Saturday, June 13, 2015

Rant on the often condescending and patronizing culture on SE and SO

I often find myself reading articles on StackOverlow and StackExchange as part of my profession.  Often I find very useful posts that have been closed or flagged negatively in some way by one or many moderators, even though clearly the content is helpful to thousands, as evident in the up-votes, favourites, the number of answers, and constructive comments that are received on such posts.

There is a clear problem with this setup, as is evident in the tone of such flaggings.  Often there is a condescending, arrogant, and patronizing tone in such flaggings or some of the early comments by more experienced members.  This problem was recognized long ago in this post: Could we please be a bit nicer to new users? and the many comments and answers that follow below it, yet the problem still exists today - 6 years later.

I recently posted on the robotics stack exchange site, about an artificial intelligence topic that has been around for some time, though certainly not a mainstream topic.  Firstly, there is no AI SE site, and so I chose the robotics site.  Secondly, being my first post, I was excited and perhaps posted too many questions in that one post, as pointed out by the first comment, along with another correction in that comment:
"First, OP stands for "Original Poster" - the person that asked the question. This is you.  Second, questions that should be asked here are questions that are closed-ended, in that they should have 1 correct answer. The only question you have asked that meets this criteria is 1.3 ...  I would ask that you edit your question to only ask that one, and take all of the other questions to the Robotics chat room." 
The tone in the OP bit is obviously a bit blunt.  I assumed from other posts that OP may have meant Operator, analogous to Moderator (mod).  Well yeah, that would be me, thanks for pointing that out, twice.  I let go of that one quickly.

What actually irked me is this:
"Welcome to robotics ________, but I'm afraid that open ended questions like this really aren't a good fit for a stack exchange site. We prefer practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Take a look at How to Ask and tour for more information on how stack exchange works."

The second comment was posted after I had already changed the question I was asking to the one that qualified as not 'open-ended'.  With italics on top.  I've been on SO for over 3 years now, so I'm familiar with what constitutes a good question.  None of my questions have been negatively flagged on SO.  Though I haven't been a heavy user, I've been more of an 'asker' instead of an 'answerer' there, and so I know how to ask questions.  Was there really a need for a second redundant comment that is both trying to welcome me and moderate in the same sentence? Cookie-cutters aren't always necessary or appropriate.

Sometimes the arrogance is apparent in some of the mod's usernames, profiles, and obviously some of the comments they make.  It was more subtle, and perhaps more coordinated here.  The tone in these comments are not welcoming, rude, redundant, and certainly discouraging of a good discussion.  My question is certainly all if not most of these:
  • inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
  • tend to have long, not short, answers 
  • have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone
  • invite sharing experiences over opinions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references
  • are more than just mindless social fun

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