When I look at the first page of open PHP questions, I find almost only bad questions. E.g. one person doesn't understand what a "Notice" error message is, and wants it to be fixed. Most questions have poor indentation. Posters don't seem to be motivated to proofread their own questions even once. They are asking poor write-me-the-code questions that are so trivial that you are wondering if these people will ever be able to make money by working as a programmer. (Like "how do I write a function that multiplies its input by two, but only if it is smaller than 95". These kind of "questions" are usually missing the question mark ("?"), because they really are no questions. Or this question. Or using file_get_contents on a URL on the same webserver instead of just calling a proper function to get a value.) These questions are not the exception but the norm. There are almost no good questions.

Sorry for ranting...

I have a feeling that PHP questions should be flagged by default, and only un-flagged if there is approval from someone who can prove that he is able to get basic stuff done in the language. Well... I will probably stop answering PHP questions until this changes. When I have a question, I normally use Google and I find an answer. In the future I will probably use this site more for asking than for answering, at least regarding PHP.

I almost had to clean my monitor after reading the first sentence of the last paragraph. –  Mysticial Apr 27 at 21:55
I don't agree with the question needing to be flagged by default. They should be closed by default. –  PeeHaa Apr 27 at 21:56
Maybe this explains a few things: blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity. In case you've missed it, the PHP Tag Wiki is a gold mine; a substantial percentage of questions asked in the PHP tag on a regular basis could probably be closed as duplicates of some question found in the "frequently asked questions" section of the Tag Wiki. –  Robert Harvey Apr 27 at 22:00
You don't have enough answers under your belt to post this. –  webarto Apr 27 at 22:02
I think that this problem isn't only existent in the php tag. There's too much to rant about this. Think about students that don't have an idea what they are doing, developers by chance not by choice or helpvampires that got this far by sucking blood from good developers. –  HamZa Apr 27 at 22:02
@RobertHarvey Room 11 is trying hard to kill new duplicates or plainly said, remove crappy questions/answers, but unfortunately the force is weak compared to influx of aformentioned. Partially, it's Stackoverflow fault because it enables such behavior. –  webarto Apr 27 at 22:14
@TOOTSKI: I especially like the 9-star comment made by tereško in Room 11. Is he a regular, or does he just like to shop for bicycles in a PHP store? :P –  Robert Harvey Apr 27 at 22:21
@RobertHarvey Yes, he's room owner too and he hates you. Your argument is not valid. –  webarto Apr 27 at 22:31
The problem isn't limited to PHP, @HamZa... But I suspect they do get a bit more than their fair share of it. –  Shog9 Apr 28 at 6:43
Your highest voted answer is 3. Your average answer score is 0.6 over 37 answers... You can't say this. –  someDoge Apr 28 at 14:52
@Will I know you're joking, but there's nothing you can't do in PHP. –  ajacian81 Apr 28 at 15:00
@muistooshort How do you know I didn't mean "cone shaped answer"? ;) Good catch thx. –  AaronLS Apr 29 at 20:22
@AaronLS Would a hyperbolic, parabolic, elliptical, or circular answer apply? I can come up with a hyperbolic answer for anything :) –  mu is too short Apr 29 at 20:48
@Jhawins He can say whatever he likes, mate. –  Lightness Races in Orbit May 1 at 20:10
@Will, "When has PHP ever been used for non trivial tasks?". Sadly, often, e.g. Facebook. –  Paul Draper May 2 at 1:43

7 Answers 7

up vote 56 down vote accepted

See also: "Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?", and this specific answer. I'm a type 1 / type 4 hybrid, and it sounds like you're getting there as well.

Some of the problems you cite are not specific to . If you want to be truly frightened, take a peek at mornings GMT. The bad questions in make me sad, but the bad questions in make me rage. I don't have enough closevotes to make it through the latest 100 questions...

Some of the problems you cite are not specific to Stack Overflow. This has all happened before ... and will happen again. The internet calls it Eternal September. We're already shoving the community guidelines down people's throats and they still don't get it. They're beyond any structured help.

Some of the problems you cite are specific to a particular breed of programmer. Again, they're beyond any structured help.

Some of the problems you cite are not specific to PHP. All languages have newbies that ask stupid questions.

