Timeline for What about the community is "toxic" to new users?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
104 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 26, 2023 at 8:04 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "Such a platform might be a good example of the kind of platform I described above. A place where beginners can feel free to just code, and to just ask questions. Basically, to just be allowed to exist as a person trying to learn how to code." - Such a platform would be actively hobbled by trying to use the Stack Exchange-style Q&A format, because that kind of learning requires a back-and-forth that is antithetical to both the design and the purpose. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 8:01 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | @MattWelke Stack Overflow, and every other Q&A site, absolutely should be a useful resource for beginners. It just should not - cannot - be a place where beginners do their research by asking questions, because if they knew how to ask questions of the sort that are useful for building up a Q&A site, they wouldn't be beginners any more. (Note: this has absolutely nothing to do with the difficulty of the material. I have something like 35 years of programming experience, and I am still perfectly willing to sit down and write pages of clear, simple explanation of the fundamentals.) | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 7:57 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | @IngoSteinke "but the consequences (down voting and closing too quickly without awaiting disussions, even preventing new volunteers to help, clarify, and edit) hit many other new users all the same." - it is correct application of policy to close unsuitable questions immediately. There is absolutely no rational reason to wait - because question closure is injunctive, not punitive, and because that injunction is essential to the core function of the site. Similarly, downvoting questions helps hide them from over-eager answerers. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 7:53 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | @IngoSteinke "If someone doesn't have a minute to ask a question to a new contributor, but still does have the time to downvote or close questions, do they really think they are doing the community a favour?" Absolutely, yes, without question. Whether a question is on topic or not is almost always very clear-cut and does not depend on any fathomable clarification from the OP. "The community" has the explicit purpose of building a library of on-topic questions. An open, not-downvoted, off-topic question is actively interfering with that goal. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 7:19 | answer | added | Karl Knechtel | timeline score: 11 | |
| Nov 24, 2023 at 9:00 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "It also does not explain exactly what "toxicity" is, only that it supposedly exists." - it cannot, because the term does not mean anything. It is a buzzword used to attack the social norms of an outgroup for not being like one's own social norms, which insulates one from the burden of trying to understand why others might prefer to interact with each other differently. People who insist on using the term, in my experience, typically harbor a political agenda that is counter to the continued existence of the group they are criticizing, or at least aimed at fundamentally changing its nature. | |
| Nov 24, 2023 at 3:14 | answer | added | MikeSchinkel | timeline score: -18 | |
| Jun 18, 2023 at 19:51 | comment | added | Matt Welke | I've seen an interesting idea brought up before, where there would be a "beginner friendly" version of Stack Overflow. That's an interesting idea. Such a platform might be a good example of the kind of platform I described above. A place where beginners can feel free to just code, and to just ask questions. Basically, to just be allowed to exist as a person trying to learn how to code. | |
| Jun 18, 2023 at 19:46 | comment | added | Matt Welke | That's a win-win. The beginner gets a friendly environment where they can ask their question without judgment, and they still end up getting linked to the highest possible quality answer. If the answer lacks context useful to the beginner to help them get the most out of it, the people who helped them on the platform where they originally asked the question can add explanation in that beginner friendly platform. | |
| Jun 18, 2023 at 19:46 | comment | added | Matt Welke | I think the right balance is to have beginners use other platforms that are designed to be friendly to beginners. For example, Reddit or Discord servers. Or even classes with instructors. And these platforms or people helping the beginner can link to Stack Overflow for the purpose of showing them the details of the concept. | |
| Jun 18, 2023 at 19:46 | comment | added | Matt Welke | I don't think Stack Overflow is toxic. I also don't think Stack Overflow is a good resource for all beginners, nor should it be. There's always been a focus on developing it into a high quality repository of questions and answers. When context is added by question askers, the question is usually refined by having that context removed. That's not friendly to beginners. | |
| Jun 16, 2023 at 16:47 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | @Eduard G: Yes, unfortunately many questions are unfairly closed. It may be collateral damage from the barrage of low-quality questions (though that is not a good excuse). Hopefully, the Staging Ground will improve it. | |
