How trolls capture your favorite programming question and answer site

The Stack Overflow website was created in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky as a more open alternative to previously emerging similar sites, such as, for example, Experts-Exchange . The name for the site was chosen by a vote in April 2008 by readers of the popular programming blog Coding Horror , which led Atwood.

For many years, the Stack Overflow site has been one of the most popular resources for programmers trying to solve a problem. Since the questions that were posted on Stack Overflow were often among the first that Google gave out in any search related to programming, users came to the site en masse and started asking their own questions.
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As of July 2015, Stack Overflow had more than 4 million registered users and almost 10 million questions (excluding remote users and questions). However, in a 2013 survey, it was found that 77% of users ask only one question, 65% answer only one question, and only 8% of users give answers to more than 5 questions . In this article I would like to consider the possible reasons for such an extremely low percentage.


Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood at the MIX09 conference in 2009

Stack Overflow hates new users.

New users feel particularly uncomfortable when entering Stack Overflow. We quote Jonah Bishop :

Stack Overflow has always been a resource with a higher than average level for finding answers to programming questions. In particular, on this site I found a lot of useful answers to really difficult questions, many of which helped me overcome problems at work or with software projects that I worked on "for the soul." So I decided to register on the site to see if I could be of any use. Never before has a single site made the worst first impression on me.

To keep this community as “clean” and organized as possible, new users have very few rights from the very beginning. This is, of course, a good idea. In practice, this makes it difficult for the task to somehow develop for new users. I read a few questions today and would like to write some comments for the original post. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to leave my comments, since new users have no right to comment on their own articles (the user must earn a “reputation” in order to receive such a right). Placing my comment as an “answer” to the original question does not seem to me a very suitable form, so I do not do that.

Traveling through the site, I found a few questions that I think I could answer. As soon as I entered to answer these questions, someone else suddenly burst in (in some cases, several people) and just beat me. I had no opportunity to give a helpful answer. Not only do you need to know the subject very well, but you must also be very quick in providing this answer. In the end, I answered the question, but I realized that my approach would not work. Before I could take action and correct my answer, my note was already written by a few people, some of whom left stinging remarks. Well, a very warm welcome to the new user! I subsequently deleted my answer.
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Questions beginners are perceived very unfriendly

Stack Overflow also hates most of its other users.

Not only new users experience a sense of hostility on the site. Someone at Hacker News expressed a general feeling that many programmers get (experienced or not) when they try to participate in Stack Overflow activity.

When I first started programming, I could use SO without asking questions, because what I wanted to find out was pretty simple. It was great because many answers helped me to understand more about the “immense universe” of problems that I might encounter during the course of development, and these answers pushed me to study the language more deeply.

After I started asking questions, I tried to respond to comments, noted and added the best answers. I wanted to be a good member of this community. And reciprocity was part of it: in the end, I decided that I myself could answer questions; I remember what a wonderful feeling it was when I first saw +25 in my profile, because someone accepted my answer.

Nowadays, if I ask a question, it is because I spent a lot of time searching for an answer and could not find it myself. What happens when I ask a question on SO:

1. I ask a question, place the code and the received error message.
2. The issue is minus one.
3. I reply to the commentary, which says that my question was already in the past (this is not the case, which I clarify, in order to avoid the situation “removed as a repetition”).
4. Reply to the comment about the missing semicolon, which was deleted when I cut / pasted / formatted my code. (Although the error message clearly shows that the problem is not missing a semicolon).
5. The question appeared like.
6. The answer! It is written that I should read the documentation, and a link to a section that is not related to the subject of the question (I, of course, have already read the documentation).
7. Finally, a helpful answer! It looks pretty good; I test it, and - the problem is solved. I accept and like the answer.
8. I notice that in less than 1 minute after the answer I received, a duplicate came. Its author complains, saying that his record was posted earlier. I refer to the time stamp indicating that the other sender was the first, and I get the answer that this is a bug related to time zones.
9. Later, I recheck and notice the message: "The question is removed, as inaccurate, the answer to it is impossible."
10. Recheck once again and see that someone zaminusoval my question.
11. Send a letter to the moderator to remove the minus.
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Stephen K. Hicks indicated 8 reasons why he felt unable to participate more in this community after having been a very active user for quite a long time:

- The eternal problem in September. Many new Stack Overflow [SO] users rarely follow community rules. I do not know how to solve this problem, but it is annoying to see questions sounding like a message of help. SO is positioning itself as a site with very concise questions and answers. He is not a discussion forum. [He is rather a support and gift]. Another problem is that there are repetitions again and again, despite the angry moderators fighting this. One example is questions about where to find free stock quote data.

