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I get all the rules and stuff, but I must say all I get when posting is complaints. Not even a answer just, "write a better question." IT ISN'T THAT BLOODY HARD TO INTERPRET STUFF THAT I AM SAYING, and when they DO give an answer it's like one sentence about a 200 sentence work topic, and then THEY say I oversimplify crap.

I love linuxquestions.org

My experience also. Fact is, they have strict rules and there seems top be more off-web nagging that actual on-web. It's as if they're trying to prevent some specialists with a 'prima donna' type attitude.

Solution: avoid stack-anything websites and be glad of LQ.

2 members found this post helpful.

the moderation is different, definitely.
Oh yes, not everybody likes (or prefers) it.

Also the social control media channels, like stankoverflow, are up to their gills in astroturfers aiming to establish a bad impression of GNU/Linux specifically and free and open source software in general. The investigative journalist Anne Applebaum looked into that in regards to general social control media and found that 80% to 90% of the comments were from identifiable astroturfers. I presume that GNU/Linux and FOSS threads will be even hotter.

1 members found this post helpful.

It's not only there. Stackexchange has a place for Biblical questions. You have to

1. Supply a Reference to support your answers.
2. Qualify (with answered questions) to ask a question.

Which effectively means only 'know-it-all' types who have the answers can ask a question . Mind you, they probably sniffed I was a J.W. and hunted me off. They don't post the rules, it seems either; they just nag when you've broken them.

It's hard to interpret whether you are asking something here or just whinging.

If the former, you need to write a better question...

1 members found this post helpful.

Moved to LQ Suggestions & Feedback for better coverage.

I've found stack overflow helpful on many occasions. Hadn't noticed it was ruder than anywhere else, I'm sure people posting bad questions have thought the same thing about lq and irc and and every other forum/chatroom in the world when they don't get mindreaders answering them. Hopefully when you do this once, regardless where, you won't do it again (on any platform) so maybe you only noticed it on stack overflow because that's where you posted your first question and it was an example of the kind of useless question nobody can help with that just annoys the people trying to help you.

If you ask a question like "the internet broke on my laptop, how do I fix it?" you WILL get justified criticism. Some of it might even be rude! If it is the second or third question you ask like that you DESERVE to see rude!

I have seen people ask questions with some detail, that did not pertain to the actual problem or that was useless, yet they are asked for more information rather than a rude rebuke. Even questions you might call "stupid questions" get action if they are asked in a smart way. (The only "stupid" question is the one you do not ask! If you need the information then it is never stupid to ask. That is one way we learn.) If someone shows they are willing to TRY and THINK then rudeness is never justified.

This is not "customer support" and no one here is paid to answer questions. You need to ask questions in a smart way, showing that you actually are invested in getting a smart ANSWER. LQ has an article on how to ask questions properly, and I believe the link to it was provided earlier in the thread.

The first thing to learn is how to ask questions, and how to follow directions intelligently. (It helps if you take the time to READ information and questions, and MAN pages!)

I would hope anyone who hits rudeness will learn form that as well. Even a stupid question is an opportunity to learn. Rudeness, even if it seems justified, is never helpful and not one of us was born knowing everything!

2 members found this post helpful.

Stack* can be a good place for answers you just have to dig through/ignore all the "I know better than you" stuff, the the amount of answers that start with "Don't do that do this!" or the equivalent gets my goat!

I wonder how much of the difference is due to the points system. You get points on SE for asking or answering well and lose points for doing it badly. That encourages the people who know everything (or think they do) and drives away everyone else. Here you get answers from people who feel like answering. People correct you when you're wrong, but it's much more cooperative.

1 members found this post helpful.

I rarely use the Stack* forums, simply because they do not have any kind of taxonomy. I will post a question and wait around about fifteen minutes before my question will "vanish into the gloom."

While I respect their business model and their very wide coverage, I find that their system entirely lacks structure.

Furthermore, they use a down-voting system which can, often within a matter of minutes, "vote your question off the island." Which means that no one in the future will ever have a chance to see it or to respond to it. I am not going to invest my time in any forum that does not give me (and my question) time and space, merely because "four-or-five people, anywhere on the planet," did not relate to it or understand it. I need for my question to be found, and seen. If your forum can't do that, then I'm not coming.

And I have found this to be the case in the entire gamut of "Stack* communities." Their product is of no value to me at all.

Per contra, I have had very long success with this forum. First of all, it is subdivided into a reasonable taxonomy of subject categories. There is no "downvote system." It is also very-specifically targeted toward "Linux Questions." It has an excellent search feature, and a highly knowledgeable community. In short, I know that I can post a question here and very quickly get a usable answer. (In return, I merely hope to sometimes return the favor.)

When I am searching for an answer, as I very often do before posting a new one, I find that "upvotes," as they may occur, are often useful. This points me more quickly to the search-results entries that I probably want to read first.

I've made more than 11,000 posts here (wow ...) because it continues to be useful to me. So, I guess that the site owners must be doing something right . . .

1 members found this post helpful.

No, we have down-votes too. You can [personally] lock out anyone, report anybody and mods can ban them. It is a more controlled way, protects members much better against personal attacks.
And I think the search engine is not that good, sometimes I have difficulties to find old posts. But probably it is just me.

It's not just you the 'advanced' search is just pants, one of the few things that let down the site.

I'm not talking about moderator actions, nor personal preferences like "banning" a particular user from "your" list.

I'm talking about a system which, literally in a matter of less than five minutes, can remove your posting entirely from public view. And, so far as I have ever been aware, these actions are not reviewed by any human. All it takes is for a handful of users to decide that "they" don't "like" your post, and the whole thing simply disappears. Which renders their entire system useless to me. So, I ignore it – except in cases of true desperation, when I can wait around five or ten minutes to see if my bait catches any fish before the sinker disappears forever beneath the water. (Most commonly, it doesn't.)

This, and the utter lack of taxonomy, makes the whole thing useless to me. I don't have time to throw "search terms" into an engine. I can't use "5,000 results." And, I can't use results that are filled with irrelevant noise.