zone bug.

9 - Later I check back and notice this message: "Question closed as vague and cannot be answered"

10 - Check back one more time and see that someone has downvoted my question

11 - Email the mods to get the downvote removed

<comment><USER6> I especially hate having to be so defensive.

E.g. in phrasing my question, specifically having to mention a whole bunch of things that obviously aren't the problem but people are going to insist on anyway unless I've already mentioned them myself.

Or the whole "Well, you shouldn't be doing this in the first place so I'm not going to help you with your actual problem".

It can be incredibly helpful to point this out. But often I'm doing things in a certain way for a reason (constraints that aren't relevant for the question, like "yeah but our entire codebase").

So when I say I'm doing it this way for a reason and looking for a way to make it work, either trust my judgment or decide I don't deserve to be helped and stop commenting. But it often ends up being a massive distracting derail preventing others from trying to answer the question I was actually asking in the first place. Most annoyingly, this behaviour is often rewarded with upvotes.

For example:

> "I can't connect to my database due to error 110, I have no idea what that > means"

"Why aren't you using an ORM?"

> "I have good reason not to, besides, I'm just looking to fix error 110 now"

"But a good ORM handles these types of errors for you, it'd be stupid not to use it"

> "You're probably right, but that'd require a lot of rewriting and > refactoring and that's simply not an option right now"

"Ok, get back to me when you're actually using an ORM and still having trouble with your database"

when all I'm looking for is "That's a connection timeout, tried checking your firewall configuration?"

<comment><USER7> I couldn't agree more. I've gone on and on endless rants on how people in the computer science/software engineering field (including but not limited to SO users) usually avoid "unusual" questions by asking _what is it exactly you 're trying to do_, instead of _being objective_ and answering.

When I've decided to post on SO, it means I've failed miserably at finding a solution on the internet and it's usually a very unusual question. I'm sure there's a nice design pattern I _could_ be using or there's a different, more standard way to do it, but I do not post on SO as a newbie in the field (or at least I avoid such questions).

My solution to avoid that kind of answer is to open my post giving all the reasons why I'm not doing it the usual way (for example, why I'm using plain WINAPI instead of MFC, .NET or whatever newer technology is out there). I still get suggestions I'm doing The Wrong Thing ™[0] though.

[0]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling- visual...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling-visual- styles-in-manifest-while-retaining-common-controls- functionalit#comment11591539_9199542)

EDIT: After posting this, the comment linked in [0] seems to be removed, but it was something along the lines of _" Any reason you want your app to look old? :)"_

<comment><USER8> "What are you trying to do?" is probably the most passive-aggressive, most infuriating and least helpful answer to any technical question.

It usually translates to "I know the answer to your question, but instead of just answering it and letting us both get on with our lives, I'd like to show off my vast intellect by helping you embark on a major re-design that you neither asked for nor need at the moment."

<comment><USER9> I ask questions like this a lot, and that is not at all what it's about. The motivation for asking what somebody is trying to do is that I don't know a good answer to the question they asked, but I have a nagging feeling that their question might actually be reducible to a different question that I can answer easily. It would be presumptuous to just answer a completely different question, though, so I ask for clarification whether this is in fact the context that it looks like. To put it another way, they're asking "How do I hit glass with stone without breaking it?" but what they actually want to know is "How do I get the lid off a beer bottle?" The fact that they currently believe removing a beer lid involves striking the bottle with a rock doesn't necessarily mean that answers along those lines are the most helpful. But I can't be sure when I see that question whether they are thinking about a beer bottle.

For example, yesterday a guy asked a rather complicated question about hacking the Objective-C runtime to replace a class in the inheritance tree. But from his question, I was able to infer that what he actually wanted to do was globally change a class's behavior. So I answered the question that I read between the lines. His response was, "Oh, yeah, I don't know why I didn't do that to begin with." In that case I felt sure enough to answer without asking, but in other cases I'm not as confident whether this is actually a different question in disguise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Expanded from a comment I left:

I think he is missing a camp, to which I'd count myself: 5. Those users who visit the site to solve their problems, and who like to help others.

Like 1 they want to have nice content on the site, but their number one criterion is "is it helpful (and civil)"? They don't care much about "is objective/it a good match for SE/constructive" and are frustrated by the wikipedia-like deletionism of 1. They would enjoy and benefit from even the "worst cardinal sin" kind of questions, like "What is the best node.js framework as of early 2014?". (The question would have many answers and would be a bit messy, but a novice could quickly gauge what frameworks there are, which ones are popular, and around which ones there is controversy.)

They dont't care much about 2 ("help vampires"), answer the questions if it is not much effort, otherwise ignore them. They don't like the term, and absolutely hate it when 1 accuses them of being one. It is incredibly rude when one closes your question for supposedly being "homework".

They don't care about 3 ("rep whores") either, and find the grudge of 1 against 3 silly. Let them have the rep they can get, if they're having fun and contributing useful content! Like 3, they enjoy getting rep (or XP), and try to unlock new features on the site, but isn't that the point of gamification?

Basically, these are the people who also care about the site and the community, but are less obsessive and deletionist (I'm looking for a less offensive word for anal-retentive...) than the vocal majority on SO and Wikipedia.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. There is a real problem that Stack Overflow comes out on top if you Google for most of the "best X framework/library/... for Y" questions.

Thus, many if not most of my encounters with SO are with closed, marked-as- offtopic questions that are still often the best resource to get an overview of the available alternatives.

I would love for someone to sift through the SO dataset for such questions and create a new, separate community catering to this specific need.

<comment><USER12> As is usually mentioned on the "Take my SO, please" discussions on HN, there is a site for that[1], which I usually forget about when I have that type of question.

[1] [http://www.slant.co](http://www.slant.co)

<comment><USER11> Ah, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who has learned to program and embarked on a career as a game developer in the past few years I found stack overflow to be invaluable. I was, and still am, certainly a 2 (help vampire) If I encountered something I didnt understand or could not get working I would often post a question there. I was amazed at how helpful the 3s (repwhores) were. Their answers saved me a lot of time and accelerated my learning, though I have to say I was quite baffled by how helpful they were, I always wondered how people had time to be answering questions there.

Anyway I think for the purposes of learning programming nowadays this help vampire / repwhore relationship is very pragmatic, also I think it is the most important function of the site (1s be damned!) to help people learn.

I've found learning programming that often the initial learning curve is quite steep, and there is often not any proper documentation for things nowadays, there are things you could never figure out yourself and in those cases you just need to be pointed in the right direction by someone who knows.

Here is an example of a "bad" question I asked. It got downvoted, with snarky comments and answers but I dont care + it was very helpful for me mainly because in one of the comments someone mentioned the word "easing". It turns out What I was doing was easing but I just didnt know that word, learning that this kind of stuff is called "easing" was a huge help as now that I know what its called I can just search for resources on it. Theres no way I would have been able to figure out that these things are called "easing" by myself

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22070187/making-a-sine- wa...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22070187/making-a-sine-wave-steeper)

<comment><USER14> The reason you were given for closing the question is terrible ("lacks sufficient information", what?), but you were basically asking a simple math question on a programming site.

This is the trouble with being _too_ specific. It's often better to say: here's what I want to do and why, what's the best way to accomplish that? Describe your actual problem first, before getting into your attempted solution.

<comment><USER15> Definitely better suited to the math stack exchange site, I would have thought

<comment><USER16> IIRC, mathoverflow maintains a "nothing an undergrad could reasonably be expected to know" policy.

<comment><USER17> There are two math sites, Math Overflow is for professional mathematicians (and started outside the SE network). Math SE is for everyone with math questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am in a 5th camp. I like going for interesting discussion.

However after having people from group 1 decide that the discussion that I wanted was happening on off topic questions. There was one particular case where group 1, the moderation nazis, decided that the question was "off topic" and should be deleted. After I complained about it here, people went and voted it back into existence. But I've been pretty close to inactive there since once I'd had that taste of moderation and realized that, as far as the site was concerned, the moderation nazis were mostly correct - the kind of algorithm questions that I found fun were off topic.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11314077/algorithm-for- ex...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11314077/algorithm-for-exclusion-of- numbers/11317787) for the particular question that lead to my getting frustrated with the site.

<comment><USER19> I left for the same reason. I wish someone would open a competitor where we could have these discussions.

<comment><USER20> Wouldn't Quora be an alternative for subjective / vague questions ?

<comment><USER21> The forced sign-up is so scummy that it drives many users (including myself) away.

<comment><USER18> Ditto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I always wondered if this point would come.

Because there's no method of recycling karma from people who have left the community, there must be a source of new karma that will allow new members of the community to take part in the community.

