[Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!
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I'm frequently a critic of overly restrictive interpretations of the rules by close-voters on Stack Overflow, but I usually manage to conform enough to at least keep my own questions on the right side of the law. Not today, though.
After being puzzled by how the
%gspecifier toprintfdoesn't behave how most of the internet claims it's supposed to, Idiveddovedived into the C standard, read the standard's actual wording which contradicts most other sources, and then asked and self-answered https://stackoverflow.com/q/54162152/1709587 so I'd have a source to point to when explaining to people that "the shortest representation out of%eand%f" isn't a true description of%g's behaviour, but rather just a bizarrely popular myth. Since this format specifier exists in loads of languages, I tested to confirm that it in fact has the same behaviour in all of them, and then in the question I listed snippets from a bunch of languages that illustrate this fact, in order to show that any answer explaining the behaviour in C would in fact be relevant to basically any language that usesprintfspecifiers.Of course, this means I now have to do battle with the close-voters, because noting that the C feature I'm asking about exists in other languages and behaves identically apparently makes the question "Too Broad". My question sits at 2/5 close votes, and may not survive. Apparently these close-voters think that I should cut out any mention of any language that isn't C, because hypothetically,
%gmight behave differently in some other language. It doesn't, of course, and I provided sample code and output to show that in the question, but apparently it's legit now to close a question because it might be too broad in an alternate universe.I'm still a true believer in the SO model and I think - contra basically everyone ever - that it actually gets its moderation more or less right most of the time. But on the occasions that I do have to fight for the right of question I care about to exist, it's enraging.
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Edited for grammmmmar.
@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Idiveddove into the C standard
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@boomzilla Begone with your American English, infidel! Here in Blighty, it's "dived".
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I am sort of impressed that the forum is sophisticated enough to render a
<del>ed<ins>in yellow.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
gets its moderation more or less right most of the time
From my experience, even completely unmoderated sites are like this usually. So saying SO is good because it has this is like saying it's good because most of the functionality works on newest Chrome.
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@boomzilla said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Edited for grammmmmar.
@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Idiveddove into the C standardWait, what?
When did too-
-to-moderate mods turn into copy-edits-your-posts-for-you? 
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FWIW, cppreference seems to get it right, they have a similar blurb to the quote from the C11 standard that you answer your question with.
I'm not a SO user (I occasionally land there due to search results) .. so out of curiosity: why would you ask a question and then immediately answer it yourself?
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
why would you ask a question and then immediately answer it yourself?
One presumes e-peen points.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
My question sits at 2/5 close votes, and may not survive.
I really wouldn't worry about it. It's attracted a reasonable number of upvotes too (and so has your answer) so It'll remain open a while. Also, you've gained a respectable number of epeen pointzzz for both. Also, the hive mind doesn't seem to be actually agreeing with the close voters; still only two close votes in 2½ hours…
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@topspin said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
@boomzilla said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Edited for grammmmmar.
@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Idiveddove into the C standardWait, what?
When did too- -to-moderate mods turn into copy-edits-your-posts-for-you? When it becomes a stackoverflow joke.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
I am sort of impressed that the forum is sophisticated enough to render a
<del>ed<ins>in yellow.It amused @PJH enough one day to make it do that.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
I am sort of impressed that the forum is sophisticated enough to render a
<del>ed<ins>in yellow.Just wait until you discover what happens to
<ins>ed<dels>s....
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I'm suprised Stackoverflow runs as well as it does. Herding programmers is not an easy task. The stinginess of the resident reviewers is not checked well. The worst is when the review process scolds you for disagreeing with other reviewers.
Why thank you automated process! You asked me my opinion then told me I didn't do it well because I came to another conclusion than the other reviewers.They don't help it either with their choice of words: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/23868/stackoverflow-consensus
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
@boomzilla Begone with your American English, infidel! Here in Blighty, it's "dived".
Have divened.
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@PJH
Cool.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
@boomzilla Begone with your American English, infidel! Here in Blighty, it's "dived".
Have divened.
Had divean on-when.
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
why would you ask a question and then immediately answer it yourself?
Why would you answer a question at all? Perhaps just because you want to help the one random dude who asked it, but presumably, if you're thinking bigger, because you want others who are wondering about that question to be able to easily find the answer by Google.
But what if you have some useful knowledge to share, but nobody has previously asked the question on Stack Overflow? Well...
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@gleemonk said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
I'm suprised Stackoverflow runs as well as it does. Herding programmers is not an easy task. The stinginess of the resident reviewers is not checked well. The worst is when the review process scolds you for disagreeing with other reviewers. Why thank you automated process! You asked me my opinion then told me I didn't do it well because I came to another conclusion than the other reviewers.
Eh... they need the audits. Bad ones happen, but without them roboreviewers selecting options at random to earn badges have nothing to stop them. Depressing that such people exist, but since they do, we need a process to catch them. :(
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
I'm not a SO user (I occasionally land there due to search results) .. so out of curiosity: why would you ask a question and then immediately answer it yourself?
According to @end himself:
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Why would you answer a question at all? Perhaps just because you want to help the one random dude who asked it, but presumably, if you're thinking bigger, because you want others who are wondering about that question to be able to easily find the answer by Google.
Well, if one random dude has asked it, I at least know that one other person is interesting in the answer. And half of the time I see this self-answer thing, the answer is already easy to find with Google.
But what if you have some useful knowledge to share, but nobody has previously asked the question on Stack Overflow? Well...
From my POV: if nobody has previously asked a question, perhaps it's not all that very interesting in the first place... But if you consider doing this useful, by all means, it's your time.
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
From my POV: if nobody has previously asked a question, perhaps it's not all that very interesting in the first place... But if you consider doing this useful, by all means, it's your time.
Fair point, and I do have a handful of low-views, low-score self-answers that vindicate your reasoning here, where I'd thought I'd identified an important piece of un-Google-able knowledge and made it Google-able but it turns out that nobody cares.
On the other hand, sometimes I nail it; https://stackoverflow.com/q/48242324/1709587 has gained 4291 views in a year and a bunch of upvotes, precisely because I judged this right - I identified a common task that it was previously tricky to find out how to do via Google (which I knew because it took me ages to find), and made it trivial.
In the case of the
%gquestion, I wanted a source to point to when telling people to fix their incorrect docs, so even if the question doesn't get much traffic from Google it will likely still serve a purpose.
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
From my POV: if nobody has previously asked a question, perhaps it's not all that very interesting in the first place...
99.9% SO questions aren't interesting. The point of SO isn't to be interesting, it's to have a database of ready-made solutions to very specific and often obscure problems.
About answering own questions - usually, it goes like this: someone has a problem; they post a question; no one answers; after some time, they figure out the solution themselves; they write answer to their own question in case someone looks it up in the future. Writing question and answering it immediately is indeed a weird occurrence.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
In the case of the %g question, I wanted a source to point to when telling people to fix their incorrect docs, so even if the question doesn't get much traffic from Google it will likely still serve a purpose.
Again from my POV. If somebody contacted me and told me to fix my docs I'd prefer if they pointed me directly to something like the C11 standard (that you admittedly quote in your answer). Referencing a SO question that they themselves wrote and answered would probably cause me to be a bit suspicious. I'd likely have to go dig for the actual sources.
Don't get me wrong though -- if you think this is a good way of sharing your knowledge, then I'm all for it.
@Gąska said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
About answering own questions - usually, it goes like this: someone has a problem; they post a question; no one answers; after some time, they figure out the solution themselves; they write answer to their own question in case someone looks it up in the future. Writing question and answering it immediately is indeed a weird occurrence.
Yes, I agree, that makes total sense. But, as you point out, the question and answer were posted roughly at the same time in this case. Which is why I was wondering why somebody would go through the trouble of doing that. :-)
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@Gąska said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Writing question and answering it immediately is indeed a weird occurrence.
It's unusual, but officially blessed; there's even a UI for immediately self-answering when you ask a question.
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This rant seems too vague, mods please lock this thread.
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
From my POV: if nobody has previously asked a question, perhaps it's not all that very interesting in the first place..
I have a stackoverflow account but it's been...a while...since I logged in. I go there all the time when I'm looking for answers. I'm often looking up something that's relatively obscure. If I don't find it there's pretty much a zero percent probability of asking. People who ask these questions are helping.
And half of the time I see this self-answer thing, the answer is already easy to find with Google.
Maybe, but this was explicitly a case where most of the stuff you'd find was wrong (according to the OP). Also, a differently worded question can have value since we don't all come up with the magical phrase that others were using that one time they wrote a blog post or a question on SO.
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@anonymous234 said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
This rant seems too vague, mods please lock this thread.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
My question sits at 2/5 close votes, and may not survive.
Since you have already posted the answer, does being "closed" matter at all?
Many of the useful answers I find on SO do indeed belong to questions "closed for <this or that imaginary offense>".
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@Adynathos said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Since you have already posted the answer, does being "closed" matter at all?
Arguably, no. I'd still rather it not end up closed, because:
- It allows anyone with enough rep to vote to delete it, which they might do.
- It sets bad precedent in the broader culture war between users who tend towards being liberal on how we should interpret our rules (like me) and those who... don't.
- It's entirely possible that somebody else genuinely has something substantial and useful to add that belongs in an answer.
- It may reduce how much a reader trusts my answer if they know that nobody else is permitted to compete with it. And even though I think my answer is good, I think that such competition should be possible as a matter of principle.
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@cvi said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
if you think this is a good way of sharing your knowledge
Nah, we all know there's only one true way to share knowledge!
Filed under: VB5 spaghetti
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
I'd still rather it not end up closed
It doesn't seem to be attracting any more close votes, and it isn't on a speedy deletion track (reasonable number of upvotes ensures that). Quit worrying. The close votes will probably expire (IIRC, they only live for a couple of weeks) before they cause any trouble.
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@Cabbage said in [Rant] Want to share your knowledge? First, do battle with the close-voters!:
Arguably, no. I'd still rather it not end up closed, because:
- It allows anyone with enough rep to vote to delete it, which they might do.
- It sets bad precedent in the broader culture war between users who tend towards being liberal on how we should interpret our rules (like me) and those who... don't.
- It's entirely possible that somebody else genuinely has something substantial and useful to add that belongs in an answer.
- It may reduce how much a reader trusts my answer if they know that nobody else is permitted to compete with it. And even though I think my answer is good, I think that such competition should be possible as a matter of principle.
- It may reduce how much a reader trusts my answer if they know that nobody else is permitted to compete with it. And even though I think my answer is good, I think that such competition should be possible as a matter of principle.
You forgot the very important:
- Technologies change. So should answers.
It's OK to Ask and Answer Your Own Questions - Stack Overflow