| Apr 27, 2023 at 13:52 | comment | added | Santiago | It's very toxi to me for one reason: a lot of negatives with explain why. I don't care about negative votes, I want an explanation of why is not considered an answer, because I put the f*****g answer and sometimes I receive negative votes and positive votes, so for negatives, I prefer know with the answer didn`t work for you, maybe will be a reason, but no, a negative vote it's better | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 23:32 | comment | added | Eduard G | Here's why stackoverflow is toxic: I have 10+ years of programming experience. I asked a question, took my time to write it, research it, format it, etc. Marked as duplicate and closed. The duplicate has NOTHING to do with my question to my knowledge as an experienced software dev. I cannot say "no, you cannot close this, because you are incorrect", my opinion is simply invalid, because someone has more virtual points than I do. All that work formulating the question - gone. All that passion - turned sour. Now please debunk my criticism too instead of actually listening to me. | |
| Apr 21, 2023 at 23:30 | comment | added | Eduard G | Here's why I found physics.stackexchange unwelcoming today: > Spent 5 hours getting to know their rules and formulating a question that I've been trying to answer myself for days > Question got closed in 5 minutes, marked as "homework" yet I am 10 years out of uni and have nobody to ask about any of these things, I am just curious > 2 guys commented, one called it ridiculous > physics.stackexchange says even if someone did answer me - a mod will delete their answer ???? > now I see this echo-chamber in the comments here disproving criticism rather than addressing it | |
| Feb 20, 2023 at 21:37 | comment | added | Martin Berger | I think that most of the people on SO have forgotten how it is to be a junior... Sometimes you just need an answer to apparently stupid question because in your mind there are no other references. | |
| May 15, 2022 at 16:46 | comment | added | agoumi | What a find toxic, is when I ask a question, I expect the others to ask me to explain my question more before downvoting it, not just downvoting without even clarifying what needs to extend in my question. | |
| Feb 22, 2022 at 13:07 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | @Ingo Steinke: It could be, but there is already rampant plagiarism on DEV. | |
| Dec 12, 2021 at 17:21 | comment | added | Ingo Steinke | @MechMK1 but if the veterans would let us help new users, they would even get some good questions eventually. But not from me anymore, at least not in the near future. Aspiring veteran turned lurker / reader again. Sorry, veterans! Maybe some day dev.to will surpass SO in Google results, and we don't have to bother about StankOverflow anymore anyway... | |
| Dec 12, 2021 at 13:06 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @IngoSteinke This is down to the fundamental schism between userbases. New users expect help, while veternan users expect questions. Those two don't necessarily align. | |
| Dec 12, 2021 at 10:05 | comment | added | Ingo Steinke | @MechMK1 that's exactly the problem, the long term high rep users get annoyed by some new users, but the consequences (down voting and closing too quickly without awaiting disussions, even preventing new volunteers to help, clarify, and edit) hit many other new users all the same. The SO/SE community concentrates on keeping their high quality by fending against low quality questions, all the while the site is full of outdated answers ("jQuery code museum"). The current SO mindset seems elitist, arrogant, and only partially helpful to me. | |
| Dec 11, 2021 at 23:17 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @IngoSteinke I've experienced the opposite: I've did my best to explain exactly what details are missing, yet the new "contributor" instead hurled insults at me for not immediately answering the question. The issue at its core is weighing between the needs of a handful of core contributors, and the long tail of "ask once, never return" people. | |
| Dec 11, 2021 at 17:55 | comment | added | Ingo Steinke | Example: "This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers." Not my question, but by a newbie whose actual problem I will never find out despite asking, because the question has already been closed some minutes after I asked for clarification in the comments. Seen that bullshit so many times, and it still makes me angry! If someone doesn't have a minute to ask a question to a new contributor, but still does have the time to downvote or close questions, do they really think they are doing the community a favour? | |
| Dec 7, 2020 at 10:41 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | @Tautological Revelations: Can you state it more directly how it was in 1990s and how it has changed? | |
| Sep 26, 2020 at 14:37 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @TautologicalRevelations I am aware that you were referencing the time between 1990 and 1999, I just don't know what meaning you were trying to convey with that. | |
| Sep 25, 2020 at 21:41 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @TautologicalRevelations I don't really know what you mean by that comment - specifically, what change since the 90s do you mean, and what should we be more careful about? And also, what does your example illustrate? I'm very confused by that. | |
| Sep 25, 2020 at 21:37 | comment | added | Donate to the Edhi Foundation | The Internet is not like it used to be in 90's. I'm saying we need to be more careful on the Internet. For example, reading content, with some exceptions, is usually safe. (This not an excuse, in terms of meta, as Stack Exchange should be better than this.) | |
| Sep 25, 2020 at 17:07 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | It is not only on Stack Exchange (the linked-to comment) - which we tend to forget in our little bubble. | |
| S Sep 24, 2020 at 18:51 | history | bounty ended | 202324 | ||