Since the only way of creating karma is to answer questions, this means there must be a constant stream of new questions sufficient to provide karma for all the new people.

But new technologies aren't being generated fast enough to provide a constant stream of new questions that can be answered easily enough to generate the stream of new karma required.

So we see duplicate questions being answered instead of being marked as duplicate because answering them creates karma but flagging them as duplicate doesn't. Only the existing moderators, who have "enough" karma, care about flagging duplicates.

So we end up here, by design.

<comment><USER23> That's an interesting point of view for the "karma economy" angle; I believe there's always enough karma sources, or rather there's always ways to create them if the scope of the site is wide enough. I would push the idea a bit further and introduce karma destruction. To me, the most useful way to destroy karma points is to introduce a karma-based site subscription; that is, one subscribes to the site in order to read/write it but there is a constant fee of N karma points per day. User contributions are tipped with karma points taken from the upvoter/downvoter's karma pool. Eventually, one may let user buy free access (but not karma points directly otherwise it becomes a plutocratic system) in order get some support money.

<comment><USER22> Or they could award karma for doing things that keep the community as they want it. Like flagging duplicates, tidying up code examples, etc.

Karma Economics... I like it :)

<comment><USER24> They already award some karma for doing those stuff but its a very small amount and it sometimes has a cap (IIRC, you only gain karma for your firt 500 edits)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think "keeping the site clean", as the linked author mentions, should be the goal of moderators, with the exception of obvious spam or questions so confusing they don't make sense.

Moderators who close questions they deem as "dirty" questions on SO (e.g. my question here [1]), remind me of the Wikipedia moderators who delete an article I'm explicitly looking for as not notable enough to be on the site.

I wonder if their psychological motivations are similar, as well.

1\. [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14779751/how-do-i- change...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14779751/how-do-i-change-the- font-selection-in-a-gmail-compose-window-from-javascript)

<comment><USER15> That question is clearly not a programming question and, therefore, not suitable for a programming q&a forum. I think the moderators got it right on this occasion. You could argue that SO should be for all kinds of questions, or all kinds of questions that are anything to do with computers, but the founders chose to handle that with other sites in the Stack Exchange network.

<comment><USER26> _That question is clearly not a programming question_

Not programming? When the first and only answer contains _JavaScript code_? Looks like SO has a rather odd definition of "programming".

I don't use SO myself but often stumble across interesting bits of info on there from Google, and also a lot of the puzzling "is this really off-topic?" questions. That's mainly what put me off from registering and participating, even to answer someone else's question/leave a comment - the community looks far too rigidly moderated for my taste.

<comment><USER15> Fair point; you're totally correct. For some reason, I didn't see the 'from JavaScript' trailing words at first (i've seen a lot of genuine, 'how do I use this software' questions on SO before, which are definitely not programming)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I found SO to be pretty useless for more complicated questions. Sure, if you ask something that you could answer by looking into the docs then you are flooded with answers by dozens of people.

But as soon as it gets to some obscure API maybe a handful people uses currently you not only get no constructive answers but get downvoted, get useless but borderline hateful comments and in the end the question gets closed because of $reasons.

Now if you go and start googling that obscure API it's inevitable that you will find SO questions about it. "Great, maybe I can find something there in the comments" you think. But no, that question most likely is closed because of $reasons and has no comments because comments on closed questions are not allowed.

In the last few years I had a handful of cases where even discussing with someone who didn't know the solution to my problem might have brought me a little nearer to the solution. But you even can't start a discussion in SO questions because if it's not an answer the question gets closed down - <USER2> matter how helpful the discussion might turn out for people with said problem.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, SO can be pretty bad for deep knowledge. Actually, the web is bad overall. It used to be a badge Of pride to stump SO; now it doesn't seem that hard.

This is a real problem with SO: it seems to prize 'easier' information by design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the linked post, the difference between 1 & 2 emerge in most communities, it's the September that never ended, the inner circle pulling up the drawbridge at the sight of the hordes of outer circle people swarming in. Group 3 belong to group 2 and are hoping to jump to group 1 but just haven't managed it yet (and don't know what it takes).

The caretakers seek to either preserve things how they were, or to make it conform to some twee memory (sentimental, nostalgic imagining of how it was, which doesn't conform to reality... i.e. people imagining HN was once better even though pg showed that the quality in the past and present was similar) or unrealistic ideal.

I personally don't think the first two groups can co-exist peacefully without a degrading in the quality of the experience from the perspectives of both groups. To please either group will rub the other the wrong way.

My take is that communities work best with gated circles and steps of promotion. That there is progression.

I don't mean karma (the computer measurement of progression and merit).

I mean that this is a social problem and people solve it and not computers. That all communities are able to recognise themselves pretty well, and would organise themselves accordingly.

I mean cliques.

Cliques cannot be coded out of existence as if they are a non-meritocratic scourge. They are an entirely natural way in which people organise themselves and people will continue to organise themselves thus.

I think that attempting to apply a meritocratic measure (karma, a technical solution to a social problem) will always fail. It needs to be recognised that it's a social problem that merely needs technical tooling.

By which, I mean that these self-identified networks, hierarchies, groups, should be able to control access, visibility for their collaborative work.

In the context of Stack Overflow, it's obvious that the goal of keeping everything visible at the highest scope is to drive as many eyeballs to unanswered questions as possible. But I would argue that it is better to allow sub-communities to thrive and to allow them to control the granularity of those sub-groups... thus putting them in charge of how many eyeballs see their particular set of unanswered questions.

Just like HN, a single SO tends to be far too broad. Just like HN, SO would benefit from allowing users to create smaller groups within the larger scope to deal with ever more niche interests.

Communities don't scale, so allow them to perform their own version of cell- division to remain highly relevant to their members.

<comment><USER30> > I think that attempting to apply a meritocratic measure (karma, a technical > solution to a social problem) will always fail.

Give one exemple of a QandA site that has a better system than stackoverflow at that scale(i insist on the latter).There is none,because nobody has done better.

> Communities don't scale, so allow them to perform their own version of cell- > division to remain highly relevant to their members.

Communities scale when they have strict rules that help promote civil discussions and interesting content.

<comment><USER29> That's the wrong question. Plus you've precluded any ability for me to answer with an example as "at that scale" requires something equal or bigger within the limited Q&A space.

The reason it's the wrong question is that Q&A is merely one form of communication that can exist within a community.

Conversations (forums) are another.

News/Link/Image sharing (the reddits, HNs, Diggs, Slashdot, etc) are another.

Even e-commerce has communities (through reviews and recommendations - <USER3> reviews are an example).

Communities are merely groups of people that have a shared interest and agree to use some form of communication to collaborate around that interest.

I would argue that Reddit is a great example of a community that allows the type of division I describe (through subreddits).

Reddit shows that by doing so that they are able to keep the quality very high with a low and highly varied moderation policy at every applicable level of scope.

Communities don't scale. But providing tools that allow them to naturally divide into smaller communities increases the total size of that group of communities whilst retaining a high quality and low moderation effort within each area.

Edit:

You've edited to add another line, but maybe you want to read this: [http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html](http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html) (Audiences scale, communities don't) .

Also, I think the Tragedy of the Commons applies [http://dieoff.org/page95.htm](http://dieoff.org/page95.htm) and on Kuro5hin back in the day that argument was made fairly well and relates to the problems of scaling a community: [http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46](http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/1/17/21155/1564/46#46)

<comment><USER30> > That's the wrong question. Plus you've precluded any ability for me to > answer with an example as "at that scale" requires something equal or bigger > within the limited Q&A space.

You're basically saying SO system is broken, I say it is not because nobody has done better at that scale. Doesnt mean it is perfect,just mean it's the best thing we've come up with yet.You cant prove me wrong on that.

And SO is a QandA , it's not an image/link/sharing recommendation system, you talk about all these sites and pretend like they play in the same category as SO,that would make them comparable to SO.They are not.

<comment><USER29> > you talk about all these sites and pretend like they play in the same > category as SO,that would make them comparable to SO.They are not.

They are.

They are all a form of content management system for a community or group.

And I'm not saying SO is broken, I'm saying communities don't scale. You can certainly tweak a community to get it farther down the road than other comparable communities (tags do this well for SO), but to imagine you've dodged the reality that communities don't scale is wrong.

Instead we should look at how things scale in societies, and they do so by splitting themselves into manageable sized groups... cliques, microcosms of the whole, each potentially a part of a larger clique and host to ever smaller cliques but all with the same capabilities.

You cannot scale a single community, but you can perform a sleight of hand (e.g. subreddits) to allow a natural sub-division of the whole into many smaller communities that collectively have scaled the parent microcosm (the parent itself is a subset of a society or the larger global population).