Some of the problems you cite are not specific to PHP developers. All new programmers ask stupid questions and most don't know how to search and research.

It just happens that PHP has such an incredibly low barrier to entry that it attracts people both new to the language and new to programming. This can make it seem like a huge number of the questions are mind-blowingly basic. Becoming competent at PHP seems to also correspond to figuring out how to Google. Correlation is not causation, mind you.

So, where are the good questions? You can often find interesting ones under framework and library tags. Advanced, complex modern libraries. Like, not Cake or CodeIgniter. Or Laravel, but I'm a snob. Notice that sometimes they aren't tagged ! This happens a lot. Maybe they're embarrassed?

Sometimes these advanced questions aren't actually even on Stack Overflow. By the time you're building an n-tier framework-leveraging enterprise-grade PHP application with all that this entails, you aren't going to be asking PHP questions that fit on SO any longer. I have a draft in progress (that I probably won't post) that I can only fit in to Programmers because it deals with software architectural concepts that will lead to opinion-based or experience-based answers instead of concrete facts. Hell, it might even be a better fit for Code Review.

The bottom line, though, is yes, there's a lot of crap, and no, that crap is never going away. Use closevotes as needed and use downvotes with little discrimination. PeeHaa was only serious about PHP questions needing to be closed by default nowadays. You might have only a limited number every day, but question downvotes are free and should be given out like candy.

The citizens of Room 11 have a closevote recommendation system, if you'd like to come help filter the ocean of horrible questions using a hand-held water purifier...

Downvotes are free? You've only got 40 votes per day and they cost 1 rep per answer (free for questions though), whereas you have 50 close votes per day. But I never run out of votes, because by that time I would have run out of patience already. –  Antony Apr 28 at 7:32
We're not talking about answers though. –  BoltClock Apr 28 at 7:32
Hmm... it's been such a long time since I've cared enough to actually downvote all the things.. there is a limit, isn't there? –  Charles Apr 28 at 7:33
Same thing (or even worse) with vba, where people who never programmed ask you to write code. –  Manu Apr 28 at 14:30
Oh, I am running into my limit almost everyday. And half of votes are going into void, as Stack Overflow is full of kind-hearted nurses who are always ready to comfort a poor noobie. And I limit myself to a few sub-tags, mind you - almost never taking my foot onto raw [php]. –  Your Common Sense Apr 28 at 14:31
@YourCommonSense: Lucky you, lol. If you were following the MySQL tag you'd be neck deep in the PHP slime. (And the Ruby on Rails and Django slimes are not much better on Postgres.) :-| –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 28 at 14:52
@Denis, I am not that lucky. Some time ago I've found myself a quiet refugee in mysqli tag - keeping me apart from many mysql questions... And then all of sudden treacherous PHP team decided to deprecate the old ext! Eventually directing all the sewage into my quiet backwater. –  Your Common Sense Apr 28 at 15:04
To summarize several of your points: PHP is effectively the new VB6. Many of the people that yesterday would have learned VB, today learn PHP. VB's half-hearted and broken objects system gives way to PHP's disorganized and poorly documented API. –  Joel Coehoorn Apr 28 at 15:15
@YourCommonSense Your ...And then all of sudden treacherous PHP team... comment is the funniest and most spot-on thing I've read in a while. –  MonkeyZeus Apr 28 at 21:21
@Denis I hear you on the Rails/PostgreSQL mess. Not only are most Rails people ignorant about databases but the culture encourages this ignorance. I tend to stay away from ruby-on-rails these days to avoid the adolescent attitude. I suspect that soon we'll see thousands of "Rails is the new PHP" garbage apps kicking around, might be a good way to make money if you don't mind wearing a hazmat suit :) –  mu is too short Apr 29 at 19:48
It's just a matter of time before ElitistStackOverflow.com is up and running, where you need to have 10k rep to ask a question. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, once I get 10k rep. –  keyser May 2 at 20:50

Yes. It happens once in a while.

The most funny fact is that without a manually attached bounty a good question scarcely gets an answer at all - the regular sewage flow is so fast, that good questions almost never have a chance to meet someone who can answer.