| S Sep 24, 2020 at 18:51 | history | notice removed | 202324 | ||
| Sep 24, 2020 at 10:55 | comment | added | Donate to the Edhi Foundation | Content with good faith is punished far too harshly. Someone could just be from Western Europe and not speak English well, for example. * (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith) * (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…) "Good faith" is an imperative in-of-itself. | |
| Sep 24, 2020 at 10:25 | answer | added | Dagelf | timeline score: 5 | |
| S Sep 23, 2020 at 17:15 | history | bounty started | 202324 | ||
| S Sep 23, 2020 at 17:15 | history | notice added | 202324 | Reward existing answer | |
| S Sep 17, 2020 at 18:45 | history | bounty ended | 202324 | ||
| S Sep 17, 2020 at 18:45 | history | notice removed | 202324 | ||
| S Sep 16, 2020 at 18:44 | history | bounty started | 202324 | ||
| S Sep 16, 2020 at 18:44 | history | notice added | 202324 | Reward existing answer | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 21:04 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @copper.hat I understand what you mean. I don't know the exact question, answer or comment in question, so this is all just speculation on my part. I'm not saying what they said or did was right or justified, only that this may have been a possible reason why they acted that way. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 21:00 | comment | added | copper.hat | @MechMK1: I can appreciate that, but it is still not a welcoming site on which I care to share my experience. Frowning on and being obnoxious are two different things. I am far from a newbie but am still human. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 20:55 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @copper.hat It's been several years since I have been on SO, since I'm mostly on Security.SE these days. I understand why a "non-answer-but-possible-solution" may be frowned upon, as it shifts the site even further away from a QA site and more towards tech support. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 20:43 | comment | added | copper.hat | I answer many questions on MSE and generally folks are reasonable. The first time I added an answer on SO, it got an immediate downvote and a truly obnoxious comment (since deleted, but one by same author remains). While my answer is admittedly a non answer (stated clearly in the answer) it provides a possible solution for the OP, which, presumably is part of the intent. So I would agree that it is unwelcoming. The site is very useful, but certainly does not encourage sharing of knowledge in my opinion. | |
| Jul 6, 2020 at 6:39 | history | edited | Shadow Wizard |
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| S Jul 5, 2020 at 20:17 | history | suggested | user166105 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
The title was more generic, but the body quickly turns to a focus on whether the site is unwelcoming to *new* users, rather than toxic to users in general. Edited the title to make this focus clear.
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| Jul 5, 2020 at 19:46 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 5, 2020 at 20:17 | |||||
| Jun 14, 2020 at 20:41 | answer | added | Michael Hardy | timeline score: -14 | |
| Jun 14, 2020 at 16:56 | answer | added | Walter Mitty | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jun 14, 2020 at 4:53 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Apr 19, 2020 at 6:31 | comment | added | Christian Strempfer | You can find good examples for the toxicity in the comments and answers here. It's always "new users are lazy and stubborn" vs "high-rep users are misusing their privileges". It's frustrating to read the discussion here where many people deny even the possibility that it could be perceived toxic. This discussion is going on for years and I don't see any progress. | |
| Feb 26, 2020 at 15:42 | comment | added | Veljko89 | by the way, why don't they focus on design first? I mean it's only 0.8% difference between first and second place | |
| Feb 24, 2020 at 7:23 | answer | added | tkruse | timeline score: 17 | |
| S Feb 22, 2020 at 11:20 | history | bounty ended | gnat | ||
| S Feb 22, 2020 at 11:20 | history | notice removed | gnat | ||
| S Feb 18, 2020 at 15:55 | history | bounty started | gnat | ||
| S Feb 18, 2020 at 15:55 | history | notice added | gnat | Reward existing answer | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 15:41 | comment | added | Marco13 | @Kovah There is no clear border. There may be questions that are downvoted/closed even though they are legitimate (or could be salvaged with small edits/clarifications). But there are some things that it could be hard to argue against: 1. Many engaged ("high-experience") users are holding questions to high standards (which may not be easy to achieve for newbies). 2. These users are spending a sh!tload of their precious, valuable (spare!) time and experience, out of pure altruism, to ~"make the world (i.e. this site) better". And 3.: Most new questions are objectively, utterly crappy. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 12:46 | comment | added | Kevin | The "moderation" done by "high-experience" users is my main problem with SE and leads to a lot of toxicity. Arrogance is a very critical problem! And I do think it's arrogance, not excellence, as @Marco suggested. I have seen dozens of questions which were absolutely valid, maybe not on point, but a valid question. And I saw so many of them being downvoted/closed/whatever by those said users, because they seem to not even try to understand the asking user and offer him help. | |
| S Jan 31, 2020 at 7:20 | history | bounty ended | gnat | ||
| S Jan 31, 2020 at 7:20 | history | notice removed | gnat | ||
| Jan 27, 2020 at 17:20 | answer | added | Maximus Minimus | timeline score: 25 | |