Disclaimer: I build community software, and I realised I've gone and used the company name in my writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> SO is brilliant for classes of questions that have black/white type answers and infuriating for almost any question that has an "it depends" somewhere in the answer. Unfortunately many legitimate and serious programming/technology questions can only be answered with "it depends" and "this is my opinion".

For example: "Should I use NoSQL or an ACID based approach to my xyz development issue?" This is the type of issue that is common and without an explicit answer and is the type of question that will be closed because it requires an opinion or may lead to arguments.

It is almost unbelievable to me the number of times I have found great information in SO questions/answers that have been closed by some mod for the above reasons.

<comment><USER30> It's an interesting question but it has no place on SO,it's open ended and ask for a recommendation.

It depends on too many factors to encourage an accurate aOnly you knows your requirements.

a good SO question is accurate,non trivial,with a reproducible test case.

Why dont you try Quora instead?Quora is made for that type of question.I'm personally not interested in Quora as I find its content quality quite poor.

<comment><USER12> I love the 'try quora' advice. 'Not enjoying running our gauntlet? Maybe trying swimming in this rain filled dumpster? I wouldn't.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm a member of another community that was run almost exactly like that for musicians called future producers. I moved from a 3 to a 1,4 and now I'm a pure 4. The thing that the 1's need to come to grips with is that people are going to keep asking the same questions over and over. SO needs the concept of a `git merge` so you can take take questions which might be part of another question and merge them in. By merge i mean a true merge, not just a link to the other question. SO is beyond the Q&A phase and needs to transition into the data curation phase, but it's rudimentary vote/mark duplicate/close/delete system isn't designed to facilitate that.

<comment><USER33> And they should award karma for spotting the duplicates, so people would do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am also a caretaker (not on SO but in the communities I join) and therefore I think I can say that caretakers are not really the best of the four. We often overdo things, get too much involved, too much heated up, which doesn't decrease the stress and doesn't create a healthy atmosphere at all.

Also there are two more groups Mystikal doesn't see in his ambitions. One is the group of people who come from time to time to ask or answer some questions, moderate a little, just have fun and learn something. And there are also the people who actually work (I mean for money) to keep the community going. These people often are just interested to calm everything down. I think these two groups should not be underestimated because often they are the reason it didn't break completely. They don't need to voice their opinion to every single post, so they are not as visible. But they also don't have beef with anybody and they provide actual content most of the time, because that's the only reason they came in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER30> Loving SO. One of the best moderated site in the world. Yes it's not perfect but i've yet to see a site as big as SO with a better moderation,given all the crap that get posted and fortunatly moderated.

One thing i wish I could do is to star a question in the question listing without visiting the actual question,so i can pick it up later,like a quick bookmark.Also i'd like to see more questions per page.

<comment><USER35> I second that. I've found SO extremely useful.

I have noticed some of the issues mentioned by others, like the overly zealous duplicate hunters and brainless comebacks like "You shouldn't do it that way". That's just line noise to me. I fast forward past it and find answers that save me hours of time.

It seems that someone out there has already asked nearly every question I come up with. There's not always an answer that I can use, but at least it's good to see someone else formulating my question a little differently.

I guess I don't really fit into the OP's 1-4 categories. I'm just a person who finds SO useful about once a week or so. I don't have the time or the deep knowledge to be answering questions on a daily basis and racking up huge karma. Just thankful the service exists, and have put in my 2 cents a few times when I had something useful to contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Stack Overflow needs to make people slow down.

A lot of the time, how quickly you can post your answer is the single most important factor in how many upvotes you'll get. It doesn't matter how thoroughly you research the topic. Too many answerers (#3 "repwhores") are trying to beat the clock, half of them don't even read the question. If you waste 30 seconds trying to format your code or making sure that your solution actually works in jsfiddle, two other people will have already answered the question and the OP might even have accepted one of them. You know what's even worse? While you're still writing your answer, a message pops up and helpfully tells you that this has happened. Thanks a lot! Stop writing and close the damn tab.

The whole system is rigged to discourage time-consuming research. The front page above the fold is always reserved for questions from the last 2-3 minutes, which sends a not-so-subtle message that if you can't grab someone's attention in the next 2-3 minutes, whatever you write will probably be buried forever.

A few years ago, I used to repwhore. It's addictive, but I quit. Now I prefer to write long-form, comprehensive, thoroughly researched answers. On HN I feel confident in doing so, because I know that the community encourages that kind of behavior. On SO I rarely post any answers anymore, because I'm pretty sure that nobody will read them if it takes more than a few minutes to read or write.

<comment><USER37> I usually upvote anyone that takes the time to answer my question reasonably (unless its obviously wrong, or not answering the question). Seems like courtesy to me, but I noticed that it doesn't usually get returned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Post seems to be from someone who is in group 1. As someone not in group 1, if group 1 actually did a good job caretaking I'd have no problem with them. Really, though, they close the most interesting questions that could actually be helpful to me and only leave open stupid stuff that could be looking up in the docs trivially. So they make the site useless for me. Worse they tend to edit my answers to be incorrect just to make them look nicer. I wouldn't say they are care taking, I'd just say they've been given power and they enjoy enforcing rules for the hell of it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I believe that there should be a higher burden for beginners to ask their question, before it can go live.

New users need to prove that they have done research, this can be done with a few questions like "name the three google search terms that you have used to find a solution", "how much time did you spend on researching?" (easily faked, but maybe it gives people a hint to step back and try harder).

There could also be a new-user queue where higher reputation users would review a question (but are unable to answer it) before it can go live, with the possibility to go back and forth before the question goes online.

In my blog post I have detailed what I'd propose: [http://alexander.kirk.at/2014/04/26/stack-overflow-ways- out-...](http://alexander.kirk.at/2014/04/26/stack-overflow-ways-out-of-the- negativity/)

<comment><USER10> I don't know... I'm not bothered at all by new users or dumb questions. What bothers me are experienced users questioning my intentions, being patronizing and thinking I am dumb. I have to include a disclaimer with almost every second question: "Yes, I know what I am doing. No, I am not suffering from the XY problem. No, I will not treat you answer as legal advice. Yes, I have tried to solve the problem on my own. Here is a bunch of useless code to prove I am worthy of getting an answer." If I don't do that, I'll get - within seconds - comments like "show what you have done" or "don't do that! what are you actually trying to achive!"

The other thing is that, increasingly, the kind of questions that would a) help me and b) I could answer with expertise are the kind of questions that are banned on the various SE sites. SE has ceased being useful to me a while ago.

<comment><USER39> I think the being patronized is an effect of the flood of the huge amount low quality. It is assumed that you did little to no research because this is the case most of the times.

What kind of question are you referring to that are banned?

<comment><USER10> On stackoverflow, it is not so clear-cut and I can't tell you one single kind of question. But on physics.stackexchange.com, my problem is that apparantly medium-level questions are frowned upon. We have some very high-level (research-level) questions, and many very low-level (popular science or below high-school level) questions. People rightfully complained about the low ratio of high to low level questions, but one thing they did against it was to ban "homework" and "homework-like" questions. This does not just include actual homework, but basically anything where you say "I'd like to calculate x, how do I do it?", and anything where you have to go through a few steps to find an answer.

The problem is, after ~10 years at the university, studying and teaching, I'm basically an expert in "homework". I can answer most university-level questions. I prefer answering (and asking) questions where the answer is "do this, then this, and then you get that", maybe with a few formulas, to a few paragraphs of prose. After all, I personally think that fits better with the SE model and with physics. But actually, what's welcome at the moment are mostly "conceptional" questions where an answer explains an abstract concept with prose. The community has narrowed down the allowed scope a lot out of fear of 1) low-level questions, and 2) accidentally helping somebody with their homework (god forbid!). But instead of getting more expert-level questions, they get less mid-level questions. I've found that I can currently neither ask nor answer anything there.

<comment><USER40> wow. you pretty much summarized that feeling - that last sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Clay Shirky summarised _every single discussion of this type_ in "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy":

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> Where's #5 - moderation nazis? Often have overlap with #3, repwhores, they repwhore in order to get high enough reputation to get the power to do moderate as they see fit... note that #5 may think they're in camp #1, but they err too often on the side of closing posts because they want to exercise their power.

This is my main problem with all stack exchange sites. It rewards repwhores with power. I'd prefer that reputation and power were divorced somehow. I don't know how to determine who would make a good moderator... but just "someone who posts a lot" is not really a good metric.

</comment><comment><USER43> I haven't completely lost interest in participating at SO, but I am mostly just thankful they don't delete all of the old "closed as not constructive" questions because they are some of the most helpful content on the site. The community wiki feature would be a better technical solution for questions that are a bit too subjective.

