> Another user actually did go through my code and the solution was trivial.

The solution may have been trivial - maybe even a single character fix, but this smells like you posted a wall of code and wanted someone to go through it with a comb for you. You likely got downvoted because you didn't provide a minimal verifiable example and instead posted way more code than was necessary to produce the bug.

If you post anything more than a few lines of code, you are probably providing TMI and need to spend more effort distilling down the problem. 9 out of 10 times, you'll find the root of the problem yourself during this distillation process, especially if the problem is trivial.

Then again, this is wild speculation, but I see this a lot when I am helping newbies.

The problem with being a beginner is that you probably don't know what those few lines are that make the most difference. Mods haughtily saying "You're doing it wrong; come back when you can do it right; here's a wall of meta-documentation that only tells you why your post sucks and doesn't help you figure out what part of your code matters" doesn't help anybody. If the bar to getting your question answered is to figure out on their own with no actual guidance how to ask the question perfectly, then you've already eliminated the 1/2 of developers out there who need the most help.

I'll never understand the mentality of people who put themselves in a position of answering questions, but are genuinely perturbed by the prospect of helping people with basic/misguided/imperfectly conceived questions. If they're the kind of person who could just read the documentation and solve all but the most complex of their own problems, congratulations. They should feel free to set that as the bar for anybody you hire or collaborate with. Or even set it as the bar for questions that they answer, but don't penalize people who are coming to a Q&A for not living up to those standards. If you're of that disposition on such a site, you're probably more interested in stroking your ego and watching some arbitrary points accumulate rather than actually helping people. There are lots of hobbies in development that don't expose you to beginner questions: go join a more esoteric users group, or contribute to an open source project without looking in the users forums/chat channels. Just do something that doesn't involve alienating inexperience developers.

But if you answer such questions at face value, the asker still doesn't know how to write concise questions and will continue to post walls of code, since, after all, it worked and produced an answer for them.

It's almost like you need to pivot the question at that point to be "how do I isolate problems?" or "how do I debug?" because the asker lacks those basic skills needed to ask a good question.

False dichotomy. It's not like you can only tell the poster one thing. There are questions on SO where someone says "this is how you fix your problem. This is how I figured that out. Here are some good docs/articles/etc. on this topic."

Both pointing out the problem with the code/methodology/etc. and helping them see something from a different perspective so they do better next time are valuable educational goals, and I don't understand why so many people think SO should address only one of them. It's almost as if people think coding problems are OK, but helping people with more amorphous skills is either beyond or beneath them.

Troubleshooting is a skill that can be taught— having someone more experienced giving you advice is an invaluable asset when you're trying to learn how to do it. Refusing to help people because they don't already know how to do it themselves helps nobody.

The goal of Stack Overflow is to produce posts that are useful for others who stumble across them. There's every reason to be friendly to newbies, but not much reason to answer questions that will never be of use to anyone else.

Stack Overflow isn't a free tutoring service, it's a collaborative wiki of answers to common programming questions.

That being said, I agree that the current culture of "you're doing it wrong" is toxic, and should be replaced with a culture of "here's how to do it right".

And so very often as a beginner, I stumbled across someone's question that I also had, which was somehow deemed unacceptable by the bureaucracy so there were no useful answers, there was no link to where the 'correct' question with the correct answer was, and because there was often different exception, or a different library was being used, or something along those lines, I didn't have the skills to find it. So, maybe it's time to abandon that strategy and concentrate on actually helping people who need it.

>>The goal of Stack Overflow is to produce posts that are useful for others who stumble across them.

That's one of the goals. I wouldn't say it's the goal.

I would argue that the goal of any software should be to help the immediate user. If it is not, then why should the user continue using it?

Stackoverflow is successful because helping the immediate user has secondary benefits, namely that it also helps others. But that doesn't mean this secondary benefit should override the primary goal.

> I would argue that the goal of any software should be to help the immediate user. If it is not, then why should the user continue using it?

That's like saying "I as the immediate user of Wikipedia want to be able to upload my research paper and have it check if there are any mistakes in my citations. If Wikipedia can't serve that immediate need, why should I continue using it?"

Yet even if Wikipedia isn't good at auto-checking your homework, it's still immensely useful for the vast majority of other users who don't care about auto-checking homework.

You can't build software that satisfies everyone's requirements. It's okay if some users choose not to use your software because it doesn't fulfill their requirements.

Your example has nothing whatsoever to do with what I said. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; it's primary (i.e. immediate) users are the readers who consume the materials.

StackOverflow is a Q&A site. Asking questions and receiving useful answers is the primary goal, and therefore the immediate users are the askers.

