If you've never made any particular use of StackOverflow, why would you expect them to care what you have to say about anything on the site?
It would probably take you as much effort to get 50 rep as it's taken you to post multiple sour grapes comments about how dare they have a threshold which excludes you, don't they know who you are??
> If you've never made any particular use of StackOverflow
I would have made use of it... if I didn't have to post questions I have no interest in posting to farm enough reputation to actually do anything to fix the incorrect answers I occasionally stumble across in Google searches.
> It would probably take you as much effort to get 50 rep
Again, I have zero interest in posting questions just to farm reputation. Less than zero, actually, because of the mental overhead involved in doing so.
Do you understand that from the other side, you aren't a known skilled developer submitting valid corrections, you are indistinguishable from any other internet IP address submitting spam and/or low grade buggy misunderstandings?
One way they distinguish people who care about code from complete robo-junk is with a minimal effort barrier of community upvotes, which you refuse to engage with. They don't know you're special and important enough to skip the entrance requirements - how should they know? What the system sees is that you won't put effort in to get 50 karma. You want to skip their criteria because you say you are good enough - yet everyone including spambots would say they were good enough to skip the criteria.
If the filter was "verified members of the ACM/IEEE/IETF/whatever can bypass the 50 point requirements" would that be better? Or would proving your identity and membership details still be too high effort?
What test wouldn't be too high effort for you to bother, but would still be something that could be automated by stackoverflow and would cut out a huge mass of spam?
Unskilled developers won't find it trivial. See the new question review queues for the kinds of questions submitted by people who can be bothered to sign up and try to participate for evidence towards this claim. e.g. right now there's one which isn't about programming it's about system administration, doesn't explain what they tried, and concludes with "it is not working" with no further details. This first-question is not likely to get upvoted. By being a minimum-competence filter it's not selecting in only the most skilled developers, it's selecting out huge swathes of people who don't want to do what stackoverflow wants its users to do.
People who submit terrible contributions will fall below 50 rep and lose the ability to do so.
> It would probably take you as much effort to get 50 rep as it's taken you to
Yeah? So what. I shouldn't have to farm for rep. I'd even donate to charity to prove I'm not a bot.
I don't want to spam the site with niche questions that nobody can even answer, or go hunting down popular questions to throw answers at that will actually get me points.
So whining that stackoverflow has rules which you don't want to follow doesn't make for interesting reading. It's not unfair; you (other commenter) are not hard done by. Don't want to get 50 rep? Then don't get 50 rep. Want to contribute? Get 50 rep it's not a lifelong commitment. Still don't want to get 50 rep? No problem, move on with your life.
> I shouldn't have to farm for rep.
You don't have to farm for rep or post niche questions or hunt down popular questions or anything because you don't have to take part in any way. It's not mandatory.
> I'd even donate to charity to prove I'm not a bot.
Yeah? So what?
> That's not what sour grapes is.
It is what sour grapes is. "sour grapes: Criticism or disparagement of that which one cannot have.". "I can't have stackoverflow on my terms, so I'm going to criticise and disparage it".
> So whining that stackoverflow has rules which you don't want to follow doesn't make for interesting reading.
Most complaints, even very good ones, are uninteresting reading.
> "I can't have stackoverflow on my terms, so I'm going to criticise and disparage it".
If complaining about not being to have something "on one's own terms" is enough to be sour grapes, then just about every complaint in the world is sour grapes. That's obviously wrong.
> It's not mandatory.
Did you honestly think I was saying it was mandatory? Come on, you can do better than that. "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation"
> Most complaints, even very good ones, are uninteresting reading.
Many people have valid complaints about StackOverflow's community building, feedback system, moderation, how it prioritises questions and answers, behaviour of people on the site. These are fine interesting discussions about how useful it is, how effectively it works, how a better site might work, how it feels to participate, and can make for interesting reading. Many other people's complaint is that they went to stackoverflow, didn't follow the site rules, the people using stackoverflow approximately upheld the site rules, and now the poster acts in a way that shows they feel personally slighted by the fact that a site exists which rejected them. This not only makes for uninteresting reading, it's also an unfair attack on stackoverflow which ought to be allowed to exist with any legal rules it likes, without being slighted for simply having rules of some sort of other.
> That's obviously wrong.
If what you suggest I'm saying is "obviously wrong", then come on, you can do better than that, "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation".
