Note:
- This is about a perceived pattern of down-votes.
- If no such pattern actually exists, this post is moot; if there is such a pattern, I hope the users who contribute to it either reconsider their behavior or engage in a discussion. I'm deliberately not linking to specific posts so as to avoid a distraction. If no one else has noticed such a pattern, so be it - but I wonder if my perception is indicative of an actual problem in the community.
Regexes (regular expressions) - love them or hate them - can offer powerfully concise, if potentially obscure solutions, where appropriate.
However, not every question tagged with regex calls for an actual regex answer - I'm sure we're all familiar with the XY problem.
Anecdotally, in my personal experience, I perceive the following pattern:
Answers to questions tagged regex that aren't regex-based - whether helpful or not, whether more appropriate than a regex solution or not - are methodically down-voted, without explanation.
Note that I am talking about helpful / more appropriate solutions in the primary language context of a given question, not off-topic answers along the lines of "Why don't you do this in language X instead"?
Needless to say, if such a pattern indeed exists, it is counterproductive and should stop.
Update (14 Jan 2023):
The problem affects regex posts more generally, suggesting a pattern of both aggressively down-voting / closing as a duplicate / deleting questions, as well as seemingly methodically down-voting even answers that do provide regex solutions, on the suspected grounds of the question being subpar / a duplicate / too trivial a variation, as the following posts attest:
Please stop deleting our content without coherent reasons (regex tag)
What should we do when one person tries to delete every duplicate?
What to do when a community is openly hostile?
- On meta meta note: It is illuminating to see the net tally of votes on that post (+10/-28 as of this writing), and the fact that the OP has (regrettably) since deleted their account - presumably (also) as a result of how their post was received.
The posts above link to many others expressing similar sentiments with respect to regex SO posts, though they may not all be tagged as such here.
REGEX, tag it with regex, => "annoy" theREGEXGurus watching that Tag, => get a few Downvotes, I post a simpler Solution that doesn't even use anyREGEX. + Those 1-Rep Users usually never follow up (and even less accept Answers, ah-ah...!), and those Qt's then get deleted 30 days later by 'Roomba'...regextag, and even though they don't include any "link to specific posts so as to avoid a distraction", they seem to often be linked to a specific user which isn't too hard to find on stackoverflow.com/tags/regex/topusers.