Closing questions - no, deleting questions - really really grinds my gears.
Nothing is more frustrating than finding a google result to SO, clicking through, and arriving at a 404. Nothing is more frustrating that searching for that great answer I read last year and not being able to find it because the question has been deleted. These are often questions that have been kicking around for 4 years, and, well, gone.
Of course, if you have enough SO points, then you probably don't care whether you've deleted a question, you can still see them.
While we're at it, SOers have always been, and are increasingly... well, jerks! If you are a new programmer, then of course your question will have incomplete information, because you don't know how to ask a good question yet. So stop downvoting into oblivion, please, and give people a little bit of time to acclimate and improve their question before closing.
I am in the top 10% of SO users as measured by points (lol.) What can I do, as a community member and hacker, to fix these things?
Due to this problem I think the site would be much more useful if the deleted posts just had a red warning at the top like wikipedia. "this question was flagged for being funny" "a little off topic" let the user decide if he wants to look or not. Buyer beware.
Wikipedia editors can also come across as jerks. A lot of new members get turned off and end up leaving the community... this happens even more often with female editors.
On the other hand, at some point both communities struggle with being inclusive and welcoming.
Maybe Joel is right though, and the two goals are mutually exclusive? I personally hope that they're not, but don't have any examples to point to that are successful on the level of Wikipedia or StackOverflow.
Nothing is more frustrating than finding a google result to SO, clicking through, and arriving at a 404. Nothing is more frustrating that searching for that great answer I read last year and not being able to find it because the question has been deleted. These are often questions that have been kicking around for 4 years, and, well, gone.
Of course, if you have enough SO points, then you probably don't care whether you've deleted a question, you can still see them.
While we're at it, SOers have always been, and are increasingly... well, jerks! If you are a new programmer, then of course your question will have incomplete information, because you don't know how to ask a good question yet. So stop downvoting into oblivion, please, and give people a little bit of time to acclimate and improve their question before closing.
I am in the top 10% of SO users as measured by points (lol.) What can I do, as a community member and hacker, to fix these things?