idownvotedbecause
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WillSullivan
Inappropriate for StackOverflow
I recently received the attach email message regarding comment I've made on stackoverflow.com, and believe they apply to your I downvoted because no attempt was made website page as well. So I suggest you remove it.
-- Martin
Forgot to attach a copy of the email message.
Stack Overflow - message from moderators re account martineau.pdf .
I'm not exactly sure on SO's policy on this, but I'd say that "no attempt was made" is different than "asking for code", no?
If someone has obviously not even tried to solve the problem, this would apply. But if they've looked for a solution and can't think of one, that's fair.
Although, yeah, maybe that page should be removed, since it's hard to tell if someone really hasn't tried at all or not.
Well, I'm still going to downvote questions that ask how to do something where there's no indication the asker has made any effort whatsoever to figure it out themselves as far as I can tell (despite their claim in the message that a "Lack of research or problem-solving effort is not a reason to close or otherwise object to questions"). I sometimes make exceptions to that personal rule for certain topics, such those about some obscure detail or using a very poorly documented module, for example).
A long time ago when I first signed-up for Stack Overflow, it billed itself as a user-moderated Q & A site — so as a current user, this is how I'm going to judge things (and I have sent a message to the Stack Overflow team telling them that).
Given all that, I now don't want you to remove the page since I may still want link to it.
If you ask me, StackOverflow went through several "Eternal Septembers" and broadened the spectrum of acceptable low quality questions each time, and your mail really shows that.
- Remember "What have you tried?" comments? Sure, slightly rude but got the gist. Eventually got blocked server-side.
- Then, friendlier / guiding comments like yours were written. Apparently not okay anymore aswell.
- Remember the once widely communicated difference between SO and Software Engineering SE? The latter was "for questions on code you didn't write yet", and SO was explained to be "for problems you have with existing code". Also wrong now.
- Recall comments from high rep. and competent users along the lines "If you need someone to write your code, go to rent-a-coder.com", and then the question got closed? Seems like that's no longer the case aswell.
Downvoting or close voting seems the best idea. I wouldn't waste more time on those questions anyway. Not like you'd get any feedback / accepted answer from 1 Rep users.
