Why are Stack Overflow people nice? [closed]

We're not actually nice. We're just pretending. 'Ya know, to lure you in. Then--when you start to feel really comfortable and "at home"--you wander into the tar pit that is meta and...

WHAM!

...we hit you with everything we've got, crush your spirit, rend your soul, and trap you forever in the maze of twisty little corridors all alike that is SOFU policy, planning and fine tuning.

But it's not really that bad. You get used to it. And besides, on Fridays in Iceland there are waffles and unicorn rides.

As someone who spends most of their time answering questions, there's three primary reasons I hang around Stack Overflow.

First is the challenge. SO provides a unique environment where I can come and browse through what are essentially challenges of my skills and abilities as a programmer. I can choose whether I want a small challenge or a large one, and in most cases, it's a real-life problem. The experience of figuring these questions out is invaluable. Often there's a rush to be the first with the correct answer, and this adds another element of challenge to it.

Second, and hand-in-hand with the first, is the validation of my skills. How I answer a question is met with feedback from my peers in the industry, and it's very rewarding to see that your solutions are correct and that you know your stuff.

Third is the learning. Just by reading questions, I can get a sense of various technologies and how they're used. If I see a question asked about my favourite language on how to accomplish a problem I've never even considered tackling before, odds are I'll learn a new way to use that language. I can honestly say that I have become a better programmer simply by answering questions here. It is a primary learning tool for me in an industry where things can change rapidly and training difficult to come by once you're in an established career.

The reputation and badges are the tangible rewards for time put in here, but it's the community and the learning that keeps me coming back.

When you design a system where positive actions are rewarded. Then you'll see a lot of that. Simple as that :)

We're just greedy rep [badword] but to get rep we need to be nice. So thank you so much for the kind words. You are so awesome.

Interestingly, the culture of relative politeness rubs off pretty quickly. My first day on SO, I saw many questions that I was tempted to answer with a hearty "RT (sometimes F) M" and "you haven't even done any basic debugging and dare waste other people's time with this?" - it's not that I'm not a nice guy generally, but people should do their own homework and too many of those kinds of questions can kill a smaller forum pretty quickly.

Anyway, a few days in, I noticed that nobody else does it. The questions I viewed "RTFM" worthy got answered nevertheless, or got a comment pointing to the manual, or simply ignored. The approach may sometimes get people solutions who really don't deserve them because they were too lazy to even ask a proper question, but it works, and I'm pretty sure has built a reputation for SO that every question is fine no matter what your level of knowledge is without having to fear getting flamed (although, thank God, you get made profoundly aware if you're doing something stupid in your programming language).

Because we whack to dead the ones that aren't.

Because being nice is nice. SOFU attracts people knowledgeable, or those eager to learn. Both of those imply someone a little more mature than the average 12 year old - and being nice is great. Let's all be nice.

Well, something about Karma.

When you help others, you feel proud yourself being able to solve certain challenging problems. When you need help, you definitely know that other developers here are able to help you. It's the kind like what goes around comes around.

I think for many reasons:

• OpenID integration makes it easy to sign up
• The interface is clean and tidy
• You don't have to fill in thousands of CAPTCHA fields
• A great tag system, easy to search
• The reputation system. It's like playing any ranked online game, it's little addictive :)
• Because of the reputation system people avoid to answer with very annoying answers like: RTFM, "Google is your friend" because they will loose points very quickly.

I love this project, it's possible to buy market shares of stackoverflow.com ? :)

I'm nice because I'm a good person. And I enjoy being part of a community of people with the same expertise as mine.

I believe the SOFU people are about average for being nice and helpful. I believe you will find helpful people everywhere. The distinction is that the system seems to do an above-average job about self-policing. I think you just see a lot of average people who are ready to be helpful at that particular moment for a particular question/topic.

Stack Overflow that can help us build an excellent team with ready-to-help members?

Are you talking about some kind of business support team? I don't think lessons from SOFU easily apply in a small team or group or in a support position.

On SOFU I can choose to answer questions when I wish, and on my time-frame. If I am not in the mood to answer questions in a helpful way I don't have too. I am not always interested in answering questions. On SOFU I can cherry-pick the questions I am interested in. In a support situation I am expected to answer pretty much any question that I am asked. Even if the asker is a brain-dead-idiot. On SOFU when someone is being an idiot you can quickly flag them as being abusive or down-vote them. In the real world it is a lot more difficult to deal with someone who is less than helpful.

Stack Overflow is like the ultimate crossword puzzle.

I think people do it as much for themselves as for the anonymous individuals to whom they offer assistance.

There is one thing that is not explicitly mentioned yet (although the answer from Zoredache comes close):

People generally like to help others

That is not different on Stack Exchange than in the rest of the world. Ask anyone for any help and in the majority of cases you will just get it.

Now why that is, is a whole sociological/psychological study in itself.
It goes beyond the reciprocity mauris mentions - although you could argue there's actually an evolutionary benefit a la The Selfish Gene, but I'm not an expert on the subject.
There are many recent studies that suggest that happiness is related to contributing to others.

Online identity is becoming less and less anonymous. Without the mask of anonymity, people prefer to stay on the safe side and be nice. Blame Facebook et al.