[Darth-Apple]

In my limited experience, they are some incredibly rude people. At first glance, it seems like a great place, and I've found great answers there. They take quality very seriously (which I respect). But my experiences haven't been particularly good. 

They have a lot of rules (not a bad thing), but they are sort of open to interpretation and they are really only worthwhile if you have an extremely precise problem. It's not an ordinary forum where you can ask more generalized questions to get feedback, information on best practices, or otherwise. It's more of a "here is my code, here is my problem, how do I do X."

If you're newer to the community, it's really more up to the discretion of whoever sees the problem as to what ends up being done, and often something gets downvoted only because it competes with someone else's question or answer. Everyone seems to be in a repuation war almost constantly. 

Is there anyone here who has successfully "figured out" stack overflow? If so, how do you go about participating meaningfully?

[tc4me]

So I actually do it like here, Imagine it, and then straight to the point like e.g. I am not a professional until I am here to gain experience, please do not be arrogant and professional siping, good is the young man who can explain something so inexperienced that he can also use it..

[campingrhino]

Usually when I Google problems, the Stack Overflow answers are the most useful but I always feel like I'm about to be ripped apart when I post on there so try to avoid it. I know that a lot of users do ask questions that they could have Googled but I feel that most peoples' responses always come across as elitist and it makes the community a bit toxic for newcomers. That's just my experience, anyway.

[Darth-Apple]

That’s the elitist vibe that I don’t particularly like. It’s as if they deeply resent having to help anyone. They look for a target any chance they get.

I don’t really think it’s bad that they focus on quality first. In all honestly, a lot of the people who ask questions without doing 10 seconds of research first deserve it. But they wrongfully assume that everyone falls into that category. It’s just something I haven’t had good experiences with yet. Maybe one day that will change, but as of yet, I haven’t seen it.

[campingrhino]

I saw this yesterday and it made me think of this thread:

[Thomas]

Loool

[Darth-Apple]

You know, I might actually attempt it. It will honestly probably work.

[campingrhino]

I was having some trouble with something with Blither the other day and I genuinely was stuck and couldn't work out what the problem was and I thought... StackOverflow will know. And then I thought about it some more... And I decided to switch framework instead as it would be less stressful.

[Darth-Apple]

What framework did you decide to switch to?

[campingrhino]

I was testing out the new version of CodeIgniter but it doesn't seem like it's fully there yet so ended up just switching to Slim and pulling in some other libraries to do the heavy stuff.

[Darth-Apple]

Never heard of either of those. I will definitely check them out.

What are your thoughts on Laravel and Symfony?

[Altair]

I saw this yesterday and it made me think of this thread:

That is hilarious and ingenious. 
I never joined stack overflow because of the toxic community.

[Guardian]

I saw this yesterday and it made me think of this thread:

If that isn't the most accurate thing!

[Darth-Apple]

I gave it a second chance. I spent the day posting answers and solutions on S/O, and sadly, hasn't much changed. They are good at finding quick solutions to complex, properly formed questions (though "properly formed" is surrounded by miles of red tape), but that's about it. As we knew, the entire atmosphere is still unbelievably elitist.

And I don't say that as someone who "failed" at it. I got a fair amount of reputation/badges/accepted (I'd say) answers within my first day. I'm not salty. If anything, I'm reflecting after having figured it out.

But it wasn't a pleasant experience. A lot of people downvote things with no explanation. People will answer the same question you've answered, then downvote your answer just so that theirs rises to the top. They will close questions for no reason or judge questions they deem to be "too simple" or otherwise below their level. They will edit answers and change your posts just for the rep bonus they get for doing so. It's just... a very toxic environment.

I did some research and dug up discussions about S/O's atmosphere, and they are very quickly triggered if someone dares to say that they are too elitist. They defend it vehimeitely. It's very much a part of their culture. And granted, there is a lot of stupid stuff that gets posted, but if you aren't interested in letting a beginner be a beginner, don't bother going onto a Q/A site to begin with?

That being said, there is one thing I can't defend. And that's people who post their homework there without even trying to understand the problem. Those people deserve to be downvoted. But the vast majority of other people whose questions get the boot have asked genuine questions, only to have their posts closed for some nondescriptive reason or because an obscure, barely-related duplicate was found from 6 years ago. It's a maze to try to get around that place.

But perhaps most shockingly, I noticed that they tend to wield their influence in the harshest of ways to keep newcomers like myself "in line" with the culture. And I answered some questions that, evidently, others found too "stupid" for the site, and I got downvoted for "encouraging stupid questions" (though they were entirely legitimate questions that weren't stupid at all). This, to me, is the worst part of the entire experience. They quite literally punish you for even trying to not be toxic at the community. If you don't fit in, you're cast out.

Shark tank is pretty much the right way to describe it. Very toxic.

[Guardian]

Agreed. Place is nasty. I've had mods jump don my throat because I came across unanswered questions from years ago, and I answered them. MY BAD. the page was on Google, so other people are going to find it a dead end. They removed my post.

Oddly enough, the one answer I got that got rated through the moon, I was a complete a** in the answer. I was already fed up with it, so just responded very bluntly. After that I kinda logged off and never went back. The whole vibe there is terrible.

[Darth-Apple]

Agreed. Place is nasty. I've had mods jump don my throat because I came across unanswered questions from years ago, and I answered them. MY BAD. the page was on Google, so other people are going to find it a dead end. They removed my post.

Oddly enough, the one answer I got that got rated through the moon, I was a complete a** in the answer. I was already fed up with it, so just responded very bluntly. After that I kinda logged off and never went back. The whole vibe there is terrible.

That's insane. They downvoted you for answering an old question? A question that evidently nobody could solve for YEARS? 

Google exists. These people are idiots. 

It seems that you have to be in the wolf pack to survive around that place. If you even remotely try to be nice, you will be downvoted. I had some successes yesterday, but I got downvoted a couple times for being too helpful on questions that were deemed to be "too stupid."

[Guardian]

That's insane. They downvoted you for answering an old question? A question that evidently nobody could solve for YEARS? 


Google exists. These people are idiots. 



It seems that you have to be in the wolf pack to survive around that place. If you even remotely try to be nice, you will be downvoted. I had some successes yesterday, but I got downvoted a couple times for being too helpful on questions that were deemed to be "too stupid."

Oh, I got a hate-message from a Moderator and I couldn't post/reply or vote until I deleted it. Absolutely ridiculous.

I also got downvoted for answering "dumb" questions, because they expected the person who obviously needed help, to come up with a friggin' rundown of how they got themselves in their situation. They don't know, that's why they're here.

I think a kinder competitor would get further. They're all a bunch of tyrants.

[Darth-Apple]

Wait, they sent you a hate message banning you from posting until you deleted your helpful post?

Those folks are even worse than I thought.

One thing I will say is that the community is fairly small compared to my expectations. It's definitely not as busy as I had anticipated. Of course it is the number one question/answer site, but I believe its popularity is probably tied much more to Stack Exchange and it's 170+ sites than to SO itself.

S/O ran everyone away. And for good reason. Nobody wants to get near that place with a ten foot pole.