But then there's the proliferation of SE sites with ambiguous/overlapping subject areas and only a handful of users. I'm solidly in the "don't give a shit" camp for those.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's true: Stack Overflow has changed. It's not bad (yet?), but it is different. The discussion on the linked page focuses a lot on bad questions, and there are plenty. But it's also much, much harder to ask good questions. To some extent the site is a victim of its own success: whereas I used to ask a basic question [1] and get several up-votes and a good answer, now I ask a basic question [2] and get almost as many down-votes as up-votes, plus the answers themselves get as many down-votes as up-votes, including some answers I actually liked but the community decided were so bad they couldn't just leave them at 0, they had to push them down to -1 and into the leper colony. Tons of comments and answers insist I had an XY problem [3] when I did not.

Some of it is because "The good questions have all been asked and answered," and some of it is that the legitimate complaints about absurdly low-quality questions have gotten people into such a mood that a so-so question from a veteran user makes them spend their own reputation to down-vote each others' answers.

Stack Overflow has an XY problem: the real problem is that a lot of questions are just bad because the barrier to entry has remained too low for too long, but it thinks the problem is the XY problem.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/q/148951/](http://stackoverflow.com/q/148951/)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/q/22856977/](http://stackoverflow.com/q/22856977/)

[3] [http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem)

</comment><comment><USER45>
      Me: I'm trying to do X, I know I need to do Y first but it doesn't work. Can someone
          please go through the basic principles I need to do this thing.
      Comment: Post some code
      Me: (posts summary code but it's a difficult problem and you can't make a trivial example)
      Comment: No idea
      0 answers

      Me: I have this problem with X and Y, but it's not working.
      Answer (2 upvotes): You should (onerous and time consuming alternative approach
        suggestion with absolutely no evidence that it would solve the problem)
      My comment: How do I know this is going to solve my problem ?
      Comment: Try it first and come back.

      Someone: (difficult and useful question) ?
      0 answers, 5 upvotes
      #1 result in Google; top 10 hits for every search on this and related subjects leads to
      this question on SO or mirror sites

Another scenario -

      Me: (challenging question) ?
      0 answers, 0 upvotes

      Another person: Why does j++(++)++++++++++ not give me the answer I expect ?
      110 answers, accepted answer receives 200+ upvotes, question has 1000 upvotes and is
      locked because of too many frivolous answers/comments

<comment><USER46> What makes this worse is that sometimes the alternative approach to #2 really is much easier, if the asker would do it. And sometimes, the asker really is wrong to regard it as more onerous. So we can't categorically ban that kind of response. But it's not automatically valid either. People will generate instances of both problems all day. So we're back to moderation to solve that somehow and moderation always has problems.

It's only a community problem when the community takes up a strong bias e.g. against the asker, and does things like closing questions aggressively. There is an underlying problem but the community has made it worse and closed off the natural compensation mechanisms.

As for lack of response to serious/challenging/useful questions (which already has a 'reputation' incentive) I'm afraid there's no way to solve that unless cash bounties will work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Still it reminds me of open source, help chans on IRC, wikipedia...

\- At the beginning it is fun and new you are a pioneer (phase discovery) \- Then you understand the concept and experiments its power (fun) and you have grown a culture with your alpha wave of compadres you become a native of the place; \- then it has success in a brutal fashion triggering a new massive phase of «new comers» (proportion of new might be bigger than the one of old), it is the mass immigration/colonization phase \- then there is a «cultural conflict» between the old and the new regarding the way to use the tool/to be part of community. This part can last a long time and I call it the Babel tower effect.

(I vaguely map the state machine described as a chronological effect)

Every community big enough and successful will suffer it. However in the process the «native» ideas are often killed, and the original success can be lost. Plus there is never a consensus, so some people will be feeling unwelcomed.

It can be seen optimistically as stochastic improvements (the pioneers will seed somewhere else and help discover new territories), or as a process of the mass integration the pioneers back into the crowd// normalization/colonization.

Internet may have many virtues but when it comes to human beings it does not change the eternal problem of «doing something together».

Every time you take part in improving the world and try to propose a worthfull alternative, there is a chance the culture will evolve in something different then what you help to build.

My advice is to fight the tendency for bitterness and leave these communities the same way Odysseus left Nausicaa.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm most frustrated by the fact that their closed questions rank so well. It's not a good fit for a Q/A format, but it is a food fit for inbound traffic, so we're leaving it up.

The keyword stuffing in the sidebar often makes the question rank for searches for which it isn't even relevant.

</comment><comment><USER49> What I think is the problem is actually the SE way of never giving notifications for bad stuff, only for good stuff. Your questions are silently closed or edited, your bad "suggested edits" are silently discarded etc.. So a lot of users do, and continue to do, "bad" stuff because they don't know they're supposed to do differently.

This means that single users act up, directly towards the offenders of the rules. This creates a lot of drama. I think that shouldn't be necessary, it's the job of the system, not single users to notify them about bad behavior.

<comment><USER50> I agree, but you do get notifications for edits to your posts.

</comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi Probably I'm a radical, but I just don't see the point of deleting factual information in the Internet, as long as it is true information.

Someone creates an article in Wikipedia about a subject that is totally irrelevant for most people? It's fine. It's not as if I'm ever going to see it (as I only tend to see articles I search for), and a Wikipedia page doesn't exactly take a lot of space by today's standards. We have the technology to build a virtually unlimited repository of all human knowledge, with no effective physical limits, and some mods keep acting as if it had to fit into a physical bookshelf.

With SO it's the same, why should I care if a question is considered to be irrelevant or even a duplicate? If I search for it on Google and it contains reliable information that solves my problem, it's useful for me. If it's really irrelevant, I'm not going to search for it, and therefore it's not going to make me lose any of my time.

We have search tools that keep getting better and better and allow us to pinpoint what is useful for us among a vast sea of information. There's no need to spend valuable human time on deleting stuff, the search engine will filter it for me so that I get what I want, thank you very much!

</comment><comment><USER51> There is a lot of reference material on SO that I find useful, and my own reputation score continues to increase on its own, but I haven't posted a new answer on the site in at least 2 years.

To me, the gamification problem has simply led to what's really going on: users caring more about the score than about the quality of the content. 5 years ago, I can recall a single question eliciting awesome input from the likes of Jon Skeet, Marc Gravell, etc. While the scores were interesting (Skeet's rep off-the-charts), the content was fantastic.

Motivations are skewed, now. People are trying to build reputation as a number rather than content. What I'm surprised at is why anyone would want to drive up a high rep score backed with completely inane content? What's the point?

The gamification rules for the site seemed to have transitioned it from a knowledge center to nothing more than a game.

<comment><USER52> > _What 's the point?_

Better job offers? Or maybe just invisible internet points.

<comment><USER51> > Better job offers?

A better job offer due to a good Stack Overflow reputation score?

Good grief.

<comment><USER37> There are plenty of jobs descriptions that ask for examples of open source contributions. In my current job, and every previous one for the last eleven years, the projects I work on are in house, so I have _nothing_ I can show to potential employers. If I had a good SO reputation I would see it as a reasonable alternative to show to potential employers.

(I am working on a side project at the moment mainly to get around the problem I described, but this is taking a whole lot more time than answering a some SO questions.)

<comment><USER51> > If I had a good SO reputation I would see it as a reasonable alternative to > show to potential employers.

I get the sentiment, but it holds little value for me. (I'm in the potential employer category.) I find it pointless as a meter of competency.

> I am working on a side project at the moment mainly to get around the > problem I described, but this is taking a whole lot more time than answering > a some SO questions.

Think about this comment for a minute. A side project takes longer to complete and requires more discipline and concerted effort. SO questions are quick hits, small scope, and are basically lather-rinse-repeat (find a question, answer it.)

Care to hazard a guess which one of these choices of time I might find more appealing in a candidate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm more familiar with Server Fault, I started contributing last month (made top of "new users") and it feels good to have helped a bunch of people that thanked you, but I'm a Camel's straw away for giving up between some moderators and how the system works.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'd like to filter out some people. Currently for example there is someone asking long and complex, but useless, Common Lisp / C / C++ questions without knowing the basics. He has also asked the same questions on the mailing list for this topic (it's about interfacing Common Lisp with C). He uses multiple accounts on stack overflow and asks multiple questions about similar things. Whenever he moves, slowly, forward, then something breaks and he asks.

It's like asking about formula one motor electronics, while not capable to even work on the simplest piece of electronics.

Stackoverflow really needs to adapt to these changing patterns of abuse.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wish I knew the economics term when reward is gotten without paying a due price? Skin in the game, but not crazy about that term.. I think there's a knee jerk reaction 'hey this is great everything is free', but that can be a bad thing, and it applies to many other things. Value needs to be compensated with value.