- Issues related to software development, which, in fact, are not technical, are often forgotten and / or removed. An example would be the question of a specific data set [for training / development purposes], which was dropped for the reason that it “does not correspond to the community”. Although there is a StackExchange site associated with data sets to which this question could be redirected, the question itself undoubtedly refers to software development. By writing “StackExchange site, ... where this question could be redirected to”, I meant a fully functioning site, not one that is currently “developed” / at Site 51. Removing the question as “irrelevant” does not help either nor to those people who are looking for a similar set of data.

- Minus as a means to remove the issue. The user, in order to get the right to vote for the removal of the question, must have 250 reputation points. If you participate in the community, then their accumulation does not take much time. The minus should be a way of noting that there is erroneous, disorienting or useless information. If the user believes that the question should be removed, but his reputation is not enough for this, then you should write a comment and provide arguments for withdrawal.

- Negation of correct, but different from the usual answers. The problem arises when questions may have multiple answers. Example: the usual answer to a question about optimizing a Java application is to suggest using a more efficient algorithm. Most likely the majority will vote for this answer. However, another correct answer is the proposal to rewrite the process in a lower level language and connect it via the programming channel [Socket, inproc, JNI, etc.] to the main application. Such a proposal is better applicable for rather unusual situations, but it is still correct and feasible. From my experience I can say that this second answer will be zaminusovan, despite the fact that it gives the correct information. I discussed the situation with one moderator [Shog9], and, in his opinion, such a strategy is quite an acceptable strategy of jamming a response that deserves respect.

- Time shifted / repeated responses. Since I have ceased my activity in the community, I cannot say how often this happens. However, when a question appears, an avalanche of answers often arises. After a while, someone places a repetition of the answer and gets more votes for it than for the initial answer. This is harder to detect, but it happens and is very annoying.

- Incorrect reputation attributed to answers: if there are other answers that help you in answering a question, then please quote those other authors. This is a manifestation of politeness and veracity. [Also, those you quote should be noted for their response].

- Here is another one of the strange cases on Stack Overflow. Some of the questions referred to “Exact repetitions” are, in fact, not repetitions due to small but important differences. I cannot give an example now, but commentators often quickly, without careful verification, decide that there is an exact repetition. Sometimes such an accusation is not supported by any evidence. References to other questions are considered sufficient evidence.

- Reputation value: after a global conversion, the site creators made a strong statement that participation is not evaluated on the site. The recount devalued the issues, and the new policy was applied retrospectively. This led to a loss of reputation. The creators of the site stated that “reputation was useless,” which contradicted their previous wording, that reputation is “an indicator of how much the community trusts you.” Based on the foregoing statement, one could argue that a user with 500 reputation points is rated as John Skeat [a well-known user in the community and the author of many technical books].

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Is it any wonder that many programmers who have been registered at Stack Overflow for many years are increasingly leaving the platform?

Reign of privileged trolls

In Michael's Techbox blog, an anonymous commentator left the following comment:

Stack Exchange sites are declared a place of “free and open” information sharing, but in reality they are captured by a small number of participants who are just trying to get evaluation points, badges and moderator status, wanting to act as “experts” and claim to work remotely.
For example, look at the activity of this user, which instead of issuing useful technical answers consists solely of condemning the answers of other people:

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A similar opinion was expressed on The Programming Works blog.

I once spoke on this post: “If you have a programming question, then Stack Overflow is probably the best place to ask your question.” So it was when SO started a few years ago; now there is no.
Now your chances of getting a useful answer to your question on SO are close to zero. Instead, you get a bunch of comments stating that your question, for example, does not correspond to SO or is incorrectly formulated or something else - and nothing useful.
SO is now another zoo of trolls and aggressively self-assured newbies.

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Both materials illustrate, in my opinion, the fundamental problem of Stack Overflow. There are a number of democratically elected moderators , who were supposed to follow some fairly well-defined guidelines on how to be good moderators. The site also has a very large number of users with privileges:

• 39,000 users with a reputation of 2,000 or more have the ability to edit other people's questions.
• 26,000 users with a reputation of 3,000 or more have the ability to remove questions. Five votes for withdrawal translate the issue into the "blocked" state.
• 6,900 users with a reputation of 10,000 or more have the ability to delete questions.

Of these thousands of privileged users, many rule their virtual estates as the smallest Fuhrers, imposing extremely arbitrary and poorly documented rules on their unsuspecting serfs, bringing down curses and torments on those who act not in accordance with their irrational, ignorant notions that they consider it a good question / answer. And this is often even without reading the whole question / answer or without any experience in the area of ​​the question under consideration.


We laugh nervously - how else to react to it?

While I am writing this article, Jason Sachs (also known as Jason S ) is under No. 503 in the list of users with the highest all-time reputation - 70,688 points. He is also one of the most respected users of Stack Overflow, who have decided to stop spending their energy on this site. Recalling the 1995 release of the Seinfeld series , he calls these little Fuhrers "soup fans":

Fans of the series Seinfeld remember his release in November 1995, the “Supny Fan” , in which the hero finds out about a restaurant where they cook fantastic soups. The restaurant is led by an extravagant person who has extremely strict requirements for its customers; if the client does not withstand proper ritual and prayer, the host shouts: “There will be no soup for you!” - and a bowl of soup is promptly taken from you before you can protest.

