(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Politeness goes a long way on the internet. So for heaven’s sake, don’t write things like this: “no offence, but your code is horrible and doesn’t show any logic” or “This is very poor object oriented design.”
On the popular Q&A website Stack Exchange, people who ask questions are more likely to accept answers that are politely phrased, according to an article in the June 2019 issue of MIS Quarterly by Shun-Yang Lee of the University of Connecticut, Huaxia Rui of the University of Rochester, and Andrew Whinston of the University of Texas at Austin. (Abstract here.)
“The more impolite an answer is, the less likely it will be chosen as the best answer,” they write. One big exception is if the impolite answerer is perceived as a true expert. In that case, they find, “the question asker will find the impoliteness to be less of a concern or even as a signal of authority.”
The high value that’s usually placed on politeness is actually a problem for sites like Stack Exchange, because it could cause weak but polite answers to get more attention than strong but snippy ones, the three authors write.
To lessen “politeness bias,” the researchers recommend that Q&A websites give less prominence to ratings given by questioners and put more weight on the ratings by other people.
Stack Exchange has already been moving in that direction. The answer that the questioner likes is called “accepted” rather than “best answer.” As the website explains, “Accepting doesn’t mean it’s the best answer, it just means that it worked for the person who asked.”
Stack Exchange and other Q&A websites speed the dissemination of technical knowledge, so anything that can be done to make them more effective is a big plus for technological progress.
To contact the columnist of this story: Peter Coy in New York at pcoy3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Eric Gelman at egelman3@bloomberg.net
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