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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

If you don't like that a question was closed, flag to reopen (if you have over 2k rep I believe). If you don't understand why a questions was closed or feel a moderator is abusing powers, create a post on Meta and it will be dealt with. Then the voice of the users will overrule the moderator decision. Not that complicated, really..

I can't say I recognize the situations pictured in your rant.

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Have you tried to do this?

Reopening usually never happens. Discussions in the comment section is totally useless and wasted time.

Discussions on Meta also just repeat that your question is not for SO.

Yes, I have. Reopening almost always happens if a question is wrongly closed when you get a few eyes on it from meta. So that removes the moderator-abuse part. Discussions in comments are of course useless, as it's only you there vs. those that closed the question. As I said, bring it to Meta.

If the discussion on Meta repeat that the question is not for SO, then those closing the question probably did the right thing. After all, Meta is the user's voting their opinions.

I've seen this happen many times.

Posting to Meta isn't obvious to anyone unfamiliar with SO/StackExchange.

Well, if people don't care to get familiar with the site (checking how others use it, reading the faq and rules), it's not weird if their questions get closed..

Thus creating a closed loop ecosystem that grows increasingly stale.

Requiring familiarization with a system before the power to change things is very very basic. Any open source project require it. I can't directly go and get a patch accepted into the kernel without familiarize myself with the project, the code, and the process of suggesting a patch. I can't request a youtube video to be deleted/undeleted without reading about youtubes process.

familiarization is the basic of the basic requirement for doing anything anywhere.

Information on how to contribute to the kernel--and most big open source projects--is readily available in multiple formats. This is the first I've heard that Stack Overflow has an appeal process.

Compare:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=contributing+to+stack+overflow

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=contributing+to+the+linux+kernel

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=contributing+to+audacity

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=contributing+to+gnu

The closest I found to an answer on SO was marked as a duplicate by several people with no link to the previous answer.

So the issue is not that people have to familiarize with the SO process, but rather that the SO process is badly documented.

Maybe a bit circular, but maybe someone should post on SO meta to improve the documentation?

The problem is that you have a complex and exclusionary process to begin with.

The comparison with open-source isn't apt; inclusion in the mainline of an open-source project affects every user of that project. Keeping code that does not fit with the goals of the project negatively impacts existing users of that project.

Not so for SO questions, or for Wikipedia pages; a page or question you never see, but contains useful information you don't personally think is notable (or "constructive"), costs you nothing to keep.

This is just the Wikipedia editorial/deletionist problem. Some people are more interested in enacting and enforcing process and community "norms".

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