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I'm ranking 8th place for the year on another StackExchange forum and I like to help people. I don't consider myself a troll. But it looks like "THE WORKPLACE" here is inhabited by people who are basically bullies.

I gave heart-felt advice to someone originally and then all of the sudden everybody refuses to see the wisdom behind such a simple idea as: "there becomes a point when you're so fed up with corporate dysfunction that you decide to start your own company". They down-vote because they're so locked into the system that they can't break out of the sheep mentality. That said, we're down to censorship when someone anonymously can step in and edit a clarification like this. StackExchange lacks oversight in the area of moderation abuse, so much so that it's no longer a useful site.

I think I'm probably the only person who systematically answers questions on the [MaaS] and [Juju] forum areas of Ask Ubuntu here. If I step back from the entire problem of bullies on THE WORKPLACE then I have to ask myself why I would associate with StackExchange in the first place, giving away free support when nobody is compensating me for it. I'm done trying to help on StackExchange.

Example of censorship

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  • Possible duplicate of Are the Downvoting police too active?
    – gnat
    Nov 2, 2015 at 17:42
  • 1
    A link to an answer's revision history, hosted on Stack Exchange, provided as evidence of censorship...oh, the irony....
    – Wildcard
    Feb 1, 2017 at 9:07

3 Answers 3

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First, Stack Exchange is NOT a forum. It's a question/answer site.

Not a "here's my thoughts!!!" site. Not a "try X, might work!" site. A question/answer site. Questions receive answers.

I gave heart-felt advice to someone originally and then all of the sudden everybody refuses to see the wisdom behind such a simple idea as:

The Workplace has different standards for answer quality than you may be used to in other online forums. An "answer" that does not address the core questions of the question is not a good answer here and will be likely downvoted.

The is Just Quit an acceptable answer? question has been discussed here before. Note that jmorts answer has +25/-0 at this current time and could be considered good guidance on this subject.

As written, your answer misses all three of the bullet points. It doesn't give any explanation as to why that's the only way to address the question the OP has, it doesn't give any indication (even pre-edit) as to why your experience is a solution to the OP's problem, and it more or less a oneliner saying "just quit and start your own business and people will follow you!"

In addition to that, your edit does come across as "it worked for me it'll work for you! downvoters are haters, lol n00bs" (similar to your meta post here). It's not surprising that it was community approved for this section to be removed.

Also, it's not censorship to remove blatantly self-congratulatory and confrontational/accusational text from an answer.

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    Agreed answers are for answers not opining and ranting and crying. They also are not for band camp stories..
    – IDrinkandIKnowThings
    Oct 21, 2015 at 19:32
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    You make fair points. But now if a bully comes along who doesn't agree with you wrote they have the power to remove what you've just posted. Might makes right, in other words. As they say "history is written by the victors" and this place is the same. If a different opinion is removed by someone with more points then that opinion is effectively gone forever. It's no longer a conversation but some one-sided monologue by those with points. In fact, check this guy out: michael.richter.name/blogs/… He's pretty much saying the same thing.
    – Michael Blankenship
    Oct 21, 2015 at 20:49
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    @MichaelBlankenship if you see content that is inappropriately removed, feel free to flag or post on meta. But keep in mind if you flag in situations that should be removed/edited those flags nearly always will be declined. For example, if someone edits your post here to remove some of the... ah, let's be generous and call it a rant - no moderator will take action and revert edits (cont)
    – enderland
    Oct 21, 2015 at 20:56
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    @MichaelBlankenship I would also suggest being considerably less confrontational in how you choose to do this. When someone comes onto meta ranting and attacking the entire site about how horrible they are, it's generally received poorly. In fact, calling out users specifically (and incorrectly, I might add) and blaming them for making things horrible is far more "bully" like behavior than the edits in the first place. Stack Exchange is designed to work like a wiki. If you want a forum SE is not going to fit your interests well at all.
    – enderland
    Oct 21, 2015 at 21:00
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Actually the community generally moderates the value of questions and answers, by upvoting or downvoting. Of course you know this, given you're #8 on another StackExchange community.

Just reading your complaint here comes across as "I'm right, and the community who downvoted me or at the very least didn't upvote me is wrong! See? Right I tell you! You just don't understand why I'm right!"

Well. If you feel you are right and people obviously aren't getting it and you are being downvoted by the community, then you need to explain it better. Justify your reason for giving the answer, either anecdotely or sourcing credible evidence. Failing to do that will almost certainly get your answer downvoted or flagged as either not an answer or very low quality.

The Workplace isn't like many of the other technical communities here. The answer is often not a "insert algorithm here" that helps the person. So given that it is more subjective, you need to qualify the reasons why your answer is correct.

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    There's a difference between being a moderator and removing answers which you don't agree with. You're guilty of the latter, to be honest.
    – Michael Blankenship
    Oct 21, 2015 at 21:07
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    @MichaelBlankenship I only remove answers that have been downvoted significantly by the community and flagged. It's a clean up operation once the community has decided something is not of value, not censorship.
    – Jane S
    Oct 21, 2015 at 21:09
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    @MichaelBlankenship I'm not really sure how to respond to that, so I'll be blunt. Knock if off. If you have problems with how Stack Exchange works, feel free to stop using it. No one is forcing you to use it. If you have problems with the way The Workplace is moderated, constructively bring up those concerns (or use the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page). I would also encourage you to read the Be Nice policy of Stack Exchange. This meta post would also be good reading. Thanks.
    – enderland
    Oct 22, 2015 at 0:25
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I've had one of my questions edited so drastically with no reason given (not in Workplace) that the whole question became meaningless in as far as being useful to me. But like anything else in life it's more productive to be philosophical about these things if you can't do anything about them. Getting confrontational and antagonising a whole bunch of people (hence the -9 downvotes on your question, not mine by the way) achieves nothing positive, except perhaps making you feel better?

If it does make you feel a bit better, then great (Y) If not then at least we all wasted a few seconds of our life that we'll never get back taking you seriously. Personally (pre-edit) I don't think your answer was very good, although it had potential, but I wouldn't have downvoted or closed it. But I'm not trigger happy on the downvotes in any case. However I can see why others did.

I think if you're ranked #8 on another part of Stack Exchange then that's an absolutely awesome effort, so I wish you all the best in your future endeavours and would like to thank you for the efforts you have made thus far.

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    Thanks, I'm just throwing my efforts at other websites now rather than here. For example, I'm now actively creating opensource code on github.
    – Michael Blankenship
    Dec 15, 2015 at 18:27
  • Good for you, glad to see you're moving forwards in any case, take it easy
    – Kilisi Mod
    Dec 15, 2015 at 20:27

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