[hehheh]

> Vague questions aren't that useful in building the library in particular because lacking the necessary information, they can have too many unhelpful answers.

If that is truly their goal (and I don't doubt that it's at least a hope) then they should go ahead and remove all the vague questions from their database, or at least flag them so they don't show up in web searches. After all, who's using Google to find unsolved, vague problems?

> No one gets points for comments. At all. The voting on comments is purely for visibility ranking of helpful and constructive aspects to the post they are on... and nothing else. No points.

I see. I didn't realize that. They do get the number but I guess it doesn't "persist" throughout the site. Good to know. Though, then I guess I don't understand what their motivation is to respond with useless comments.

> Instead a comment asking "what version of C++ are you using" up front to make sure that the person asking the question gets the correct answer rather than something that is unhelpful.

That's OK, I guess, but it seems to be counter to the idea of building a library. Rather than have a set of answers that may address the question for various versions of C++, you have a question and zero answers (because the person asking for details disappeared). That's the reality, anyway.

In any case, it wouldn't even have to be a private message. Simply having a "needs more detail" checkbox that hides the question (from Google et al) until the detail is added would be enough to improve the SO experience.

[shagie]

There have been efforts to remove vague questions. There is a lot of them. Stack Overflow corporate tends to leave that to the community moderation... which is a bit under powered. Until recently, the elected moderator team tended to be on the preservationist side. As to removing from search? https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/316881/ - remember that Stack Overflow monetization is driven by views. Deleting those vague questions that people search for (they do) that happen to have a lot of views and are locked ends up as a - on the balance sheet.

Reputation changes happen from: * Upvote on a question you asked (+5) * Upvote on an answer your provided (+10) * Accepted answer you provided (+15) * Accepted edit (+2) * Down vote on a question you asked (-2) * Down vote on an answer you provided (-2) * Down vote you gave on an answer (-1); yes down voting other peoples answers costs you points. * Receiving a bounty (+varies) * Giving a bounty (-varies)

Thats it. Nothing about comments. Nothing about closing questions.

The comments aren't necessary useless. They are often trying to help the person asking the question write a better question that can get a better answer. If the comment truly is useless, it should be flagged to be removed (and that won't give or cost anyone any points).

Guessing at the answer isn't that helpful. You've got no idea if it solved the problem or not. The next person to find it with search won't know if it solved the problem or not either. So instead of one question with an answer that did, you've got a question that has a dozen guesses... and you've got to go through and figure out which one works for you in your environment. Might as well have searched a forum and paged through all the guesses there.

Questions that don't have any answers eventually get removed by the system. https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92006 describes the criteria.

> If the question is more than 30 days old, and ... > has −1 or lower score > has no answers > is not locked

> If the question is more than 365 days old, and ... > has a score of 0 or less, or a score of 1 or less in case of deleted owner > has no answers > is not locked > has view count <= the age of the question in days times 1.5 > has 1 or 0 comments

The "needs more detail" is often part of the close reason. The question is closed not as a "you did bad" but rather as a "don't try to guess at an answer until this is cleared up"

> Questions seeking debugging help ("why isn't this code working?") must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.

> Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

The hides from google, again, is the "this is how SO makes its advertising impression money." The reason given often is the "breaks the internet." If people linked to the closed question from outside that link becomes a 404. I'm skeptical on that being the only reason as I noted the advertising impression dollars there. I personally believe that maintaining poor quality material, no matter how many people link to it, is damaging to the brand and sets a poor example for what people asking questions expect. And thus, when they do catch the eye of someone who has an Atwoodian (quality above all else, delete the stuff that doesn't contribute) philosophy of quality on the site, it becomes a poor user experience for everyone involved. And as Jeff isn't there and Joel is CEO, the emphasis is different.

I say Atwoodian there - thats following the call of:

> It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.

The Spolskyians are following the call of:

> What kind of questions are appropriate? Well, thanks to the tagging system, we can be rather broad with that. As long as questions are appropriately tagged, I think it’s okay to be off topic as long as what you’re asking about is of interest to people who make software. But it does have to be a question. Stack Overflow isn’t a good place for imponderables, or public service announcements, or vague complaints, or storytelling.

Its shifted a bit from those original calls to people to contribute... but you can see a profound difference in the emphasis between those different calls for contributors. Then give https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/02/22/are-some-questions-too... a read and look at the editor history of https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions

The thing I'm trying to say there is the "why don't these questions get hidden from google" gets an "its complicated" and goes to the top of the company and its founder about what is appropriate for the site and not. Its not something easily done or decided.

[hehheh]

> Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers.

I guess this is fundamentally where I disagree with SO's staff and/or moderation team. I occasionally find those questions and their answers very useful, when there are answers, and again more useful than the perhaps ideal, specific, and ignored questions that fill the site. When questions get too specific, the only person that might benefit from the reply is the person that posted the question in the first place. At that point it might as well not be part of a public forum.

My favorite SO pages are those that generate multiple replies with different perspectives, and often different languages or at least libraries. Those questions are admittedly usually vague but I think that given the result (many interesting answers from different people) that is a net positive. You might say that the answers given look like guesses, and that'd be completely fair, but there's still value. Certainly more value than an unanswered question abandoned by both the asker and the one person who expressed a small amount of interest.

I do see the difference you're describing (between Atwoodian and Spolskyians) and I can see the merits in both sides. I'm not satisfied with either, but that's more on me than on SO. In any case, I doubt I'm making any unique or new arguments here. I'm mostly just frustrated with SO and Google in general because I almost never find a solution to my problems.

As a sort of aside:

> The key distinction to make here, in my mind, is that all questions are ultimately in service of the people answering them. That is the audience you need to satisfy if you want to have any hope of creating and sustaining a community of peers learning from each other.

That seems to be how you make a site by and for narcissists, or people otherwise interested in hearing themselves talk. It'd be a different story if the answers were paid, I guess, because at least then the motivation would be something more tangible.

To be honest, I probably would have written SO off entirely if I'd seen this comment earlier.