If I had a nickel for every SO thread that came up in my Google searches that could have answered my question if only the SO moderators had allowed it to be answered, I'd be able to buy a few steak dinners.
Me: Goes to read the other ticket. It's from 8 years ago, and the answer was "This is solved in version X."
Me, on something many versions after X, and having the hindsight of knowing that no, it was not solved in X, shakes my head. I find the solution someplace else.
I do not go back to SO because I can't be bothered to fight an uphill battle.
Same experience here, except half the time I visit the "duplicate" question, only to find it isn't a duplicate at all! In the last I've had several of my own questions closed as "duplicates", where it's quite obvious the moderator didn't read either my question, or the one they point to.
I haven't asked a question on SO for over 2 years now, mainly because I just got sick of the hostile environment that the mods created.
A 'high' (just not a new one) reputation user (not necessarily a moderator) opens a review queue. He sees a new question. He searches the SO if a similar question has been asked. He finds a similar question, and without reading and testing it thoroughly, he marks yours as a duplicate of that.
Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong, but another user who already spent some time cleaning up the site is supposed to thoroughly analyze both questions to begin with?
People on Stack Exchange tend to try to not be emotional like you, so they don't fight a battle with you. You just resign from a discussion, and then complain how a mistake has been made, that you didn't care to even point out.
> Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong
Right.
> but another user who already spent some time cleaning up the site
"Cleaning up" by mislabeling stuff. Sounds like they are making a mess. But go on...
> is supposed to thoroughly analyze both questions to begin with?
Yes, they should completley read questions before closing them.
> People on Stack Exchange tend to try to not be emotional like you
I hope they care about being accurate rather than being apathetic about it.
> , so they don't fight a battle with you. You just resign from a discussion, and then complain how a mistake has been made, that you didn't care to even point out.
There was no discussion. I didn't resign, I never engaged in any discussion in the first place. I just found a question and a closed question.
And I can't even comment on how it shouldn't have been closed. It's closed. That's it.
Your entire comment is about how SO fails, and rather than work to overcome it, it just blamed the people for "not holding it right."
> "Cleaning up" by mislabeling stuff. Sounds like they are making a mess. But go on...
Accidents are inevitable.
> Yes, they should completley read questions before closing them.
Do you know the concept of a triage?
> And I can't even comment on how it shouldn't have been closed.
Either you don't have some very minimal reputation in the network (I don't know, 100 points?), which limitation is there, I think, do protect from bots and similar abuse, or the question was *locked* for other reason than just being a duplicate. You could still open a question on meta to discuss that.
I don't even want to defend SO, I'm just frustrated by how terribly bad the arguments criticizing SO are.
> you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong
this comments are ignored
people closed my questions in past for being duplicate - despite that I linked that question and described why it is not a duplicate
> He sees a new question. He searches the SO if a similar question has been asked. He finds a similar question, and without reading and testing it thoroughly, he marks yours as a duplicate of that.
that is wrongheaded and bad idea leading to predictably terrible results
she/he should not close it as duplicated without proper check (it is better to have some duplicates over bad closures)
Well it doesn't matter because the parent post completely disengaged from the site. Turning away potentially active users seems like a horrible move that the owners of SO didn't try to fix and possibly led them to where they are today.
Flashback to a very common question about relative imports in python that had mostly outdated answers, or very hacky non-solutions but that kept being referenced in newer threads. You actually had to scroll way down to get a reasonable answer. Even then, there was so much confusion and "works for me if I just set the path manually (lol)" or "add __init__.py in this folder" , "no actually don't remove __init__!". Which okay I guess sometimes questions have multiple answers (though the answer way down the page was objectively correct!) ... but then why close newer questions if past answers were messy and very non universal?