If the problem is too many bad questions, the thing is there is no barrier to entry for asking a question. Charge people a dollar or even 50 cents, or even 25 cents - the point is anything but free. You'll see a much better quality of questions. Easier to whine about it, which is also easy and free.

<comment><USER56> Are there too many bad questions?

Why not the Google answer, which is that search brings you "good" no matter how much "bad" there is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> We know how successful karma/reputation systems are at encouraging users to contribute good content. The unexpected thing I've learned from Stack Overflow is that the reputation system, when it doesn't work as expected, can also be demotivating.

My personal experience has been mixed with regards to how successfully my answers are accepted. On multiple occasions, I've answered questions first, only to have another answer accepted that contained the same content as mine but was posted hours later.

I don't know if this is a common experience or if my sample size is too small. In any case it's a bit frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER58> When I first started asking questions I learned a lot, the most articulated answers always came from the same users. It was also these same users that downvoted me, then upvoted when I corrected my mistakes. I've learned so much from my mistakes. I now welcome the downvotes just so I can prove myself!

After a year on Stack I started answering questions and still today don't hesitate to downvote users that don't understand what constitutes a valid question. I find people 'used' to react well commenting... "what did I do wrong?". Its the recent reaction to downvotes that changed.

</comment><comment><USER56> The striking thing for me was to Google a few questions in a row, to find good answers on SO, and then to see that each one was also closed/rejected for some reason. It was strange to see that the answers to these questions all had high ratings, but the question was closed anyway.

I guess it's a vision opposite of the internet itself. Rather than "find one of a million pages that work for me" it is "there should only be one."

(In the spirit of the internet, perhaps if a question cannot be found by a simple search on SO, that IS a reason to ask again, and to fill the search slot.)

</comment><comment><USER59> In my eyes the problem is pseudonymity and pseudo interaction.

If the system isn't anonymous, people will try to use it for their personal reputation gains. See Github, Stackexchange, Wikipedia.

If the system promotes pseudo interaction, like votes, it will lead people to empathise posts, which they _think_ are good, but don't have to be. You don't have to conduct real interaction with the content and users, like writing and reading, you just have to click, which leads to easy manipulation from people who don't know anything real to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think stackoverflow is working just fine, it's just weird. For example a question I posted recently I got a great answer in minute or so, as well as grumpy comments and closed.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21889666/facial- recogniti...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21889666/facial-recognition- software-that-can-detect-eye-positions)

<comment><USER33> You probably should not have used `linux` and `osx` tags for such a specific question.

<comment><USER60> I was looking for a solution that worked on either

<comment><USER33> Yeah, but it injected your question to the feeds of people who follow the `linux` or `osx` tag, 99.9+% of whom have no idea how to answer your question, and this resulted in some of them closing your question as off-topic.

Whereas, the people following the `image-processing` and `face-recognition` would probably (my guess) not have closed your question as off-topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Should karma be an ephemeral thing? Should it age off in a week or so?

There could be a downside to the early entrants benefit. Sure, you can explore new territory and carve out a huge position, but you become a "Land Barron" in a sense, and no friend of later "squatters." (Relatedly, Bitcoin)

("sure I've got 20000 points, but they guy just climbing from 100 to 200 is a repwhore")

</comment><comment><USER61> Well I found lately that asking anything on SO that is not trivial doesn't get an answer. My last 3 questions were up-voted, but never answered. I'm a regular SO user, I know the rules, I'm doing my research, my questions are not subjective, they are "answerable", yet they remain without answers.

</comment><comment><USER62> Stack Overflow has definitely given better organization to the corpus of data borne of programmer on-the-fly discovery and for that I and all programmers are grateful, but SO has made some serious mistakes that have hamstrung it.

First, the reputation system is inadequate and there are many people who game it. SO tried some interesting things, but "accepted answers" and the push to accept answers has always sucked. It rewards rapid-fire, crappy responses instead of thorough ones. You'll often find people just copying the page summary from Google or some other tiny snippet of text without context so that they could post first and get the "accepted answer" checkmark and the upvotes that come from the short time at the top of the page. Someone else will take 20-30 minutes to type out a thorough, good response that considers ramifications and end up with nothing. There's no way to recognize multiple answers, so if multiple answers contain valuable information you have to pick one to favor. There's also no way to deprecate answers if new versions break things; the best you can hope for is that the OP will know about the change, remember giving that answer one day, and go back and edit it. You can't change acceptances once awarded, and some people will accept answers without even trying them.

Those basic flaws in the contrived reputation system have caused problems on SO since day one and deterred many good contributors who weren't interested in racing against amateurs who just wanted to copy and paste answers.

Second-most damaging imo is the aggressive insistence on moving everything to other StackExchange sites and everything becoming a closed or karmaless ("community wiki") question on SO. A lot of relevant things were killed off on SO and moved to obscure StackExchanges where they never got a good answer. This deterred contribution, especially on questions that were cross- disciplinary as your question would get stuck in a loop where moderators on SO would say "this should be on SuperUser" and moderators on SU would say "this should be on StackOverflow". Really it'd work fine on either. I think that part of why this got so out of hand was another component of the reputation system, that automatically gave those most likely to race to Google and copy and paste the first result moderation powers. If you give people shiny new toys, they'll want to use them, and you'll end up with a lot of unnecessary infractions being filed and stifling communication.

On top of all of that, a large reason SO even gained any popularity in the first place was the star power of Joel Spolsky. With such serious flaws in reputation systems, I'm honestly not sure that it would've gotten off the ground if not for his association.

I don't know that SO is ever going to grow out of these problems as they probably now feel their rep system is validated (falsely believing the rep system caused the site's success instead of acknowledging that the site is successful despite the rep system), and I think they've just relied on new people entering the groups outlined in this post. I don't know that they're going to run out of those people anytime soon, but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

<comment><USER34> Most of my upvotes come from years old questions and well written answers not from the first view interactions when the question is still on the top of the new ones. If you relax more, look for really good questions and take your time to answer them you will find that the questions aren't googleable, that you really need to put in time to find a good answer, etc. And you will see that even years later you still get upvotes for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Instead of fighting people who ask subjective questions, they should find a way to accommodate them ( make the questions expire after a year?). All these question closings are rightly perceived as aggressive and cause a lot of needless problems.

</comment><comment><USER64> IM very HO SO has a UX problem, namely the tone they use can sound negative even if there was a good intention. Something around "Your question was closed ... = because you are bad person"

<comment><USER46> Besides defeating the purpose of posting the question, having a question closed is inherently deflating regardless of wording. And should be reserved for genuine need, and should not be the default that every newbie has to fight tooth and nail just to get valid questions answered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Sometimes I wonder whether people are more interested in making an effort to help people or badmouth/downvote them on SO.

I help people often on IRC with dev questions (so much so that I was given ops in a particular channel for a library), and it is kept professional for the most part - no badmouthing, no matter how simple the question. Just trying to figure out people's problems and giving them advice. SO seems to fail to do that often, and that's why I'm not interested in contributing.

</comment><comment><USER66> He assumes too much in the arc (1,4).

</comment><comment><USER67> It's a complex problem, but with a "training/welcome period" (explained below) for new users, these specific issues can be addressed:

\- experts (users having rep above EXPERT_THRESHOLD, say 5000) want "interesting" questions

\- most new questions are not interesting

\- "new users" (having rep below some REGULAR_THRESHOLD, say 100) are not educated and have unrealistic expectations

\- it is expensive for the community to manually educate new users

\- asking questions is inexpensive for the asker, but answering questions is costly to the community (to research, comment, close, find dupes)

\- it's hard for new users to gain rep by answering questions because rep- whores are more experienced with the site. thus new users are instead encouraged to gain rep by asking questions.

Some ideas mentioned on SE would help:

\- require rep for asking questions

\- give rep for finding duplicates (discouraging repwhores from answering dupes, encouraging dupe linking)

\- give rep for taking a quiz about the 2-Minute Tour or other FAQs

Additionally, a training/welcome period for new users (during which they interact a slightly more among themselves than directly with experts) would go a long way toward fixing a lot of deeper issues. New user questions (which tend to be uninteresting dupes) would be hidden from experts for some period of time NEW_Q_DUR (say 1 day). During that time, _only_ other new users or regular users can answer the question. Experts can un-hide them with a Setting but can only comment, not answer. Benefits:

\- new/regular users (that care about the site) are incentivized to answer questions, find dupes, work with others at their rep-level and do some of the (educational) activities that experts see as menial, rather than just ask questions

\- experts get a higher signal/noise ratio of interesting questions, as bad questions can be cleaned up by new/regular users and interesting questions will likely remain unanswered after NEW_Q_DUR (since new users tend to be less experienced and less able to answer difficult, good questions from other new users)

\- dupe rep-whoring is mitigated because once a rep-whore becomes an expert, they cannot answer dupe questions without new/regular users having time NEW_Q_DUR to flag as dupe

\- new user expectations are made more realistic. until they've participated a certain amount, they cannot expect to draw immediate attention from experts. also, they become aware of the dupe problem.