The existence of strict standards of this type is not in itself a “supreme fanaticism"; A problem occurs when this attitude spreads and begins to affect the bulk of the community.
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Further in this article, Sashs quotes from several users of the site, further illustrating the problem. Take this side:

... at first, most of the questions asked found a positive response: friendly comments and answers, people tried to help no matter how you formulated the question. Recently, there has been a tendency to simply remove or block most of the questions, to jam them, make fun of the form or style.
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... or such a comment:

I see that people usually take down or minus the question immediately if they consider this question to be at all somewhat wrong; Only 5 people are required to recognize your post as incorrect, although more than 20 other users of the site will consider the answer to be correct. The community does not like it, but there are no explanatory comments unless you request them. Just take off, thank you, and come again.
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... or such a comment:

Michael Richter did a good job of identifying this tendency and its reasons in his post “Why I don’t participate in StackOverflow anymore” - he calls site users who are seeking a very high reputation as “a party of distanced scholars”.
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... or such a comment:

I think you are completely right in stating: “This site was intended to provide an exemplary resource that allows programmers to find answers to their questions. Entire books (and very good ones) can be written based on the content of the best questions / answers posted here. ”Unfortunately, they all sank into a sea of ​​nonsense. The success of the site attracts people with programming questions (there are a lot of such visitors on Google). This reduces the ability of the system to self-regulate. There is a need to have something like an “entrance exam” for those who wish to send a question.
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In his blog, Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, explains the meaning of the word trolling:

Classic troll:

1. Comes to create conflict.
2. He, in fact, does not care about the topic of discussion.
Some of the trolls, it may seem, are concerned with the topic, because they express, albeit extreme, but the views on it and long talk about it in the smallest details for those who are ready to perceive them. This could go on for days, weeks, months ... But all this is a hoax.

The most striking feature of the worst trolls is that their position on this topic is absolutely “hard stone”, unshakable and they defend its death, despite any criticism, evidence or considerations.
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Based on this definition, I would suggest an alternative name for "soup fans" or "raspoltsovannogo scholars tusovki": "super-privileged trolls". Yes, you read it right. Not only does the Stack Overflow site suffer from fanatical trolls, but it is also a community where trolls are in fact the main ones. Not surprisingly, hostility and infantile behavior have become the norm that determines the interaction at Stack Overflow! It is clear that no one guards the watchmen themselves .


Meta.StackOverflow is a community dedicated to questions about StackOverflow. This is the place where, as you are told, you can turn to any complaints about Stack Overflow, but the problem is perhaps even worse.


The Latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Or “Who will extinguish the watchmen themselves?” Is a popular expression in satire and political literature, at least since ancient times. This means that any system easily ceases to perform the functions for which it was created, if its custodians have unlimited power.

To further worsen the situation, the Stack Exchange networking software automatically removes the questions that meet the following criteria:

• Filmed more than 9 days ago
• Not filmed as a repeat
• Account <= 0
• Not blocked
• No replies with> 0
• No accepted response
• No Suspended Voices Hanged
• No editing in the last 9 days

The consequence of this is that many good questions are not only removed before anyone can answer, but also the fact that many of them eventually disappear after only 9 days.

I think that any question on Stack Overflow can be described as not relevant to the topic of the site, if it is enough that only privileged trolls vote to remove it.

Is there any alternative?

Quora may seem like an obvious choice, but this site has many problems similar to Stack Overflow, although in a less obvious way. For example, jammed answers are skillfully hidden from most users, and it is not uncommon to delete answers without any explanation or notification and / or without visible traces for everyone except the author of the answer. Quora gives some users completely anonymous authority to edit the site as they see fit , but almost no one seems to know about it.

Thus, while Quora may seem like a more democratic and more robust website, in fact it is only a superficial impression. Trolling and direct petty authoritarianism of privileged users is not less often found on this site. For many of the same reasons why Huxley’s Brave New World dystopia seems more scary and troubling than Orwell’s 1984 dystopia , the Quora community is more frightened and worried than on the Stack Overflow website.

At the very least, Stack Overflow does not care to hide its totalitarian nature from those who are willing to devote more than a few minutes to the inner workings of the site. At the very least, dictators on Stack Overflow are somehow publicly known and should give an open explanation when they decide to remove a question. And, perhaps even more importantly, Stack Overflow does not put us out of ourselves with countless stupid questions like: "Is Sheryl Sandberg ever saving anything for later?" Despite all the flaws, his weak attempts at making community-driven quality control work are not as bad as the one on the Quora website.