Kinda ironically, I'm torn between commenting on your blog and answering here. I'd like to start by saying I'll be reproducing sections of your blog post for the purposes of trying to address your issues. Having read through this though, I'm unsure that you'd be satisfied but I've tried my best.
This post contains the text of a question that I originally planned to post on SuperUser, a StackExchange website. By the time I finished it, however, I realized that its style and substance would draw hostility at SuperUser.
Unlike Meta.stackexchange (formerly meta.stackoverflow) - per site metas are relatively judgement free. There's no penalty for votes and your reputation is independant of the votes here.
For instance, Gaius Augustus asked, “Is superuser unfriendly to beginners?” His question pertained primarily to rudeness among users.
And folk have addressed his issues - we still don't have any examples
newbies were barred from basic participation (in this instance, the ability to volunteer a link), due to lack of SuperUser reputation points.
Its an anti spam measure - and has been effective there. That said, the community has been known to fix up inactive links or edit in links from comments or wrongly posted answers as needed.
The image shows that I had gotten as far as stating my question, and then the SuperUser site promptly responded with a criticism, as follows:
A quick search on meta suggests it was put in place years ago
What algorithm does Stack Exchange use to determine if a question may be subjective?
This does smell like a potential bug, and might need a dev looking at it. However, had it been a subjective question, it helps new users reframe their question to be better. These tooltips are things that have been added in response to actual, real world issues we've faced.
This was a question I posed on StackOverflow. It was a question about batch files.
Oddly enough, totally on topic here, and a better fit for us
The problem arising in that instance was captured by user623852, who asked, “Why is SuperUser such a negative board?” Data advanced by that user, and by respondents to his/her question, supported the impression of a negative bias.
Shog's a CM, and his word is as canonical as it gets.
Note that this includes posts that were deleted: spam, abusive trolling, blatantly off-topic, etc. If you exclude deleted questions, the picture is somewhat more rosy:
Of course stuff like this gets downvoted and closed... which looks a little worse overall.
The answer may be that the SuperUser site placed trust in its insiders. For some purposes, that trust was surely warranted. But people who have been doing this stuff for years can become impatient with beginners. Some of those responsible for building and maintaining the site may have become effectively incompetent, for purposes of instructing newbies, just as a college English professor might be incompetent at teaching first-grade reading. The site did not appear to be structured to counteract any tendency toward that sort of incompetence over time.
Citations needed - I've been here from since just past the beta and I'm entirely aware of how the QA format needs a certain amount of mental rewiring for someone used to the traditional forum. That said, our structure - of community edits (with benefits for newer users) helps with smaller issues. Folks also often comment asking for clarification.
SE's designed by nature to be about maximising signal - there's little room to be impatient. The smart, experienced ones don't react (too much). We go for stuff to answer. We sometimes try to guide - if we have the patience, but even those teachable moments are through comments (which are transient) or meta.
There's also, both formally and informally, various amounts of mentorship going on. If someone's unsure why a question got closed, or they got question/answer banned, I'm sure someone would be happy, if they had the time, to go through and fix things.
That said, if you must allege structural incompetence, please show evidence of this - at worst, we'll deal with it, but this is the sort of over-broad statement that's unproductive.
The foregoing examples involved the first of those two levels: they illustrated built-in support for potentially irresponsible negativity toward legitimate questions that were perhaps not phrased or conceived as an expert would phrase or conceive them.
The language here... Basically attempts to delegitimise anyone who disagrees. If a question is good but badly written we fix. One of the big changes in the site over time is how we went from closing questions to putting on hold. And I often comment "Hey, this is the issue with your post" and let them know that they can flag the specific post for undeletion or reopening.
The second level involved structural hostility toward those who would question this state of affairs.
And... you've basically gone "anyone who disagrees with me is hostile". We don't actually always defend the status quo.
In that case, someone summarized my question in these words: “Why am I getting push-back for linking to my own blog posts in answers?”
I've nothing to add to what lightness wrote. That's an excellent answer. This is the canonical question. You'll need to click through and read another post - which is what SE tries to avoid making you do - self contained answers are awesome.
The hostility toward me was particularly intensive, in that case, due to a rising level of personal dislike voiced by a StackExchange moderator who admitted having an emotional response — which, even if it had been appropriate, should never have played a role in the website’s response to my question.
Super vague accusation. If a moderator is being 'unfair' - you can take it up with the CM team. While we're only human, we're supposed to try not to let stuff like that get in the way. PERSONALLY, I'd pass it on to another mod or at least give myself some time for perspective.
I'd like to close by reproducing the tags on the post
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged abuse, abusive, discourage, hostile, negative, newbies, newcomers, outsiders, rude, StackExchange, StackOverflow, SuperUser.
I'll leave it to the community to decide what they think of those.
