StackOverflowReviews 76

This website is not welcoming, it is not for programmers who are learning a new language, it is not for starters. The people with high reputations there have these reputations from asking common questions years back when the website was new, and now about 1% of the users there decide who gets to be on the website and who doesn't.

It is not a welcoming community, and it shows the bad side of the industry where you'd be rebuked for asking silly questions, talked down to like you're an idiot with a rude and smart-assy tone.

I tried to ask a specific question about a task I have to do, all was well within their question guidelines. However, people still downvoted my question. They also don't leave any comments, so you have no idea why they downvote your question. And if you have 15 downvotes, your question just gets deleted, just like that. What is that about?

It's the most stupid system I have ever seen. You would think that it was made for people to help others with their programming, but apparently it's not. The only answers you can find are on questions from about 5 years ago, nothing recent.

Anyway, the site and the users are horrible, you would be better of to just keep trying yourself and not wasting any time on this site.

The majority of coders who have jobs, take coding seriously just want an open forum. That ISN'T StackOverFlow.

It's a fascist communist dictatorship. You ACTUALLY have to earn 50 points before you can post answers to other peoples questions!

God willing, you want to ask a question to "Earn Points"; the "moderators" will delete your well thought out questions because they aren't formatted within the strict guidelines dictated by the socialist overlord's. Rather than making it possible to earn points they just frustrate you to no end.

It's total BULL $#*! and I don't say that lightly. I worked very hard on my posts and then didn't use the service for a few years and lost points.

God forbid that you should express a point of view (complain about it). I canceled my account and I recommend EVERYONE do the same! Send these NAZI's a message!

The plantation is closed!

When, individuals in a social community are motivated to help other people you shouldn't stand in their way. When you combine personal freedom with a powerful and intelligent education, individuals can recognize their own responsibilities and effectively carry them out.

There are plenty of services that do that much better. In a free online community, vicious lawbreakers can be punished without severely impacting everyone else. Some people will be successful and others will not, and that can't be changed under any circumstances.

If people need help from society then that responsibility falls on the individuals through the channels the people themselves create, and moderate.

Its alright for beginner programmers if you know what you're looking for and how to ask the question. I rarely have to ask questions myself, a quick google search brings up StackOverflow and some decent answers. The problem is that it might not be up to date, considering programming languages and practices change quite often. It would be naive to expect good answers all the time, maybe people are not keen on doing everything for you and are just giving tips.

The community is just a bunch of heartless people, who just complain by saying things like "Oh, you haven't laid your question out this way, read the rules". It seems like they never know the answer, because they just skim over your question, and then complain. However, some people give you the answer and suggestions, while others just complain. I must say, I haven't got an answer for a good 2 months, instead just hateful comments.

HOWEVER, the solutions are very helpful at times. But, I would not recommend this site. I would recommend something like Codeproject, or Daniweb.

I used a solution as a basis from a popular question and was initially pleased with the site.

However, I wouldn't even bother asking a question on this website! I spent days researching how to solve a problem before I decided to try asking on this site. I was downvoted within ten minutes and suggested an edit to change the order of words in a sentence. An hour later my question was blocked and I still have no idea why.

I posted the same question on a different forum and received some helpful guidance within hours.

This site has so much potential. They limit the amount of questions you can ask and might even block you if your questions are received poorly. I ask a question that I truly need help with and people don't like it so I get punished for it? What sense does that make? The following scenario sums up this website:
Me: *posts a question about code I researched tirelessly and didn't find an answer to.
*Some know it all comments*: hhmm, why did you do this and that? Your question isn't well informed blah blah blah, *no real help given*.
Me: Well, Einstein, If i knew the answer to those questions I wouldn't be here in the first place now would I? Thanks for nothing though...
In summary, almost everyone on here expects you to have 95% of the answer already so I definitely can't recommend any beginner programmers even attempt this website.

I've been around stackoverflow for a few years and so I have a few questions there. My most recent question was put on hold almost straight away stating that I needed to be more specific. So I edited my question and then waited, but nothing came of it. The moderator that basically locked my question then went through some of my old questions and edited them... changing complete sentences as he saw fit.

English is not my first language, but the amount of time spend judging and editing my questions was probably 100 times more than just helping me with my problem. An ENTIRE day was completely wasted as I waited for someone, anyone, to help me move forward with the issue I had.

Naturally I had to work after hours and had to do a complete patch job just to have something that works because I dared asking for help and my grammar and spelling wasn't up to their standards.

I live in a third world country. The thing third world countries need the most is education/knowledge. That's what I came to stackoverflow for. If you want to help with my grammar and spelling, that's fine, but in this case the most important thing was completely ignored and I just got shoved aside. I can't even close my own question now.

It takes far too long to find the nuggets of great information and examples that some members post - you have to wade through a morass of homework requests and many established members not answering, but having debates about how the question should be worded - neither are helpful.

The site is not recommended to participate in and not really that useful as a resource - there are far better sites (e.g. Android Developers; Python.org; DataCamp etc).

Many established members see it as their site and have little to no tolerance for anyone who thinks differently. The same applies to the other Stack Exchange sites (particularly Physics and Academia).

This site is ridiculous, and it's created to be so. Firstly I started noticing some of the answers that I knew were totally wrong, or at least very inefficient. So, I tried to help by up-voting, down-voting, and commenting correct answers. But I was stymied by a system that requires you to have a "reputation" before you can do anything. But, in order to get a reputation, you have to do stuff. As I went around this site, looking for ways to help and contribute and increase my "reputation" score I found that you can't even down-vote an incorrect answer because I didn't have enough. And honestly, most of the solutions I've seen upvoted around there are asinine. It's *clear* they should start allowing real experts who might not have used the site very much (because we figure everything out on our own) to contribute instead of these childish commentors, mainly because they've just used the site more. I just tried to downvote two blatantly incorrect answers and was stymied. I won't use this site, and I won't let my employees either.