A caveat might be that new user questions with enough upvotes can become answerable by experts before the normal time limit. Also, if/when new user question quality improves, NEW_Q_DUR can be reduced.

Some very minor drawbacks:

\- new users would be slightly deterred from asking certain questions because they do not value answers from non-experts (leading them to do more research on their own)

\- more class-ful community, potentially creating stronger biases (I don't think this is too bad because class mobility is clear and feasible)

\- some new users that would care about the site might instead be turned off by the welcome period on some principal and never participate

</comment><comment><USER68> 4.

</comment><comment><USER69> It's interesting, is stackoverflow a Q & A site? I'd say a definite nup.

It's wikipedia, well that's where it's true value lies I think. But it's way to get content is 'suckering' people in thinking it's a Q&A site.

It's value to the community is amazing. But it is a chameleon.

Relevance. Not sure, perhaps if you dig to deep in anything the matrix spoils reality.

</comment><comment><USER70> The JavaScript community on StackOverflow is very JQuery centric - <USER4> annoying if someone prefers modern vanilla JavaScript. And their point system is not optimal and contributes to _karma whores_.

Beside that, SO is a good resource that pops up in the top Google search results.

</comment><comment><USER71> NAILED. IT.

</comment><comment><USER72> Once I saw a client typing part of her domain in the browser's search to then click on the first Google result: her site. What? Wait: use the address bar, you know the domain. My way is 'faster' she said. Not really I said: your way is type, wait, click. The fast, and correct, way is to type just a few letters on the address bar and if your browser is remembering: enter. The solution? Make the address bar and search bar one and be smart enough to know if the user is searching or just calling a usual site.

So, if I have a question about xyz, type a few kwds and google-it, top 3-5 results are SO, then something else, then the 'official' docs. What? Wait: aren't the docs the most relevant trust-worthy correct answer? Docs always suck and SO is faster. Then hire SO wizards to write the docs and pay them dollars not karma ;)

What? Wait: aren't I way off topic? Did I piss you off? Did you get enough hugs as a child? Enough beer last night?

Happy weekend you wizards :)

PS: Pardon my typos and grammar. English not my mother tounge. Yes, there are programmers past the border ;)</comment>


How Condo Flippers are making a killing in Toronto - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/condo-flipping-toronto-hot-housing-market/article34908345 <comment><AUTHOR> One the most neat-flowing articles I've read.

</comment><comment><USER2> One word: Miami.</comment>


Nine Rounds a Second: Why the Las Vegas Shooting Was Different - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/02/us/vegas-guns.html <comment><USER2> We cling to the "right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" portion of the 2nd amendment, but forget the preceding piece of the same amendment "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State".

What we have now is the absence of domestic security and no evidence of a well regulated militia. We kowtow to the ever expanding security theater encompassing the small activities in our lives, and our day to day freedom decreases with each pat down and purse search.

The people at this show were screened, patted down, searched and then fenced in. They were the proverbial fish in a barrel and they were being shot at.

Where is the well-ordered militia that has lists of citizens who have arms stock piles like Paddock? When are citizens with militia level armaments trained in an ordered and effective fashion so that we may call upon them in times of crisis? When are arms-bearing citizens evaluated for their mental stability to ensure they exercise their rights in a fashion that promotes the security of a free state? We do none of these things because we are a failing state. By failing state, I specifically mean that we are failing to fully implement laws and regulations that enact the full meaning and intent of the 2nd amendment.

<comment><USER3> As someone who defends the right to own guns this still resonates with me.

Somewhere in between "doing nothing" and trying to "ban all guns" there is a good solution waiting to be found.

Meanwhile the discussion seems deadlocked and I guess many of us can understand both sides.

<comment><USER4> Unconventional gun law idea:

To get a license to own a gun, you need to take a marksmanship test. You get 36 shots, and have to fire at a 12" circular target 25' away. Your personal maximum magazine size is the number of shots that hit the target minus 24 (36-24= max 12). If you have less than 66% accuracy (<24 hits), no license. If you only hit 25, your max size is 1. Must have gun license on you any time you're in possession of a gun outside your house (for verification of magazine limit). Shooting ranges can let you rent a gun for practice without a license, but must stay on premises.

If you're going to own a gun for the purposes of protection, you should be able to fire it accurately, or you are a danger to yourself and others. Driving a car requires proof of competence, don't see any reason why guns shouldn't be the same: especially if its an objective test.

Would be relatively politically defensible, because opposition would have to argue that people who cannot fire accurately should still be able to own higher-capacity magazines, which is pretty hard position to argue.

The biggest counterpoint I can think of is that it might make it harder for victims of domestic violence to obtain weapons to protect themselves, but I think most of those situations are close enough range that there are other non lethal alternatives (taser, mace) that could be safer/more effective for someone without shooting experience.

<comment><USER5> > If you're going to own a gun for the purposes of protection, you should be > able to fire it accurately, or you are a danger to yourself and others.

But, conversely, the number of bullets you need for protection in any specific situation goes _down_ with accuracy, so inaccurate shooters legitimately _need_ more bullets.

<comment><USER6> For themselves, yes. But bystanders need the inaccurate shooters to have fewer bullets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mainstream journalism being fast-and-loose with weapon definitions again. I'm not sure if the NY times can't get it right, or they don't want to.

"Assault-style rifle" has no definition from what I can tell, other than getting used repeatedly by the news when "assault rifle" is technically incorrect but it looks like an assault rifle and they want to use the word "assault" near the word "rifle".

And "semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle" is just wrong. Semiautomatic- only rifles are not considered assault rifles.

<comment><USER8> I always see gun promoters trying to divert the discussion from the real issue (read: mass shootings and terrorism) towards the technicality of the term "assault weapon". Would calling these guns "weapons of mass murder" be more accurate? Does that distinction really makes a difference? Why does a law abiding citizen of America needs mass murdering guns with thousands of rounds?

<comment><USER7> The technical details here _matter_. What features do we want the firearms owned by law-abiding citizens to have? The use of the term "assault weapon" is a tragedy of discourse norms that conflates in the minds of many the incidental features of military assault rifles with the necessary features for weapons to be used for mass murder.

And for what it's worth, if you can make an intensional definition for "weapons of mass murder" that includes the most dangerous weapons for mass- murder purposes without unnecessarily curtailing the design space for the socially acceptable uses for weapons, please go for it.

<comment><USER9> If you are going to argue about terminology, argue first about how can there be a "design space for the socially acceptable uses of weapons". The phrase is laughable. Weapons are for killing--that's why they're called weapons. Arguing about what to actually call the physical thing that does the damage is missing the point and is trying to draw attention away from the real purpose of the thing.

<comment><USER7> Yes, these weapons are for killing. Using a firearm for home defense is socially accepted. This is exactly what makes it tricky to ban "mass murder" weapons while keeping "justified homicide" weapons legal.

<comment><USER9> "Mass murder weapon" versus "justified homicide weapon" is just a situational distinction that does nothing to address the fact that the physical thing is identical and inextricably tied to horrible, irrevocable actions. Your gun doesn't become a "justified homicide weapon" until after the fact. Up until then, it's always just a weapon because you can't prevent or enforce its use for a particular, sanctioned purpose.

<comment><USER10> They don't have to be identical physical things. That's what they mean by design space. What features (that affect things like range and rate of fire and accuracy and so on) should be legal on civilian weapons?

For the US even something like limited internal magazines isn't politically tenable (a 5 shot internal magazine and manual action would still be useful for hunting but could not be used to shoot hundreds of rounds per minute into a crowd of people).

Hell, I won't be real shocked if nothing gets done about bump stocks (which don't really have any purpose beyond shooting for fun).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to preface this by saying that yes those modifications should be illegal. However, would that have made difference? I am not that knowledgeable on the subject of gun modification, but aren't those things that would be added after purchase? And things someone could create themselves? They seems like fairly simple mechanics from short descriptions of them. So sure, outlaw them because they certainly aren't something any gun owner needs. But I don't think that would have made a difference in this situation. I doubt he had all those guns in the hotel legally. It is not like he waltzed in with his guns out in the open, he was hiding them already.

<comment><USER12> The problem of the right to bear arms is that it was done during a time when weapons were single shot, and hard to reload. There were limits to what you could do.

