It isn't often you run across someone who is anti-sharing-information.

pfft go to SE they're all over the place. they're called "moderators". (IDR what they're really called and i can't be arsed to find out atm so please don't be a pedantic one-of-those-type-of-ppl and just accept my point. ty.)

u can't even ask a question without an ID anymore. did i mention gatekeeping?

i ask my tech questions on steam forums. :P of course i get zero results which means I have to solve my own issues, which is better in the long run. ;)

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seriously i've gone my rounds w/ SE's rules and asked plenty of "good" questions there and got good results more often than not but the couple times they shut me down it was because some individual doucher-mod's subjective opinion, instead of letting the community just attempt to answer the question. (and btw yes I know the "rules" of what constitutes a "good" question, and I followed them.) ...ppl w/ way too much time on their hands naysaying others' valid contributions cuz they have nothing better to do. did i mention steam forums?

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in other news i was thinking about this game just yesterday like ... "what was that game w/ the cat helping u figure out how to program?" so despite my remark apparently the game made an impression.

cats. :)

Moderators don't bother you when you answer and ask questions properly. Having an account to ASK questions isn't a big deal for most people, and I would argue isn't really gatekeeping. Considering there are websites that require you to sign up with your real name to simply view more than one answer, SE is pretty lenient. Also consider that all SE asks for is the objective right answer, compared to Quora where every answer is meant to be subjective and most users are trying to sell you their particular brand of snake oil.

I'm boycotting the game for the pretentious 'xd! am i a coder yet guise' name of the game. I probably wouldn't buy or enjoy it regardless, but it's the first thing that popped out.

@t3

"The problem with stackoverflow is the people trying to get others to do their work or homework."

You would think the word would be out by now, that that type of stuff isn't well-received. FWIW last I checked it was more the "homework" that ppl were being busted on. But i mean .. is not basically everyone except the homework ppl there for work?

No, the problem w/ stack exhchange is they disallow the asking of questions which, while they might not perfectly adhere to the SE question-asking standards, are extremely well-suited to being answered by the misc. SE communities, and often can be asked an answered in an imperfect-yet-still-effective way.

Which ultimately feels like "standards-for-standards'-sake" which are getting in the way of my goals. How can I not be critical of such policies?

And if my SO hate is OTT then so is your assertion that my post makes steam a worse place. ;)

I post w/ plenty of "snark" and impatience but also plenty of helpful and insightful tech support. I donate my knowledge because I like gaming, and typically i don't mind helping gamers w/ stuff that is "ez for me, hard for u".

Honestly now that they require login to ask the (well-justified) hate has just begun. ;P

Logins in general are garbo. Luckily I got my steam login "free w/ purchase of way too many video games", so, like I said, I just ask everything here. :P

No, my post was a PSA and as such makes steam a better place.

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@Nona

"Moderators don't bother you when you answer and ask questions properly."

Yeah, that's actually a platitude and not true. They have more koolaid over at stack exchange, of course.

Obviously totally ignored what I wrote above, too, so thanks for that. (I have asked questions "properly".)

Bottom line: especially after the new login-to-ask policy, their site "doesn't work for me". (...except as t3 said, basically as a source of existing "matches" for my google queries.)

...Which ultimately positions them just about equally with the sites they've tried to differentiate from. GJ!

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To get back to the OP: hopefully the game has a realistic depiction of SO. So, as long as it forces u to login, and depicts u getting harrassed by pedantic moderators instead of being able to just get your simple answer and get on with your day ... i'm ok w/ that. :P

I like stackoverflow. In all other "forums" there are thousands of idiots who answer every question with "and why would you want to do that?". In computer science everyone thinks he is an expert and everyone else is stupid. Thats why a proper moderation is sometimes necessary.
But feel free to use other platforms which do not require logins.

Originally posted by kaibioinfo:

In all other "forums" there are thousands of idiots who answer every question with "and why would you want to do that?"

LoL ain't /that/ the truth.

...proper moderation is sometimes necessary...

Yep. And with any luck, maybe one day SE/SO will have some.

...feel free...

End of the day, I'm a practical guy. On those occasions when SE/SO's value proposition actually has appeal or advantage for me, I'll use it.

But, based on the fact that my use of my site had already been on the decline and the fact that they now have put up this additional barrier to entry, I just see those moments being fewer and farther between. I'll try every possible alternative first. But last I checked, that's not really a thing anyone wants potential users to feel about their website.

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BTW you can just throw this in the "uncategorized rant" category, but as long as u all are making me relive my trauma, let's also plz recognize: the SE "community" as far as those actually who wind up making these calls on whether or not questions live or die, is a relatively extremely small, and implicitly cliqueish group of individuals.

The ppl w/ the mod power are the experts, because they got their points from answering questions. So, obviously the top-question-answerers are a very select subset of the overall SE community, not the "Joe Average"s of it. ...Which obviously calls into question their ability to be adequately representative of that community. (And this seems like a good moment to also mention that even being one of the top 5 living Java experts on planet earth does not necessarily correlate to being a good communicator in general. Yet according to the SE model, those are the ppl who are likely to wind up making the site-mod decisions.)

Even if I as The Asker of The Bad Question don't get a "vote" in the review process, are we we really to think my questions were so useless that they wouldn't have had the traction for other SE users to find them helpful? Well, those voices were silenced. Either because my question never got the visibility to gain community support (because the million-point mod team obviously combs SE all day and starts flagging "bad" questions within about .25 seconds), or because plebes are afraid (and probably rightfully so) to get on the wrong side of "mods", or maybe because my question just plain sucked (it really didn't, tho).

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it's been nice talking but I'm gonna try to make this my last post. not gonna unsubscribe just yet but i'm just not invested enough in this to continue to take the time to answer thoughtfully.

funniest thread I ever seen