<story><title>Looking for a new CEO</title><url>https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>soneca</author><text>As a junior developer for two years now, what frustrates me is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; the responses to the questions I ask. I almost never had the urge to ask any questions, most of them are already asked and answered in a similar enough form so I can learn from them.&lt;p&gt;What do frustrates me is how I, as a newbie, am incapable of contributing to the site.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t upvote an answer that was particularly good to my case. Dozens (literally dozens) of times I clicked to upvote an answer that was just the right one for my case and it wasn&amp;#x27;t the accepted or most upvoted answer. Only to get this as a reply:&lt;p&gt;- &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What?? As a junior learning through an answer, I want to contribute it right away and acknowledge the person who helped it. As well as signalizing to other people that that answer is a good one. Why my upvote do not count? I don&amp;#x27;t understand the reason behind this design decision.&lt;p&gt;Then I try to comment on the answer to make it explicit how it helped me and I get:&lt;p&gt;- &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;You must have 50 reputation to comment&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This rule at least I kind of understand the logic (avoid spamming, flamewars maybe?), but it does not make it any less frustrating.&lt;p&gt;I cannot contribute to the site and to the people that helped me so much at the beginning of my learning path.&lt;p&gt;I can  Ask, Answer and Edit without any reputation threshold. But those are precisely what a junior developer will most likely &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; want to do while learning the basic stuff through SO.&lt;p&gt;These design choices made me totally give up of any urge to &lt;i&gt;participate&lt;/i&gt; in SO and I only consult the answers without engaging or recognizing any of the humans that helped me.</text></item><item><author>peeters</author><text>&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;One thing I’m very concerned about, as we try to educate the next generation of developers, and, importantly, get more diversity and inclusiveness in that new generation, is what obstacles we’re putting up for people as they try to learn programming. In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;I care a lot about this. Being a developer gives you an unparalleled opportunity to write the script for the future. All the flak that Stack Overflow throws in the face of newbies trying to become developers is actively harmful to people, to society, and to Stack Overflow itself, by driving away potential future contributors. And programming is hard enough; we should see our mission as making it easier.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s good to see that acknowledgement coming from Joel.  I wasn&amp;#x27;t one of those newbies facing that snark, but as an earlier contributor it was really depressing to see the general attitude shift from &amp;quot;yeah OK this question&amp;#x27;s not the best but it was asked in good faith so I&amp;#x27;ll answer&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re a worthless human being for wasting our time with imperfection&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>everfree</author><text>I understand that can be frustrating, but as you mentioned part of that is by design. Stack Overflow gets its success by being laser-focused on questions and answers, to the extreme that comments like &amp;quot;thanks&amp;quot; are seen as noise for developers to wade through to find the answers they are looking for. That&amp;#x27;s why they have such a high bar to comment - the number of &amp;quot;thanks&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;this solved my problem&amp;quot; comments would be a staggering moderation issue. Either that or the site would turn into a long-winded discussion forum.&lt;p&gt;In short, only questions and answers add any real value to the site for the most part. If you really want to contribute to the community, consider diving in and writing questions and answers.&lt;p&gt;As for upvoting, I understand that it&amp;#x27;s frustrating not to be able to vote in a community that you spend so much time in. But on the flip side, realize that 90% of the value of Stack Overflow comes from its questions and answers. If you want to contribute to the site, it only takes 3 upvotes across all your questions (or 2 across all your answers) to gain the upvote privilege permanently.</text></comment>
<story><title>Looking for a new CEO</title><url>https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>soneca</author><text>As a junior developer for two years now, what frustrates me is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; the responses to the questions I ask. I almost never had the urge to ask any questions, most of them are already asked and answered in a similar enough form so I can learn from them.&lt;p&gt;What do frustrates me is how I, as a newbie, am incapable of contributing to the site.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t upvote an answer that was particularly good to my case. Dozens (literally dozens) of times I clicked to upvote an answer that was just the right one for my case and it wasn&amp;#x27;t the accepted or most upvoted answer. Only to get this as a reply:&lt;p&gt;- &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What?? As a junior learning through an answer, I want to contribute it right away and acknowledge the person who helped it. As well as signalizing to other people that that answer is a good one. Why my upvote do not count? I don&amp;#x27;t understand the reason behind this design decision.&lt;p&gt;Then I try to comment on the answer to make it explicit how it helped me and I get:&lt;p&gt;- &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;You must have 50 reputation to comment&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This rule at least I kind of understand the logic (avoid spamming, flamewars maybe?), but it does not make it any less frustrating.&lt;p&gt;I cannot contribute to the site and to the people that helped me so much at the beginning of my learning path.&lt;p&gt;I can  Ask, Answer and Edit without any reputation threshold. But those are precisely what a junior developer will most likely &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; want to do while learning the basic stuff through SO.&lt;p&gt;These design choices made me totally give up of any urge to &lt;i&gt;participate&lt;/i&gt; in SO and I only consult the answers without engaging or recognizing any of the humans that helped me.</text></item><item><author>peeters</author><text>&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;One thing I’m very concerned about, as we try to educate the next generation of developers, and, importantly, get more diversity and inclusiveness in that new generation, is what obstacles we’re putting up for people as they try to learn programming. In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;I care a lot about this. Being a developer gives you an unparalleled opportunity to write the script for the future. All the flak that Stack Overflow throws in the face of newbies trying to become developers is actively harmful to people, to society, and to Stack Overflow itself, by driving away potential future contributors. And programming is hard enough; we should see our mission as making it easier.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s good to see that acknowledgement coming from Joel.  I wasn&amp;#x27;t one of those newbies facing that snark, but as an earlier contributor it was really depressing to see the general attitude shift from &amp;quot;yeah OK this question&amp;#x27;s not the best but it was asked in good faith so I&amp;#x27;ll answer&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re a worthless human being for wasting our time with imperfection&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fabian2k</author><text>The restriction on upvoting is necessary to have any chance of handling vote fraud like users upvoting themselves with socks. If any new account could vote it would be far easier to cheat the system.&lt;p&gt;15 rep is also a very small barrier. Asking good questions or editing are probably the best ways to start. Editing is certainly something a new user can do, simply fixing the formatting, grammar and typos in new questions will give you 15 rep in no time.</text></comment>