Now you can classify many of these weapon as having the potential for mass killings (not very different than explosives).

Should shotguns, and single shot rifles be allowed to be bought and sold freely? Sure, as they seem to fit the idea of what an weapon during the time was, and the right is in the constitution.

Should rapid fire machine guns be allowed? Probably not. The battle is where do you draw the line of what is allowed and what is not.

<comment><USER13> Historical reasons aside, what is the difference between slow and fast weapons that would make one want to allow the one but not the other? As a first approximation, it would seem that any argument that could be given for allowing or disallowing either of the types would be applicable also to the other type.

<comment><USER14> There are some actual productive uses for "slow" weapons. Farmers who might want to shoot predators, rabbits etc. Hunting animals for food as well if you support that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a gun owner and own a lot of firearms, including a number of semi- automatic rifles. I have never liked the bump stocks, crank triggers, and binary triggers. These "almost NFA" items are just so incredibly degenerate. You never see quality people firing these things at the gun range--it's always a scumbag. I will not cry if a bipartisan group of legislators bans the sale of these items.

<comment><USER16> As a fellow gun enthusiast, I agree. I have shot _real_ NFA select fire weapons (full/burst) and while they are a fun day at the range, there is little legitimate purpose for them outside of laying down cover fire.

These modifications that make something "almost NFA" have always rubbed me the wrong way. I wouldn't be surprised if the ATF issues a new opinion letter regulating their manufacture / sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sorry but I'm still a bit confused. Read through the article and others online, but I don't actually see it mentioned exactly what weapon was used. Is it literally an AR-15 that had some sort of change done to it? They mention 2 guns were used, but only talk about the one and don't offer much details. Asking out of curiousity, since everything I've read online doesn't really seem to just get to the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now it isn't clear, exactly, what weapon and modifications where used. This piece is being updated as we find out more [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/us/las-vegas-mass- shootin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/us/las-vegas-mass-shooting- weapons.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am curious, why is HN keeping articles about the shooting off the front page?

<comment><USER18> I gather it's because they generally fall into general news, rather than things that would be specifically interesting to HN, and also because stories about mass shootings always tend to degenerate into people just insulting each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a firearms enthusiast and was shocked to read that the rotating trigger mechanism wasn't outlawed. It almost definitely will be after this massacre.

I also think that this is a strong case of genetics at play considering that the shooter didn't even spend time with his bank robber father. The psychopath apple didn't fall far from the psychopath tree.

<comment><USER20> I understand everyone is upset about what this terrorist did, so am I.

However, we should be cautious about making statements about genetics. Apart from there not being any major scientific research behind it, it also leads to disturbing effects like the state detaining blood relatives of someone that commits crime because they will be more at risk of committing crimes in the future, thought-crimes, etc.

<comment><USER13> > this terrorist

Do we know this? Do we know what his motivation was?

<comment><USER8> Does his motivations make it any less terrorizing for the victims?

<comment><USER13> It strikes terror (in the sense of _fear_) into the victims there and then all the same, sure. I was talking about whether or not it constitutes _terrorism_, though. I mean, it's terrorism if the purpose is to spread fear in a way that will further some cause, but not every killing is terrorism, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jc-arp Most people drive assault weapons too

</comment><comment><USER21> Selling my Romanian AK-47 and other firearms obtained through purchase or inheritance felt great.

Since then there has been several mass casualty shootings in the states.

Wish I burned them now.

edit:

I didn't get rid of my collection over any huge reason, just didn't want the liability sitting around home when I haven't gone shooting in years. That said I feel like I've made a critical mistake in yielding my arms to people who would likely be less responsible than I during my ownership.

For anyone in the same position remember you can disable most firearms pretty easily by kludging a part or two. Hopefully will save someone that nagging feeling I have.

<comment><USER22> You aren't responsible for other people's heinous acts.

<comment><USER21> I know, but I don't know.

It is obviously my duty to deescalate & inhibit violence in my community when possible, while restricting people's avenues to tools that multiply the potential damage they can inflict.

This is why we have mental health care and regulations for buying explosives.

The best I could figure with my firearms at the time was selling them to the most responsible party possible, in my case it was gunsmiths. Recently some criminals attempted to break into their shop. Didn't get away with anything. So my choice already yielded measurable results in a way.

I'm not responsible people's heinous acts, but I am responsible for the environment people choose to act in.

<comment><USER23> Thank you for taking your responsibility seriously.

(I first wrote "...for being responsible", but then it has two opposite possible readings. Yikes.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Heroku Enterprise: New Features for Teams - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/2/19/introducing-heroku-enterprise-new-features-for-teams

<comment><USER2> So these team features are only available with a "Heroku Enterprise" account, yes?

It looks like Heroku Enterprise has a 'contact us for pricing' price?

Heroku was an influential part of a wave popularizing clearly advertised, transparent, standardized pricing. It's disappointing to see the market going back to the bad old days of "contact us for pricing", where pricing is negotiated separately for every customer and you have to invest time negotiating (or at least dealing with salespeople) to even find out the price, and your price may depend on your negotiating ability.

<comment><USER3> They told us it would be about $1k/month minimum to get access to enterprisey features and support, like being able to have a group own an app instead of an individual.

<comment><USER4> As in, if I already consume $1k/month of services, I get enterprise features, or it's another $1k on top of what I use?

<comment><USER5> I was also quoted the $1000/month price, and followed up with this same question. I was told it was separate from (in addition to) all other service pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone from Heroku comment on Heroku's plans to someday be able to sign BAAs with customers subject to HIPAA compliance, as AWS does? That's the #1 reason my clients are leaving Heroku for AWS.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm really torn on things like this. Heroku is the type of service that got really good at one thing, and is now branching out into related services. Thus far most of those related services have been great, but I'm still a proponent of companies that "do one thing, and do it well."

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty sure this has existed for a while. Encountered it at least as early as last October when re-evaluating PaaS providers. Not having a team feature bit us today when I was unavailable and a co-worker needed admin access. (We still have some legacy services on Heroku.)

Fast support is fine, but I notice no mention of an SLA. I can go to several other PaaS that have a better SLA reputation without such a high bar for entry.

Also now that PCI-DSS 3.0 excludes Heroku from CC processing, this adjustment may be a bit too late. Great service for experimentation, but Enterprise seems to not fit with the Heroku brand.

<comment><USER9> > Enterprise seems to not fit with the Heroku brand.

Heroku aka Salesforce?</comment></comment>


IOTsatcom is IOT and robotics everywhere - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.io/project/6279-iotsatcom-is-iot-and-robotics-everywhere

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! Call for the community voice!

I need the community voice to decide if integrate some extra features, please could you give me your opinion answering this post?

Should be the device kept in a modular fashion or better provide to the users integrated extra features?

-Solar panel charger with maximum power point tracking (MPPT)

-LIPO battery fuel gauge

-ESP8266 WIFI mesh or acess point modes to gather extra wireless IOT sensors data

THANK YOU!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Global two-way satellite communication for robotics and IOT sensors. Easy to use, GPIOs, telemetry, low power and web API provided.</comment>


Monkey-Patching blocking Python networking to use tornado - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bergundy/blocks

<comment><AUTHOR> disclaimer: this is not my work, a coworker wrote it as an experiment, I liked it and thought I'd post it here.</comment>


On Commit Messages - <AUTHOR> http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-commit-messages.html

<comment><USER2> What I like to do is reference a tracking number from the issue/bug tracking system in my commit messages. Yes, this has some possible pitfalls, e.g. the source code may outlive the issue tracking system, or may change owners without the issue history coming along.. but it works well in practice.

<comment><USER3> its best when your bug tracker can automatically link to issue numbers and commit numbers.

<comment><USER4> Using svn with Trac, for example, one can use "r1234" to refer to a revision from a ticket, or "#123" to refer to a ticket number from a commit message.

<comment><USER5> We make _extensive_ use of these at the day job. It is a lifesaver. If I ever get around to using bug tracking for myself, I'm certainly going to continue the practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to work with a guy who wrote horrible commit messages. My (least) favorite was "works better." This was especially annoying because his code generally didn't go through review and was pushed into production within minutes. So any problem with the new code and we'd need to stare at the diff (which was often very complex) and try to answer the 3 questions in the article plus why it caused a problem.

Mind you - this was a guy with a few decades of experience.

<comment><USER7> Could be worse, at least he was claiming it was done. I frequently see several completely unrelated changes committed together with the comment "wip" (which stands for "work in progress") and these aren't from just one dev. Drives me nuts. "Was this finished?" "Did QA have any idea what you were sneaking in?"