| S Jan 27, 2020 at 8:42 | history | bounty started | gnat | ||
| S Jan 27, 2020 at 8:42 | history | notice added | gnat | Reward existing answer | |
| Jan 26, 2020 at 6:34 | comment | added | EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine | I'm guessing that everyone who said "overmoderation" had a question downvoted and/or closed recently. | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 15:25 | comment | added | gerrit | @Marco13 You would probably be right. It's very difficult to create a community where being an outsider is not a difficult experience. | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 15:17 | comment | added | Marco13 | @gerrit Well... after reading the first and most upvoted answer there, it boils down to that: "I asked a question and got downvoted and one person sent me a useless link, stack overflow is shit" (and the word "shit" is mentioned eight times in that answer). Here on stack overflow, such an answer would be downvoted into oblivion for the language alone, not even considering the fact that one person just wrote a rant about being downvoted by one person. Or to put it that way: After reading this answer, I could say that quora is shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit (8 times) | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 10:04 | comment | added | gerrit | @PeterMortensen Your comment linking to the quora page deserves to be an answer, along with selected quotes from the answers there. | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 9:31 | comment | added | gerrit | This question belongs on meta.stackoverflow because the survey only concerns Stack Overflow, and not the wider SE community. Voting to close/migrate. | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 9:16 | answer | added | jorapi9 | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 1:32 | answer | added | Hymns For Disco | timeline score: 17 | |
| Jan 24, 2020 at 0:48 | comment | added | Marco13 | The most toxic thing is how "the community" is portrayed. I'm so tired of this. There is a quote (sometimes attributed to Klaus Kinski, very roughly translated to English here): "When it is seen from below, excellence looks like arrogance". We can assume that what is often called "toxicity" boils down to someone perceiving this sort of "arrogance" here... | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 22:53 | answer | added | KorvinStarmast | timeline score: 24 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 22:50 | answer | added | Makoto | timeline score: 14 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 21:49 | answer | added | Andreas Haferburg | timeline score: 21 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 21:22 | comment | added | De Novo | How to measure the number of people scared to sign up: 7.7 * 10^9 - 2.7 * 10^6 = 7.7*10^9. Rounding to two digits, everyone is scared to sign up. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 21:13 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | 36 more elaborate examples (though, with selection bias). | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 20:31 | answer | added | Scott Seidman | timeline score: 15 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 15:39 | comment | added | Script47 | @RebeccaJ.Stones (d) release all anonymized examples - but yes, the cherry picking will always be an issue because SO has interactions of thousands daily (guesstimating) and boiling down the whole community to being "toxic" due to a few bad apples is cherry picking. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 15:28 | answer | added | Arun Vinoth_PrecogTechnologies | timeline score: 34 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:55 | vote | accept | MechMK1 | ||
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:48 | comment | added | Rebecca J. Stones | (a) don't give examples => no evidence. (b) give one example => you're unfairly targeting someone. (c) give multiple examples => you're cherry picking. You can't win. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:12 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @JMac "I'm right, debate me" could, with some effort on OP's part, be rephrased to "How does system X react when ...". I'm sure it could be a helpful experience for everyone involved. But that in turn would require effort on the side of OP. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:11 | comment | added | JMac | @MechMK1 Yeah so does Physics -_-. The worst part was, in this case I think OP's assertion actually could have been a good theoretical question about mainstream physics. I think what they were saying might have even had some conceptual grounding. They just chose to frame it as "I'm right, debate me" and didn't want to budge on that. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:08 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @JMac Information Security and Cryptography get these crackpots regularly. "I invented a perfectly secure scheme. Review it for me" - "No" - "You are the devil!!!!!!!" | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:06 | comment | added | JMac | @MechMK1 It wasn't even "you have no clue". It was more "you're crippling scientific advancement. One day I will show people this and they will see your foolishness once I'm famous for this discovery that will change physics". I never even once said their theory was wrong; just that Physics SE wasn't the site to deal with it. In this case they may have come looking for enemies; but I can't rule out that the person just didn't understand the site and was too caught up in their narrative to see it from the other end. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:03 | comment | added | Script47 | @JMac yes, unfortunately this is the case with many users but the issue is that SE approached this issue as a "welcoming" issue rather than an issue on both sides (some bad apples and some inexperienced users who misunderstand the site) so the people that do contribute feel things closing around them as they are vilified further and further. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:02 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @JMac "Your question is off-topic.", says the 100k rep user, who has been active on the site since Area51. "No, you have no clue", replies the 1 rep user. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 14:00 | comment | added | JMac | I tried to explain to someone on physics SE yesterday that the site wasn't meant to have us validate new theories, or disprove assertions of others. I even went on to explain that I thought their question could actually be edited so that it was on-topic. Naturally, they accused me and three others (who respectfully pointed out the problems to help fix the question) of "trolling". Sometimes you just can't win. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:50 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 23, 2020 at 15:40 | |||||
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:38 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @RobertColumbia I personally don't even see the connection between these two. My question is about what the community and SE, Inc. consider to be "toxic" while the dupe you linked to is regarding close and dupe messages. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:32 | comment | added | Robert Columbia | Does this answer your question? Closing questions while being friendlier to newbies | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:25 | comment | added | Script47 | @MechMK1 but we'd absolutely need an official reply or the original dataset to determine this to be a factual trend and not an anecdotal experience. You can't describe a whole community as "toxic" based on the experiences of a few (and I say that looking at the grand scheme of things) individuals. What also needs to be checked is how those bad apples were handled? Were they dealt with or not and that would determine how far up this issue goes. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:25 | answer | added | Mithical | timeline score: 244 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:22 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @Script47 I never expected an official answer. Ideally, I would have gotten a user who genuinely felt like SE or SO was toxic with concrete evidence of said toxicity. But then again, the Sandmen don't wander to this place unless they want something. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:20 | comment | added | Script47 | @MechMK1 yeah, it was more of heads up that you probably won't get an official reply which I'm assuming is what you wanted. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:19 | comment | added | MechMK1 | @Script47 Because once you answer it, this is what you have to roll with. It's much more convenient for SE, Inc. to keep up this illusion of "general toxicity" to make it whatever it needs to be at the moment. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:18 | comment | added | Script47 | BTW, OP, I believe this sort of question has been asked before on MSO too (don't quote me on it but I'm sure it has) and if memory serves right, it wasn't officially answered. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:10 | comment | added | Script47 | We need some clarity, was a comment left? Anonymized, what was the comment? Was the question dved/closed? Well, take all those out of "unwelcoming" because that's how the site is meant to work. As it stands, what classes as "unwelcoming" is this amorphous blob which could be anything from comments, to dvs, to cvs, to misunderstandings, and in some cases actually "toxic" comments. One might say that's an awful lot of work, but, in reality, this is the standard of research that should be applied if folks are changing the whole network based on this feedback. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:10 | comment | added | Mast | @Script47 There's an increasing amount of users that simply (and openly) blame the community for not answering their question while it's wildly off-topic. We get accused of the strangest things. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 13:07 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | We don't really know what people mean when they said unwelcoming. Indeed, it can mean a lot of different things. The statistics about is probably not very useful. We would need additional investigation into what specifically is meant. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 12:47 | comment | added | Script47 | That word has been thrown around so much that it almost has no meaning behind it. People think SO is a support desk and because their needs are not met, they deem the site to be "toxic" or "unsatisfactory". It's a fundamental failing by SE to communicate clearly to new users about what this site IS NOT. At this point, "toxic" is that which goes against me. | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 12:29 | answer | added | GhostCat | timeline score: 49 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 12:12 | comment | added | Tom | To sum it up: everything that prevents users from getting their answer for free is considered as "toxic" by them. They want your time for free and our rules don't matter to them, so answer or be called "toxic". | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 11:59 | answer | added | Shadow Wizard | timeline score: 99 | |
| Jan 23, 2020 at 11:56 | history | asked | MechMK1 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |