Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Here's what happened to me when I threw out what I thought an interesting question then had a little debate about it on Meta. My question got extremely downvoted.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11706028/creating-a-elisp...

The "rule" is that you must show some sort of effort before you ask a question. I was honest and said that I didn't do anything, but I did make my question well-defined, and I thought that it was useful, in general.

Anyway, if that's their rule, that's their rule. Personally, I'm interested in seeing a "Wikipedia of Programming", where all good questions exist with good answers.

For example, "How do I do X in Java|Perl|Scala|Haskell|Elisp|...?"

I think a site with enough questions would be the perfect site to take someone from novice to guru. The big thing missing from StackOverFlow, IMHO, is that there are lots of questions for popular topics like Java (280k)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java

Where as topics like elisp (1200) are almost neglected.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/elisp

StackOverFlow doesn't want to be the site that connects the dots, which isn't their business model. I think another site could fill the void.

Your question was downvoted because it basically reads as, "I want to do X. Please do it for me." The site is supposed to be a replacement for a smart coworker. You wouldn't ask your coworker to do something like that, you'd ask him for help with a specific part of it. Asking otherwise just comes across as freeloading.

Yes, that's the rule and I disagreed so I left the site. I'm interested in a site to augment the wizardly elisp or Haskell guy you run into occasionally, who you know could show you "the way". I don't use elisp in my day job, for example, but when I get the rare chance to play with it, it would nice to have a deeper repository of questions from which to learn.

The point is, it's not a "do my work/homework for me" site.

It's a "I tried to solve the problem this way, but it doesn't quite work; can you show me what I'm doing wrong?" or a "I solved the problem this way, but it seems really bad; is there a better way?"

I agree, asking a question without demonstrating an earnest attempt at solving or understanding it shows to me that you didn't care enough about it to even attempt it. Given that, why should I care enough about it to attempt it?

Btw, I added a downvote to your question. It really is in poor form.

Fair enough. If anyone wants to build the other site, let me know.

Hi. I answered this question, and was delighted to see it because it was the sort of question that is fun to answer. I was surprised about the "do your homework" rule as I've never heard of it before. So I read the FAQ and it's not there. You need to read the FAQ AND from there click on a link to go to another page to explain this rule.

I don't know what good this rule brings to the site. Sure in a lot of cases it's better for the person who asks the question to try and solve the problem themselves, but for the site itself it's better the more questions and answers there are to read.

The original question could be changed to be more generic, such as: How can I write elisp code that transforms a selected region of text? or something similar.

What I would like to see instead of questions being closed is just a banner at the top of the question saying: Warning: This question may not meet the standards of the site due to [which rule it broke] and let the people searching decide what weight to give it.

All this said, I think the way the question was handled was quite polite and proper given the rules.

> Where as topics like elisp (1200) are almost neglected.

Not sure what is your complaint here. Of course there are few elisp questions compared to Java questions: there are so many fewer elisp programmers! And from what I see most of the elisp questions do get answers, i.e. they aren't neglected. In my experience the same holds for Haskell questions.

That said, I don't think your question should have been downvoted and blocked, and I upvoted it just in case.

Not to mention, his question was answered and he got what he wanted. He's just unhappy for getting downvoted and doesn't want to comply with what SO wants out of how questions are asked.

Note please that despite asking a question that, as other commenters here have pointed out, brazenly goes against the guidelines for "the kind of question that Stack Overflow is good for," you still got an answer that gave you what you wanted.

I am definitely surprised that you're still whining after that. If you want the reputation points instead of the answer to your question, you are the problem!

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