<comment><USER6> _at least he was claiming it was done_

True enough, but we never _what_ he was claiming was done. It was just _better._

Though I admit, yours is much worse...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Excellent points. I have found myself making some of these mistakes (ie. whitespace changes mixed with other changes) and do feel bad about them later.

I'm going to post a link to this at the top of our project's Trac page to remind everyone of the (a) right way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is worse, bad commit messages or no commit messages at all? Having to diff through no commit message changes is the bane of my existence. Yes I have brought this up to my supervisors multiple times, sometimes they are the culprits.

</comment><comment><USER10> i'm ambivalent about where the right place is to answer the 3 questions posted by the OP.

on the one hand, it seems efficient to put meta-data in the commit rather than clouding the code itself. on the other hand, i'm much more likely to go back to a piece of code and reread my comments and architectural diagrams then visit the repo logs. if documentation is too big or orthogonal to go in a class or function comment, then i put it in the docs folder.

<comment><USER11> Commit descriptions describe the _change_ , which is very often different than the design of the code itself.

My approach is to use detailed descriptions in both places: commit logs track the evolution of the source tree, and comments/documentation describe the design and implementation of the source tree at a snapshot in time (e.g. now/tip).

<comment><USER10> good point. i guess i'm overvaluing the now/tip docs. i definitely delete old docs since that just confuses everything.

when i reach that point where i start wanting to revert the repo or backtrack on changes then commit docs will make much more sense. i still leave a good commit message when i can but....documenting the now/tip in the code is far more useful to me currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cool-RR In my opinion, unless your project already has excellent documentation, you shouldn't spend much time or thought documenting your commits.

Making detailed commit messages is "documenting the process". Making code documentation is documenting the product. The latter, in my opinion, is much more important.

<comment><USER12> Let us know how that works out 6 months from now when you have a regression issue and you're trying to track it down.</comment></comment>


Startup Guide To Independent Contractors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.foundersnetwork.com/2011/12/independent-contractor-guide/ <comment><USER2> Should be re-titled to 'U.S. Startup Guide to Independent Contractors' since about half of it is very U.S.-centric.

</comment><comment><USER3> Point 2 is very important. The IRS is getting tougher and tougher on companies for hiring consultants who look like employees. Even companies like Microsoft have stumbled with this issue.</comment>


Creative/Creepy way to find out a girl's name - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/b04829344e02

<comment><USER2> This is the _fourth_ time you've submitted this URL.

1) Deleting then resubmitting links is a bannable offense on HN.

2) Medium.com links are penalized so there's little benefit in attempting to maximize votes, as it's incredibly unlikely that it will hit the front page.

3) Seriously, _this_ article is the one you want to promote so badly?!

<comment><USER3> I've just made a "Feature Request": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274891)

> _I have an idea to discourage deletion and resubmission. Apply a -1 penalty > to the deletion of a story. It 's small enough to not penalize too much > honest mistakes, and it's a signal that deletions are bad. (If the user > still continues to delete and resubmit, use the current method.)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And then you post that person's identity in your public blog and repeatedly link to it on here? That's stalker behavior. Maybe you should get help on developing your in-person social skills; in the meantime you should definitely get a friend to explain to you why this is not a cool thing to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> She is fully supportive of the post and the use of her Twitter handle.

I appreciate your concern for my stalker tendencies and social skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Creepy indeed. The last two sentences make me think the entire post is just an attempt at getting this person's attention.</comment>


Off-Screen Cache with HTML5's Canvas - <AUTHOR> http://kaioa.com/node/103 <comment><USER2> I got lost for a while because I thought something really new was being done... I guess I thought everyone knew that you could draw to a canvas, even if it wasn't displayed.

<comment><AUTHOR> And you can treat it as an image to other canvases. Which is the whole point.</comment></comment>


Apple's home-grown Maps leaves users lost - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/apples-homegrown-maps-leaves-users-lost-20120921-26a9b.html

<comment><USER2> Just what HN needs, another useless article with useless pictures of a useless mapping app.</comment>


Ask HN:  Are patents worthwhile? - <AUTHOR>

I'm nearing a release of something big.  It's not what's in my profile, actually something a lot simpler than that, but with very large implications.  Think "Quicksilver for the internet."  You probably think I'm full of shit, but that's OK.
What are your thoughts on patenting web applications?  What I'm working on could pretty easily be copied, which would really break my heart, but hasn't been done yet.  It would be along the lines of patenting the "Quicksilver" application for Mac.  If you don't know what this is, you hit Ctrl+space, start typing an Application name, and it fills it in for you and executes it for you, giving you ultra-quick access to most used apps.  Ctrl+space, then "fi" then Enter would open up Firefox, for example.
Is Quicksilver patentable?  Is it worthwhile to patent and idea like this? <comment><USER2> I think that something like this already exists for firefox : <http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/>

Patenting, is, imo, not a good idea. First, suppose that someone breaks your patent ? Are you going to engage a tedious lawsuit. Second, you should always be ahead of your concurrence. Third, you're already copying someone else's idea.

<comment><USER3> And before joining Mozilla, the same guys who work on ubiquity worked on the similar product "enso launcher" for desktops which you should also investigate:

<http://humanized.com/enso/launcher/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not particularly useful once your company is going, but investors like to see that your IP is exclusive and protected. It's still probably not worth the money to pay a lawyer to write it, but you can file a patent or provisional patent yourself for next to nothing. Check out the Nolo Press books on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER5> The sooner patents are abolished the better.

That said, as long as they exist there are situations where patents make sense. If developing your product takes a couple of millions of dollars and it is truly innovative then it makes sense to take out a patent because the overhead is relatively low compared to the potential benefits.

For instance, the Dyson vacuum cleaner was protected by a patent and it helped them in going after Philips who shamelessly cloned it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unless you happen to have a couple hundred thousand laying around to actually prosecute an offender, a patent will do you little good.

You should spend your energy doing your thing. Simply having a good idea _and doing it well_ is probably the best defense against those who would copy it. People who rip off ideas in the way that you are worried about usually do it so poorly that it doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER7> you can't patent ideas. Even if you could, _you_ couldn't afford to actually prosecute an offender.</comment>


Schick Owner Abandons $1.37B Takeover of Harry's - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/schick-razor-maker-abandons-bln-deal-for-harrys-after-ftc-opposition.html <comment><USER2> Nice!

I currently use DSC, but want to stop because it was purchased by Unlever. If Harry's doesn't become part of a multinational conglomerate, then I'll switch to them.</comment>


Use the new JBoss Modules class-path system to master your portlet packaging - <AUTHOR> http://blog.exoplatform.com/2014/04/22/master-portlet-packaging-jboss?utm_campaign=blogposts&utm_medium=social&utm_source=hackernews&utm_content=Julie

<comment><USER2> Java and Portals are not dead! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> nice post</comment>


Ask HN: What are some innovative products Google has come up with? - <AUTHOR>

Google is well known for it's highly innovative culture.  They hire the best and brightest who then create products that change our lives.  Well, at least that's what the television says.
I'm having a problem trying to figure out what innovative products they actually created.
EXCLUDING ANY PRODUCT OR COMPANY THAT WAS BOUGHT, what are some innovative products that Google created on it's own?  Is it still alive?  Is it popular? <comment><USER2> Google translate. chrome. Chromebooks(zero maintenance laptop). Google books.

Android(altough they bought it at first, what they bought wasn't even close to how android and touch based smartphones look today ,so it can be considered a internal development.And the innovation there was creating such OS that fits many phones and their business model with it).

</comment><comment><USER3> Gmail and Google Maps we're developed in house, and are still alive and kicking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gmail, yes.

Maps, I'm not so sure. Wikiepdia says it was created when Google acquired Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole, and ZipDash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A search engine. Still alive and popular.

<comment><USER5> Also adwords (the product that is actually sold). Brilliant idea: users only see ads relevant to their interests; advertisers get qualified users, and instant feedback and adjustment; google gets the highest price possible (by advertisers bidding against each other).

Google is double the good guy: (1) helps users for free, because advertisers pay for it (like free-to-air TV); (2) advertisers can't complain about google's high prices, because it's the _other_ guy who bid it up (like selling munitions in an arms race).

I believe google came up with this independently BUT goto/overture did it first, patented it, sued, and google settled.

So far as revenue is concerned, this is Google's only product.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pram – utilities for dealing with and keeping state in url query params - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/coffeedoughnuts/pram <comment><AUTHOR> I found myself constantly copy-pasting the same utilities to make `history`, `react-router` and `qs` all talk to each other so that I could store state in the url (something I think not enough web apps do); so finally took the time to put a few of them into a library. Really these are just the basics but it would be good to get any feedback on what kinds of things people thing would be useful in a library like this</comment>