I used the site as intented. I was referring to the discussions which happened under the question independetly of answers (and which usually were not the intended outcome). Most of my questions resulted only in such "discussions" and usually there was no answer or just one which recommended to not ask the question. I neither care much whether the people who blocked my questions are called admins or moderators or whatever, the outcome is the same.
> I was referring to the discussions which happened under the question independetly of answers
Oh, you mean the comment section, which is explicitly by policy not for extended discussion (and in fact, actual moderators have a template message that they can use when moving those comments to a chat room in bulk, which says so in about as many words).
The purpose of this section under a question is to determine and address issues with the question - by telling you what to fix if you need to fix it, by making sure you're understood so that someone else can fix it, etc.
> and usually there was no answer
It is explicitly against policy to attempt to answer a question in the comments. That's why there are actual answers labelled as such; it's why comments are limited in length and formatting capability; and it's why, when you open the comment submission form, the placeholder text in the text field reads
> Use comments to ask for more information or suggest improvements. Avoid answering questions in comments.
Moving on:
> or just one which recommended to not ask the question
Yes, because questions that aren't fixable shouldn't be asked, and questions that can be fixed should be.
> I neither care much whether the people who blocked my questions are called admins or moderators or whatever, the outcome is the same.
Your questions were not "blocked"; other people were simply prevented from answering them until you fix the question. You are given a minimum of 9 days to do this before automatic deletion, and you can still petition for undeletion.
If you don't care about a site enough even to use or understand its basic terminology, why should that site try to accommodate you?
> I used the site as intented.
No, you clearly did not, based on your demonstrated lack of understanding of basic principles of how the site works.
> It is explicitly against policy to attempt to answer a question in the comments
I didn't say anything else.
> other people were simply prevented from answering them until you fix the question
Oh, thanks, I feel much better now.
> No, you clearly did not, based on your demonstrated lack of understanding of basic principles of how the site works.
Which is what common people call "bad marketing" ;-)
In Switzerland, we have a popular expression for the attitude we can observe on SO: “schön sterben” (to die beautifully). As I said, I left SO behind and am much better off with what I have now, and I'm definitely not the only one.
You claimed to gain value from discussion that was explicitly against policy, while also claiming to use the site as intended.
> Oh, thanks, I feel much better now.
You were not using the site as intended if you believed that you should be able to get a personalized answer to your question without having to fix it to meet standards first.
> As I said, I left SO behind and am much better off with what I have now
I'm glad you found something that allowed you to have the experience you wanted. This does not in any way change the fact that, based on the available evidence, you did not use Stack Overflow the way it was designed and intended to be used, but rather - like most people - in the way that you supposed it ought to be used.
> Which is what common people call "bad marketing" ;-)
I agree. The company keeps trying to mislead people about how the site is intended to be used, in pursuit of profit.
But Atwood and Spolsky were overall pretty clear about this. They were much more clear about describing the kinds of things they wanted to not be.
And the company staff are, quite simply, not the people who get to decide what that purpose is.
Not now that there are 29M users, with 100k of them eligible for basic curation actions, and a separate meta discussion site with 50k Q&A entries (just for Stack Overflow specifically, and another 100k for the network generally, which includes a ton of old Stack Overflow-specific stuff for historical reasons), and a 16-year-long history of a community figuring these things out among themselves.
> “schön sterben” (to die beautifully)
Oh, the site absolutely will die.
Because because the curators are also leaving, because the company continues to be hostile to them - trying to make the site work like another Quora, repeatedly trying to sneak in random uses for AI; repeatedly claiming to have listened to the community in discussion and then doing yet another thing that demonstrates complete ignorance of the community's most basic positions; repeatedly introducing new channels for user-generated content without even thinking about how spammers will use them; seemingly having no awareness of the work the volunteer community does to fight spam (including large-scale third-party automation) despite being repeatedly told about it; hobbling the mods (the two dozen actual mods) from enforcing the rules....