To me, this fact is a foul shame for a site that was intended for programmers but turned into online typo-spotting / trivial-code-writing service.

As of the general flow - don't forget answers: it is not uncommon, when a trivial question gets a half-dozen of answers, ALL of which are wrong. Because of the same tolerant policy - writing total rubbish costs you nothing but occasionally can bring some points from a fellow illiterate or a kind-hearted nurse. And even being forced to delete his answer, rep-whore keeps overall balance at zero.

The problem is that Stack Overflow has changed. And for a changed site one needs changed rules. There is always a balance between scarcity and abundance - one has to moderate them wisely, as the latter is no better than the former. When visitors are scarce, they have to be lured in with all the might. Yet, when they are overflowing, there should be some moderation.

Old man Parkinson once discovered that principle in his truly brilliant article "THE SHORT LIST, OR PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION", where he clearly shows how a position has to be equally fitted with baits and spikes.

I'll take the liberty to cite

Wanted-- Acrobat capable of crossing a slack wire 200 feet above raging furnace. Twice nightly, three times on Saturday. 53 Salary offered £25 (or $70 U.S.) per week. No pension and no compensation in the event of injury. Apply in person at Wildcat Circus between the hours of 9 A.M. and 10 A.M.



Wanted-- An archaeologist with high academic qualifications willing to spend fifteen years in excavating the Inca tombs at Helsdump on the Alligator River. Knighthood or equivalent honor guaranteed. Pension payable but never yet claimed. Salary of £2000 (or $6000 U.S.) per year. Apply in triplicate to the Director of the Grubbenburrow Institute, Sickdale, Ill., U.S.A.

Here the advantages and drawbacks are neatly balanced. There is no need to insist that candidates must be patient, 54 tough, intrepid, and single. The terms of the advertisement have eliminated all who are not.

I hope you get the idea.

The same principle should be applied to the modern SO.

  1. First, number of baits can be reduced. Believe me, there are many people who are willing to share their knowledge just for sake of it, not for rep points or badges.
  2. Second, number and size of spikes can be enraged. Say, current ratio 1:5 is embarrassing. Especially taking into account comforting upvotes (or solidarity ones, when two illiterates, got downvoted for their wild guess answers missing the point by a mile, happily upvoting each other). A comforting upvote will reward one fivefold! I'd make ratio 1:2.
    Incidentally, why not to make an upvote to cost at least a penny? It will make all the repwhores think twice before spending!

There are could be other measures. But it's no use to sit and devise them, unless some political will to the change will be shown.

Beside other benefits, it will give back value to the SO reputation, which has devaluated into soil.

Could you explain how that principle should be applied to SO? Not sure I quite follow what you mean. –  femtoRgon Apr 28 at 15:35
okay added some. –  Your Common Sense Apr 29 at 3:31
+1 for "without a manually attached bounty a good question scarcely gets an answer at all." Good questions become tumbleweeds. –  James King Apr 29 at 22:45

Downvote them... Seriously. You've 50 votes per day; use them to downvote 50 questions.

The "demonstrate a minimal understanding" close reason is no more, and the powers that be said "downvote" instead. So downvote.

Invite other PHP devs to do the same. With enough perseverance, people who should never have begun a profession in programming to begin with might stop asking. If not, at the very least you'll see giant walls of downvoted questions which you can ignore.

