So, I was busy answering a pretty interesting question on Stack Overflow. I spent a good 20 minutes writing a thoughtful, well explained answer, and just as I was finishing up, and giving my question a proof read, this happened:
This question has been closed - no more answers will be accepted..
Sure enough, the "Post Answer" button was now disabled, and my answer was trapped in the edit box, doomed to never see the light of day.
I've had this happen to me a bunch of times, and each time has frustrated, or even enraged me. This isn't the experience any normal UX engineer wants for their users, so I decide to go onto meta and explain how ridiculous the situation was.
It went very well, everyone agreed with me, and they're going to fix the problem soon... Just kidding
I got into the usual discussions with the usual "Church of Jeff's-way-of-thinking" douchebags.
Here are the highlights:
: If this keeps happening to you, I suggest you stop trying to answer off-topic or low-quality questions.
: Have you ever considered that some of those people are the ones who need the most help?
: It's not about helping people, that's a collateral benefit.
: That's the big problem with SO. That's why we had the "not very welcoming" issue. It's funny how a QA site has skewed it's objectives so much, that it's no longer about actually helping people.
: People asking low quality questions might need help, but not from here. Here is for high quality questions only.
: It's a good job that "high quality questions" are easily identifiable, and aren't subjective at all then!
So this boils down that you disagree what the site's priorities should be.
: no, this boils down to the fact that I spent a good 20 minutes answering a question, and having my effort thrown away by poor UX driven by questionable ideals.
: Snarky comment from a mod who should know better.
: as things stand, the system does this by design, and anyone that falls foul of it has a terrible experience. It's a problem that people should be aware of, and they should also be very aware of how it makes the end user feel, i.e. frustrated, enraged and defeated. Is that how good UX is supposed to make a user feel?
And the SO community wondered why the StackOverflow isn't very welcoming shit happened.