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Indeed, there's a lot of needless down-voting here as well.
I think voting should be way down the list of people's priorities, but I think some here think they have to vote on everything.
Voting isn't helping. Are you here to help? Or are you just here to feel superior? (Rhetorical, not directed at you, Maxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.)
What if users had a limit of ten votes per day?
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Another thing that drives me crazy is the bloodlust moderators have to close questions that are even remotely similar to another question on the site, even if that question is 2 years old and has no solution.
Often questions will only bear a surface similarity to another question and will get closed as a duplicate (perhaps they share the same obstacle or bug) even when what is being asked is completely different.
Sometimes the question is the same, but no one has provided a satisfactory answer on the other question. Give me a way to bump an old question and add my own information to it and this would be fine! But just because a question has been asked doesn't mean it should never be asked again!.
SO needs a better way to merge duplicate questions instead of just closing the duplicate and preventing new answers. If someone asks the same question as another, their question should be merged with the original question and bumped as if it were a new question so that people using the site will see it and be able to answer it again. Keeping an unanswered question around historically with no new information is worthless.
Sad but true: 4/3 of Americans have difficulty with simple fractions.
There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
{o,o}.oO( Check out my blog! )
|)””’) http://pihole.org/
-”-”-
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Yes - I agree. But it would take a lot of thinking about how to do it.
I would like to see the ability to merge questions and answers, delete trivial answers and comments, to provide a go-to place for the knowledge about that particular problem - but that would take sensible moderation.
Imagine if SAK was moderating, for example? Any questions about VB would be deleted on the grounds the OP shouldn't be using an outdated language...
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I stopped posting there precisely because of this arrogance.
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Tough croud!
I personally don't mind SO, it has helped me out of a conundrum more times than I can remember.
It isn't a friendly place though, if you ask a question and put "thanks in advance" or something similar at the end, sooner or later some ass-hat will come along and edit the "thanks" part out of your question, and if you are new and ask a question that isn't perfect[^] they are bloody brutal.
If you read and follow their rules though, you can actually get a lot of value out of the site, even if it is full of Americans  .
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HomerTheGreat wrote: even if it is full of Americans
Well, Jon Skeet's English.
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What about his English? It seems pretty good to me.
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That is a valid apostrophe without possession.
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Yes, I know. Yet ambiguous.
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Actually no it's not ambiguous. Your interpretation would result in an invalid sentence fragment as it has no verb. 
Sad but true: 4/3 of Americans have difficulty with simple fractions.
There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
{o,o}.oO( Check out my blog! )
|)””’) http://pihole.org/
-”-”-
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This is 'Merica; land of the sentence fragment.
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I don't think Jon Skeet technically has a nationality
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HomerTheGreat wrote: "thanks in advance"
 Can't stand that.
But I never edit the content of questions, usually I just add or fix pre tags.
Edit: I just remembered that recently I edited a question that was asked in Portugese. I passed it through a translator and added the English translation.
modified 10-Aug-14 11:19am.
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The way they treat people there on SO has kept me from even thinking of creating an account there.
"I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak
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You can create an account there? 
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To sign up, which I never have done, and do not plan on it, seeing what kind of an online community they look like...
"I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak
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I created an account and posted a very small number of answers.
One answer had a small inaccuracy in it and I was voted down and flamed.
The helpful answers were not even acknowledged.
That led to me cancelling my account and carrying on with Codeproject - where people are much more friendly and helpful.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I'm not sure QA here is that much better. It depends a lot on who you happen to run into.
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I will jump in belatedly on this and say that I have never experienced those problems. The times I've asked a question, I've gotten a decent reply in short order. No insults, no ranting, no down voting. So, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Marc
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Same experience here my friend.
I think the thing that a lot of people don't realize is that SO isn't designed to be a place of social interaction - not even close.
Furthermore, many of the site's policies have been adjusted over time to become more newb-friendly.
I think many of those caught out by SO users' militant behaviour have simply failed to read the rules/expectations in the help centre and failed to grasp and appreciate the culture of the site. Failure to do these generally results in an introduction to a wire-brush spinning at 2800 rpm.
To be entirely honest (and perhaps arrogant?) - I think that a lot of users need to not be so precious when they receive a wire-brushing - to take the criticism on-board, learn from it and move on.
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I'd say the only time I've seen problems there is if a) someone has posted a question that's already been asked numerous times, or b) the question is written so badly or without enough information for anyone to actually help.
Usually a prod in the right direction (not from me, btw - I don't have any kind of rank there  ) resolves both of these issues.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I've got to agree with you; if you ask an intelligent question you'll get a reasonable answer. If you post "Gimmie Teh Codez!!! Its Urgentz!!!" on SO; it will get quickly deleted. On CP it gets linked to on the Lounge for widespread mockery. I suspect obliterating the torrent of crap and only keeping the good content has something to do with that fact that when I Google for how to fix a problem I almost always find multiple hits from SO; I don't think I've *ever* seen QA show up in Google.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Bingo.
FWIW, I collected some stats a while back on how much cruft gets deleted for various reasons. One of the things that persistently irritates me about searching for problems on the 'Net is wasting time clicking through to unresolved problems - getting questions that can't be effectively answered out of circulation to make room for those that are is critical, IMHO.
You must be careful in the forest
Broken glass and rusty nails
If you're to bring back something for us
I have bullets for sale...
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Solution: do a little work before demanding others hand you the solution on a silver platter. If stupid questions get good answers, SO will overflow (ha!) with stupidity, making it useless for people who ask and answer good questions.
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I disagree.
They can be rude, yes, but usually it's the questions that could be easily googled that get them going. If something was answered (maybe even on SO!) and yet it is asked again and again...they GIVE their free time in an attempt to help genuine problems...once SO got reputation they wasted their time answering how to setup arrays in C# or similar (stupid / lazy / unnecessary) questions.
Give the guys a break, use search before you ask and THEN ask the question along with the list of tried things that did not work for you.
And besides, looking for the answers is the way you become an expert (by your own words).
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