> Did you honestly think I was saying it was mandatory? Come on, you can do better than that. "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation"
You made up some things you "have to do" and then complained that you don't want to have to do those things to hack the site to let you do what you want. Objecting to that whole premise is my point. "You think it's mandatory" is the strong interpretation, the weak one is that you're deliberately building a strawman of things you "have to do" which don't actually exist. 1) you don't need to hack or farm, you can genuinely participate. 2) you don't need to post niche questions or hunt popular questions, you can deal with normal questions. 3) If you do this, you won't be able to jump quickly to the thing you want. This is not a problem with the site, this is part of its design, if you dislike that design then we're back to "the site is not mandatory" and if you want to be so great you don't have to go through the normal processes then we're back to "how should the site know that you're not a total spambot if you won't go through the procedure they've setup which involves community feedback on the things you do (which paying money would not involve)?
> didn't follow the site rules [...] rejected them
That's not what's happening here. Neither I nor crooked-v have broken any rules or gotten rejected.
> If what you suggest I'm saying is "obviously wrong", then come on, you can do better than that, "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation".
Sorry, I can't think of any other way to interpret what you said. You gave a definition of sour grapes that is different from the normal definition, but fatally flawed. Normally the "strongest plausible interpretation" would be to assume you mean the normal definition of sour grapes, but that would contradict your entire argument as I understand it, so I can't do that.
While for my argument, I was saying "you have to do X to do Y, which is dumb" and you responded to "you have to do X" in a vacuum. Obvious weakening.
> you don't need to post niche questions or hunt popular questions, you can deal with normal questions.
If it's not niche, I can nearly guarantee it's already been answered, or that I'd be responding to a duplicate where the rules-following behavior would be trying to get it closed.
> you don't need to hack or farm, you can genuinely participate
Not when I rarely find questions appropriate to respond to, and the correct way to respond is always a comment. I would have to seek out questions just for points, which is farming.
The site has a "no shoes" policy, rejecting people without shoes. You refuse to put shoes on, so can't go in. Rejected. Anticipating your next dodge, saying "I own shoes, I could put them on, they're not rejecting me, I'm rejecting them!" - they're rejecting people who won't pass the filter as well as people who can't; both look the same from the other side.
"that thing I can't have sucks": is sour grapes. "My leg hurts": not sour grapes. Not all complaints are sour grapes. "I can't comment without following their rules therefore the site sucks" is sour grapes enough for me. Anticipating your next dodge, whether you "can" have it or not, see previous paragraph. And dogdge after that, no neither of you used those exact words, yes that's what I read crooked-v's intent, supporting evidence: calling the SO score "MeowMeowBeenz" elsewhere in this thread.
> in a vacuum
This zillion comment deep subthread is not a vacuum, it's context and the reply was in all this context. Don't want to do X to do Y? No problem, don't do X or Y, simply move on with your life, nothing lost. You don't have to correct things on SO, and you don't have to be allowed to correct things on SO because it's not public property. Wanting to correct things but not on their terms doesn't change anything. "I want to offer corrections but don't agree to their rules, or don't have time or interest, so I don't" isn't sour grapes and isn't a problem for me. "You can't offer corrections without their gatekeeping meowmeowbeenz", sour grapes. Implying the site owes you a way to comment on your terms, and whining when it doesn't, is a problem.
> If it's not niche, I can nearly guarantee it's already been answered, or that I'd be responding to a duplicate where the rules-following behavior would be trying to get it closed.
A site so full that there's nothing left to ask or answer, yet you're so desperate to hurry in instantly so you can join in. You're not interested in following the site rules .. until it's convenient for you, so now suddenly you are.
> Not when I rarely find [..] I would have to seek out questions just for points, which is farming.
Again "I won't engage with the site on their terms, the only way I can engage on my terms is farming, and the site is bad for making me farm!!!!!". Yes, if you want to engage on your terms you would need to farm. Change yourself to engage on their terms because it's their site. If that means waiting patiently for "rare" questions, or if it means changing what you can answer, or if it means something else, whatever. It's not unfair that it has rules which are keeping you out because you don't want to follow them, and that doesn't make it a bad site.
It would probably take you as much effort to get 50 rep as it's taken you to post multiple sour grapes comments about how dare they have a threshold which excludes you, don't they know who you are??