-1 for the imaginary practice. It doesn't work in real Stack Overflow for a multitude reasons –  Your Common Sense Apr 28 at 14:21
Any reference for "the powers that be said "downvote" instead"? I'd have guessed that "This question appears to be off-topic because it lacks sufficient information to diagnose the problem. Describe your problem in more detail or include a minimal example in the question itself." could be used instead. –  Arjan Apr 28 at 15:05
Well, it could work if we actually followed the advice you've just downvoted @YourCommonSense. So the advice itself doesn't really deserve a downvote. The fact that it's not applied in practice does ... but we can't (yet) downvote such general notions. –  Bart Apr 28 at 15:16
@Arjan: see discussions and comments related to meta.stackexchange.com/q/215596 or meta.stackexchange.com/q/211080 or meta.stackexchange.com/q/216585 –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 28 at 15:23
@YourCommonSense - Then again I'm not implying I believe it would work, hehe. But seeing the reactions I got when I actually cared much (e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/q/178234), I'm at a loss as to what to hope for. –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 28 at 15:33
@dallin: I fail to see the point you're trying to make, then, if you don't wish them to post here either. When you post a question, you research it before showing up asking what you've missed -- and it shows. Contrast these questions with the smelly sewage spewed by random incompetents on the PHP tag and elsewhere. The part that makes me cringe is how many of those inept coders are actually working as programmers. Because I'm later tasked by clients with cleaning up the puke they left behind. –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 29 at 21:59
@Denis "inept coders with an IQ no larger than a shoe-size"? My point is you do not know their IQ, their proficiency, their area of focus, their circumstances, or anything. You don't know what they are trying to achieve. You don't know how long they've tried to learn programming. I understand you're frustrated with their questions that don't belong here, but telling people they should not try to become a programmer or that they're too stupid to without even knowing them is not an attitude we should have. –  dallin Apr 29 at 22:10
@dallin: I think we'll have to agree to disagree for now, and revisit this chat in a few years after you've dealt with your fair share of stinky code bases left behind by incompetent subcontractors. –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 29 at 22:17
@Denis lol, I agree to disagree as well. As a side note, I have dealt with a lot of incompetent code left by learning programmers and understand why it frustrates you. –  dallin Apr 30 at 0:06
@dallin; It has nothing to do with skill level. Beginners, by definition, have a low skill level. It has everything to do with willingness to learn and improve, as opposed to just dumping questions on us. –  Chris Laplante May 1 at 20:18

Lack of administration will undoubtedly lead to more stupid questions. Though it may feel wasted at the time, scorning people for bad questions will likely lead to a more refined question that abides by the criteria further down the road. You just may not be there to witness it and see the result of your effort.

That's how SE started for me. I discovered the site, asked a really dumb question, and people yelled at me for it. You could probably see my inquisitions get better and more concise over the next 2 years. Being scolded really made me feel like an idiot and drove me to want to be better.

I think that "scorning people for bad questions" is not really the right solution. It doesn't solve the problem because there is an endless supply of people with bad questions. I think we need to find ways to do a better job at stopping people from asking the bad questions before they do. –  dallin Apr 29 at 21:47

Smart people who started using PHP have outgrown it, and are asking good questions about other languages and web frameworks instead. Leaving just the people who don't know any better to stumble their way around PHP.

That's right, I don't think very highly of PHP. –  David Bullock Apr 30 at 2:04
You're not alone. –  George Cummins Apr 30 at 3:59

Trivial questions get pounced upon, like a piranha feeding frenzy. Or downvoted/closed, before you can even type "Google it". If all that bothers you, stop looking at the recent questions page! Bookmark these instead:


Or if those are too hard, then try these: (a question has to survive a couple of days to have a bounty, so they should be worth reading)



I'm amazed by the fact that everyone just blindly agrees with this statement. And answers such as downvote everything, and close all by default have the majority's support. I agree with the fact that a question should show sufficient effort of research trough use of Google at least. What I don't understand is why you doubt someone would make a living just because they lack knowledge of PHP. The person might not be interested in a career as a backend programmer but just needs help with a small partion of his/her webpage that requires PHP or some other language they never completely mastered. Perhaps the person asking the question is a hybrid webdesigner/frontend developer. Do you expect them to hire a PHP developer for every trivial problem they run in to?

So, to summerize. I agree that questions that show lack of effort are to be downvoted, however when the OP takes the time to edit the question, remove your downvote accordingly.

Also, if the question shows effort but the OP does not seem to have the correct knowledge of terminoligy, try pointing them in the right direction with hints trough comment like: "Try Googling random term".

A little less negativity and a little more patience would help this community a great deal.

Just my two cents.

