this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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That boat sailed off into the sunset a really long time ago.
Whatever comes next should consider not starting by talking down to new users.
Source: I'm still pissed about a ten year old bug that threw out my helpful answer after I composed it because I didn't have enough bullshit Internet points.
A decade later it doesn't really feel like SO has fixed their fundamentally "asshole to new contributors" vibe.
I'm glad someone else contributes, but I can't be arsed myself. And honestly, it doesn't look like the staff at SO really care.
So I expect the current SO cohort will eventually age out and something new, with a new vibe, will replace it. I hope it has pokemon memes.
If that new thing is polite, I might contribute there.
Pro tip: I'm at least twice as likely to contribute to the next thing if they revive the domain ExpertSexChange.com.
I've been on SO for around 10 years - I'm still not allowed to upvote good answers.
Fuck you, stack
SO has helped me countless times, so I can't thank it enough. However, it just seems impossible to become an "expert" these days. I can't even vote when a solution has helped me. I've tried raising my own legitimate questions, but at this point they're going to be obscure & niche, so that no one interacts with it, and I don't get magical internet points so that I can contribute myself. It's actually really frustrating since I've actually wanted to give back to the community, and it just seems to work actively against me.
At one point I decided it was time for me to contribute by answering questions.
I sorted by new in PHP and found a brand new, really confusing & poorly written question. After about 5 times reading it through I finally understood what they needed, and wrote a full answer along with corrected code that I had tested.
Got an error when I submitted my answer that the question was locked. Just before I submitted my answer, a mod had locked it because it was a low quality question. I wasn’t allowed to submit my answer to their problem.
I haven’t tried writing an answer since. Just felt like a massive slap in the face for trying to finally contribute.
@DigitalHello @kambusha
I had the exact same experience. First, I tried to ask a question and couldn't for some reason (it was ~10 years ago). Then in an attempt to gain points that would allow me to ask questions (I think that was my issue) I kept getting rejected.
At the time I was active on Experts Exchange but, they were moving to a paid model. I thought I could find community on SO. You're right it does feel like a slap in the face. I hate all of Stack because of SO.
Having a bunch of answers to very poor questions is not the goal.
If you managed to parse out a good question in there of general interest that has not been answered yet, you can submit it yourself and provide your own answer. That way you are actually adding something valuable to the site.
I agree that it is really hard to contribute in a meaningful way though.
Yeah. This exactly.