What's with all the rude comments recently?Maybe I've led a sheltered life until recently, but it really seems that comments are getting ruder and ruder. I've seen on questions by new users (rep of 1), particularly those for whom English is a second language, that people are really quick to put in a comment like: "Worst question ever" or "Let me google that for you" or "Why bother, no one's going to use your application anyway". And other people upvote it!
Can we return to some semblance of civility? At least, until the person has a track record of inviting abuse?
I would really like the ability to downvote these comments just to show that I don't agree with the behavior. When does rudeness rise to the level of being offensive enough to warrant intervention by the moderators?
Update
Here's a couple of examples. Note both were asked by a new user with rep 1. I fixed the first one up a little since, while I understood what the OP was asking, the language was imprecise. We can quibble over whether the questions are good, bad, or otherwise. What really bothered me though was the tone of some of the comments. My rule of thumb -- would I be willing to say it in person to a co-worker (or my wife)?
How To Prevent Duplicate Email Addresses on a User Registration Form? [1]
Update 2
The questions referenced above have had the rude comments deleted -- perhaps as a result of the flagging that happened in response to this question. One result of this question is that I now feel much more free to flag rude comments.
ACCEPTED]
Just flag them for being offensive. A moderator can (and will) remove them.
Completely agree. I had edited a question the other day, only to find when I had done editing it, a user had commented, "What's the question?" The OP had replied, "Your ugly face." I don't really get attitudes like that.
Moreover, I've seen an influx of users who are now guessing as answers. "Well, I don't know, but it may be ." It's rather aggravating, to say the least.
Have we hit the critical mass where we're now just bringing 4chan frequenters, or something to that effect? Because I'm with you, we've lost a lot of civility 'round these parts. The best we can do is just flag comments and downvote answers/questions, and hope for the best.
:-) and 'LOL', then it's veiled insults, and finally insults - puk
The fact that one thinks a question (or answer) is horrible, incorrect or useless does not provide an excuse for insults or rudeness. Ad-hominems and insults have no place here; they are unprofessional and reveal only the lack of maturity of the person posting the nastiness. Feel free to ignore a question, fix it, make suggestions, or vote it down, but leave the nastiness for MTV.
I would like to see a reputation penalty assessed by the moderators for rudeness, ad-hominem statements, insults, offensive behavior, and a lack of civility. I would like to see accounts suspended or removed if the behavior continues.
Flag them. I haven't seen any moderator flags highlighting such comments, but I don't mind getting my hands dirty destroying comments and/or users (where necessary). We've suspended and/or kicked people in the past for abusive behaviour, and I can't see that changing any time...
In all honesty, if I were the SO Czar, any consistent (like 2 or 3) commenting like this would be grounds for instant banning. I'm more of a zero-tolerance type of guy. If you're being playful, that's another issue. If you're just being rude for no reason, you don't deserve to have a voice. All I could suggest is to flag the comments - that's what I do. I wish I could downvote, vote-to-delete, or edit comments.
I agree with you. What I especially can't abide is rudeness to folks for whom English isn't their first language. Why not just spend time tidying the question instead of moaning about it and generally being an arse in the comments.
Also there's a lot of folk out there who just aren't pre-disposed to write a good question [1]. It's our job to help these folks and edit their questions into better shape instead of bumping our gums and filling the comments with pointless attacks on the OP.
[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1472/how-to-ask-questions-the-smart-wayAs I have been watching various social web sites, as the user number grows, more morons come. This is, sadly, inevitable. In addition, I am afraid we will need some system-level solution or more moderators’ effort (maybe increase number of moderators?).
Well, it seems S.Lott is a prime perpetrator here:
When you Googled C++ SDK what did you learn?" (S.Lott, 4 upvotes)
(now gone)
and just now in Generating PDF’S dynamically in servlets? [2]:
When you Googled for "creating PDF from servlet" what did you learn? – S.Lott 44 secs ago
and what are the 4th generation languages? [3]
When you queried wikipedia for "fourth-generation programming language" what did you see? – S.Lott 51 mins ago
Honestly I have no time for this. It's just completely unnecessary.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1291226/what-is-an-sdk-cAs people have said, just flag any comment or answer you find offensive. All of the mods have a serious and dedicated side to them about keeping this site organized and well maintained. They do spend a chunk of their free time on this site. This doesn't mean though they don't like to have fun, but they do realize when people are serious.
On meta, things are a little more laid back though.
Having a look at the samples I find it interesting that the commenters rarely have high reputation or have themselves asked some really mudane questions. I have noticed a trend of "Google it first" members appearing more and more often, and we have these on Stack Overflow at the moment as well.
Personally I think the fact that Google is the Stack Overflow homepage is missed by many and the reality is that unless you're part of the beta groups, and know Jeff and Joel and the history of the Trilogy, you will not understand why Stack Overflow exists, and the more people become members the more these problems will occur.
The moderators are there to deal with these, make use of them. People seems afraid to make use of the flags that have been made available. There is quite a bit that can be done by the moderators to deal with users like these without upsetting the whole community.
At some point, this is to be expected and perfectly in line with John Gabriel's Greater Internet F***wad Theory [1]. I think that also Elitism plays a role. Sure, for most people, the meaning of an SDK is obvious, or what a database is. I mean, I guess that a question like "What does SDK mean?" is like asking "What does House mean?". Also, there is this continuing questions about what type of questions should be on Stack Overflow.
Luckily, we know the stance of Jeff and Joel on this, and that is: We want everything that's programming related, no matter how simple (Listen to Joel in the podcasts).
[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/Here is another example of rude comments, including "There's a button on the front of your computer, press that.":
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1311127
Update: that particular rude comment has now been removed.
And so this continues [1]. I never expected rude comments from this community and it's the first questions I've asked here in a long time.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6132949/whats-the-point-of-the-boolean-objectWhen a user has a comment of his flagged as offensive, and it subsequently gets mod deleted, then that user has commenting privileges suspended for a short amount of time.