You might think that, but it is my opinion that the immediate users of SO are the readers, not the askers. The askers are but a small minority of SO's users. It's the readers coming into SO from Google that are the primary audience. Therefore, the site should seek to serve them.

Ultra specific homework questions do not help the immediate users (readers) at all which is why it is frowned upon.

yup it's all about that empathy, and having a constructive, vs. destructive approach to candid criticism and conversation. SO somehow swung far in the destructive direction. Candid discussion does not have to be toxic to be direct, no matter what Linus and co might say, and SO seems to embody.

I sincerely hope that you tell that to novices because they probably don't know any better. When you're new to development, it can be extremely difficult to distill any problem down to it's root elements. That's a skill that develops with experience. I would argue that it's one of the skills that makes a good developer overall.

Sometimes, all someone needs is a rubber duck. We can help by becoming that rubber duck.

I try to, but honestly SO seems hard for interacting with newbies. Half the time I say stuff to newbies I never get a response, upvote, accept, etc. I don't know if they even saw what I wrote and they just don't have enough rep to comment (is this still a thing?) or if they literally got hit by a bus, etc.

New users can't comment, except on their own questions; so if you ask for clarification on their question and they never answered, it's not because SO is preventing them.

With new programmers, you can't have the expectation that you're going to get a response or be upvoted. You help them precisely because you like helping, not that you expect anything in return.

Its the long term goodwill that eventually brings new programmers into the field, because programming is hard! Newbies need to know its ok to take risks and there will be a safety net.

I understand that, it's just hard to know if what I told them was actually helpful or not since I got no feedback

I tried so hard to understand the Stack Overflow mindset, but the costs were too much. They treat every question as the X-Y problem, so you have to anticipate that and preemptively answer them in your question. They'll criticize you for asking a question about Apache since it's not Nginx. They'll tell you you're too dumb to be trusted with Linux if you have to ask something about file permissions.

This started to leak into my real-life conversations at work and I realized I was being condescending and arrogant. I feel like Stack Overflow and the related SE sites genuinely made me a worse person. I spend a lot of time in online communities and I've never seen anything so toxic.

> I spend a lot of time in online communities and I've never seen anything so toxic.

That's very odd to me. I spend a lot of time in online communities and I've been hard pressed to find anything as welcoming and helpful as Stack Overflow. I became a high rep user over the years, and I made mistakes that earned downvotes, but usually someone could give me a pointer to how to improve my question or answer. (Not always, but usually.) It does suck to get downvotes, especially without a comment about why, but honestly, when I look at other sites (ahem hacker news) where the rules are only ever referred to by experienced users and in tiny print below the fold, the clear rules and help on StackOverflow, and posters who are willing to link to them and clearly explain them seem like a breath of fresh air.

I think you and I are totally different then. When I find a new community, online or offline, my first thought isn't "what are the rules here?". I'll pick up social cues subconsciously and rarely if ever think about it. I think that's one reason I love HN and hate SO. I don't mean to say my way is better, I just think we can't relate our experiences at all.

> I spend a lot of time in online communities and I've never seen anything so toxic

I haven't spend that much time asking questions, but I answered many (and commented, edited, flagged…) but Id didn't found the community that toxic, especially compared to other places.

Could you please link to the question? I don't mean to be adversarial but in the past when I checked the questions people complained were downvoted for no reason there were indeed reasons. Perhaps the guidelines have subtly changed since your last experience and we can give you feedback on it.

This response is honestly part of the problem though. I understand not wanting many duplicate questions, and wanting a well written question/response style. However, different people approach differently problems differently. For every person who asks a question there are likely several others who didnt bother to post or were intimidated by the requirements to even get involved in SO. It seems like it’s been gamified to the point that it excludes newcomers.

A newcomer shouldn’t have to know the subtleties of the guidelines. When I go to the library and ask the librarian a question they don’t reprimand me for the formulation of my question. They don’t refer me to the weekly research/reference class (which is great by the way). They try to help me find what I’m looking for. Sometimes I find questions on SO through google that are dupes, but if it weren’t for that dupe I may never have found the original with the search terms that I used.

This isn’t to say that SO’s rules are wrong, I just believe that there are those who are more concerned with the decorum than the functionality. Unfortunately it feels like those users outnumber the functional ones.

There might have been reasons. But then when you ask for them in the comments section, people would just answer "you don't need to provide a reason to downvote". So actually you never learn.

The other issue is, even when the reason is given, sometimes you would not agree with that. E.g. sometimes people claim it's a duplicate, although they are not deep enough into the topic to really tell, and then the question gets closed. Or people claim is subjective, while in fact objective answers are possible. Or many other things.