"Do you expect them to hire a PHP developer for every trivial problem they run in to?" No but we expect them to put in some minimal amount of effort before they post a new (duplicate/incomprehensible) question –  OGHaza Apr 28 at 15:11
If people aren't actually programmers then this site is not for them. This is a site specifically created for professional and enthusiast programmers. It is not a site for people who don't want to learn how to program to have programmers search Google for them. If people can't even be bothered to do a minimum amount of research before asking a question, such as sticking their question into a search engine, then this site is, again, not for them. The site expects question authors to have done some research. If they are unwilling to do so, their questions don't belong here. –  Servy Apr 28 at 15:12
It is people like you who are encouraging these users that the site has made very clear do not belong here that is the cause of this problem here. By encouraging people asking bad questions, they ask more bad questions. That is really bad for the site. –  Servy Apr 28 at 15:13
Many a SO veteran wishes, as can be seen from the recent meta post related to SO negativity, that users hire a developer instead of posting questions like stackoverflow.com/q/17403265 –  Denis de Bernardy Apr 28 at 15:40
the problem with stupid questions is that they do repell the "experts". and as soon as the noobs succeed in repelling the "experts", this site will become useless, because it then will be a site where noobs give advice to noobs. and by "expert" I mean everyone but the noobs, you know, people who understand the difference between a global variable, a local variable and an instance variable. a real expert (without quotes) will probably leave much earlier. –  Michael Apr 29 at 14:33
@Servy "the site has made very clear do not belong here" - and this is why a lot of experienced developers don't want to participate here anymore. Some people want SO to be some sort of exclusive club. Their motivation is something other than "helping people" - particularly those who close questions as "too specific". It's like a doctor saying too few people have this disease to be worth my while trying to find a cure. –  alcalde Apr 29 at 21:06
How do you know they didn't Google it first? SO factors in the first 5 spots on Google more often than not for any programming question I ask. I would assume most/all newbies found SO by searching for their problem on Google. After getting to SO, they looked around, couldn't find their answer so they did what seemed logical... they posted a question. –  davidethell Apr 29 at 21:07
@alcalde So it seems you're not familiar with the mission of this site, to which the founders have made quite clear. It's not a place where someone goes to ask a question and have someone help them, to which some useless artifact is left around. That's what the site's competition was for decades, and the SO founders were tired of it. Rather than having the same questions asked day in day out, they wanted place to create a repository of knowledge in which each question creates an artifact for future visitors. That is why this site exists. –  Servy Apr 29 at 21:09
@alcalde To stick with your analogy, consider SO the equivalent of a research hospital. It's not here to just help the handful of people that can pass through its doors each day; its goal is to benefit the entire community through expanded knowledge. There are non-research clinics where people can go for individualized care. In the same vein; if someone wants personalized help with a problem that's just for them, then there are places for that. SO isn't one of them. –  Servy Apr 29 at 21:11
@Servy, and because this repository has such great depth, it is the first place they'll come from a Google search. –  davidethell Apr 29 at 21:11
@davidethell When I can take the title of a question, stick it into google, and get an answer to the question, I can be fairly confident that the OP did not do sufficient research before asking their question. As one moves further along between obvious cases like that, and harder cases where I can only find the question because I happened to have already known the "magic words" to find it, there is a grey area. There certainly is a degree of subjectivity as to what level of research is to be expected, and whether a given question meets that criteria. –  Servy Apr 29 at 21:11
@davidethell Okay. Fine. If they can find an answer from another SO question, great, if they can't they should still look elsewhere. After all, SO is not a replacement for documentation, tutorials, etc. –  Servy Apr 29 at 21:12
@Servy, why post if not for personalized help? The only questions I've posted were because I was stuck on a personal problem. I didn't necessarily care if the problem was going to help N number of programmers down the road. I posted a question, hopefully well-formed, and almost always have gotten great answers. I'm sure several of my questions are edge cases or were fairly minor once the problem came to light. –  davidethell Apr 29 at 21:13
@Servy, ok, I'll grant you those last two comments. I do agree that posting on SO should be after exhausting as many other options as possible. More Google searching is usually the better solution most of the time. –  davidethell Apr 29 at 21:14
@davidethell Whether someone comes here for personalized help isn't really the issue. The whole design of the site is that someone comes here for personalized help, they get it, but in the process a useful and high quality artifact is created for future googlers. If the question is one that cannot, or probably will not, generate such an artifact, then it should be downvoted/closed. The motivations of the asker aren't the issue here, but whether or not the question is of sufficient quality to be useful. Ironically, most questions people ask intending to create useful artifacts are low quality. –  Servy Apr 29 at 21:16

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