But my experience of the site (as an experienced long time user) is much more negatively affected by the “active moderation” than it is positively affected by it. I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question, than a race to ninja-downvote or close anything that is tangentially related to an existing question. The struggle to maintain quality in the content of the site appears to be destroying the quality of the experience of the site. In the end, if the experience is not good, nor will the content be if people stop visiting. I’m sure 99% of the negativity is coming from non-admins. The ninja downvotes and closevotes are coming from regular users.
I still visit but I basically stopped asking and answering because it’s just not worth the stress of having to defend my question or answer. I have a 10k rep account and I’m an experienced dev with a decent grip of English as a second language but I still never felt once that my answer was welcome or my question was good enough for the site. I can only imagine what a novice must feel when using SO.
> I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question
Sure, unless it really happens. I'd been burned by over-moderation as well but when I look at the process I think it's not arbitrary. There are controls and voting by more than one person. Remember, there is nothing a moderator gains by doing any of this.
Yes, I think moderators aren't to blame for the poor quality of the experience (mostly).
But I think this recipe is a disaster: users downvote and close-vote. Moderators look at votes and clean up accordingly. I think the problem is that the algorithms allow a small group of drive-by downvoters to destroy the experience. I'd be more than willing to accept a somewhat lower content quality for a more friendly experience.
Well, what is the downside to having duplicate* questions?
I would guess the vast majority of traffic to any specific question page is search, followed by specific links people have posted (on or offsite), and relatively little will come from browsing through lists of questions (tags pages) or something like that.
Search is going to surface the most up-voted and linked questions. Links people have posted are obviously very specific (no chance of confusion following the link).
I would say the upsides are that you end up with more opportunities to have nuanced differences in question handled, give more people a chance to answer questions, naturally refresh questions/answers over the years (eg: "How do I minify CSS in <stack>?" will have very different answers in 2019 than it did in 2009).
* I'm not necessarily suggesting exact duplicates, but allowing for questions to be re-asked after a year or two, and allowing any subtle difference in the situation, stack, etc.
I still visit but I basically stopped asking and answering because it’s just not worth the stress of having to defend my question or answer. I have a 10k rep account and I’m an experienced dev with a decent grip of English as a second language but I still never felt once that my answer was welcome or my question was good enough for the site. I can only imagine what a novice must feel when using SO.