Do people really comment this? I've never seen anyone comment anything along the lines of "you don't need to provide a reason to downvote" on a question they are downvoting. I would probably call them out and/or flag a mod if I saw it. Is this a very recent thing?

That being said, I agree that Stack Overflow has a duplicate issue.

Yes, I have seen that a few times. E.g. some own question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9945648/ Or another one, which recovered now: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9946322 (Initially votes were all negative, but over time more and more positive votes came.)

Posts are soft-deleted on SO. You can see your own recent deleted questions at

    https://stackoverflow.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/[your user id]

This link is on your profile on the questions tab at the bottom.

Mods and high-rep (10k +) users can see deleted questions.

Came here to say a similar story.

After ~12 years of development, StackOverflow has gone from invaluable to irrelevant.

These days my questions are either so niche nobody answers them, or like you, I get a tonne of abuse for asking in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or not including the right info, or whatever it may be.

I had a similar experience back then. I actually grew out of needing it. I would just go to the site, type out my question and answer it myself when I dug in to the details of asking a good question.

I'm not gonna sit here and say you asked a poor question, because answers/commenters can be jerks. However, learning how to write software is hard, and the idea that a magic site can answer any question you need to make 6 figures is ridiculous. The tough love I received on SO made me write better questions and think more atomically.

I have had this conversation with my wife many times, who is working her first development job: "Yes the people can be cruel, but there's no better way to see the obvious gaps you have in your expertise than to expose yourself to them."

Please make sure you are familiar with the best practices of providing a minimal, complete, verifiable example (MCVE).

https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve

In my experience, 90% of moderating questions on SO is linking people to this doc and asking them to apply it. A lot of these users just didn't know this doc exists or haven't read it yet and are then able to edit their question to be answerable and meet community standards.

I've been on Stack Overflow for almost 10 years and very rarely to never see a question with a MCVE and steps to reproduce get downvoted. The more effort you put into asking a question well the more likely it is to get rewarded with upvotes and good answers.

Your question was about one of the big languages or frameworks, probably? SO can still be nice in its smaller corners, outside of the busiest mainstream topics.

>> Everyone there is just looking for someone to snipe at for internet points

I agree. But not just there. Here too. I feel I do not always express myself like I would were there no karma points to be earned/lost. I often wish for a karma-less HN .

Edit. Because I get micro depressed when I loose karma and I start to question myself. I feel I shouldn't care because I look upon myself as strong, well-behaved, clever. But I do care. Immensely.

sounds like you wanted someone to debug your code for free and were then surprised they wouldn't

That is pretty much the reason for Stack Overflow's existence isn't it? Requests for debugging whatever problem you have (for free), and offers to do the same for others. You make it sound like a bad thing.

This is the biggest reason why people fault Stack Overflow. As Joel and Jeff have always said, it's about making a repository of knowledge to questions that are helpful for everyone. So you still see questions which are about "I was trying this but get this error" since they are useful when the error is something general and a lot of people might run into.

OTOH questions like I am trying to do this very specific thing that interacts with multitudes of other systems and cannot get it to work are therefore not considered StackOverflow worthy.

Stack Overflow is about creating a wiki of knowledge for future visitors. If you have a question that is only relevant to your specific implementation, and that will never help anyone else in the future, then it doesn't add value to Stack Overflow.

It's sometimes hard to know in advance whether your situation is unique or going to be of use to someone in the future however.

If it is completely unique and is of no use to anyone else, then it still of use to one person and still worth answering. Maybe SO just needs a flag for questions as 'unique situation' so it doesn't appear by default in future searches.

Also, SO isn't really a wiki. It's not designed that way. It's built around "this is my problem; what is the best solution?" interactions.

I had to chew a guy out the other day. He freely admitted that he wasn't a Python programmer and was looking for working code that he could run without modification. He tried to justify it by saying he was only asking for someone to "share their expertise".

"pls send the codes"

or homework questions

But for every response of, "What code have YOU tried?", there's someone who posts the answer to the question, and the user gets their one-time answer and never comes back

So what? Someone earned money off of a snippet of code. What's the big deal?

It's a question of motivation. Being used as a source of free labor is very demotivating. That's not why I contribute to the site.

I didn't know it was that kind of a setup. Then you were right to tell him off.

Remember JavaScript.com? SO is that but for every language and with snippets of code that have been validated by names that are so well recognized for being brilliant that would I start to mention one then I would have to name everyone and they are too many. So we shouldn't frown upon people who take those snippets of code to try to make a buck. Is all I'm saying.

That's the thing, he wasn't looking for a snippet - he wanted a fully operational application. I don't mind providing useful tidbits of code, even if they get quite large.

OP "wrote up [a] code example" as is generally asked on SO, and that's somehow now bad asking "someone to debug your code for free"?