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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#71

Post by justinlardinois »

I don't really agree with this article's assessment.

If your question isn't clear, it's not possible to get good answers. If your question is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology you're using, the best possible answer is "You're fundamentally misunderstanding the technology you're using."

Stack Overflow encourages users to edit other people's questions for clarity and formatting, which I think is helpful for a lot of new users that don't know how the site works yet. And my experience has been that when there isn't enough information in a question, you tend to get comments asking for more, which is productive.

I do agree that Stack Overflow can be a bit daunting for new users, especially because you're not allowed to comment right off the bat. I believe the threshold is 50 reputation, which can be hard to get early on, because questions get answered so quickly on Stack Overflow that it's hard to find questions that still need an answer.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#72

Post by exstudent2 »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #34

Disclaimer: I work in the Q&A team at Stack Overflow. What people don't understand is that SO serves literally all developers. No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over. Do we keep moderation as is? People complain we are too strict (or not enough). Do we allow only English? We are elitist. Do we allow SO in other languages? We are fragmenting the comm…

> Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over.

Every moderator on every site will tell you this; without this narrative they wouldn't exist.

Is there any proof that this is the case though? To me SO is super useful with ~20% of great threads killed for being off topic. Voting puts good topic on top, no need for administrator intervention.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#73

Post by tedmiston »

> However, a 2013 study has found that 77% of users only ask one question, 65% only answer one question, and only 8% of users answer more than 5 questions.

Is this actually a problem?

I've always viewed Stack Overflow as a "write once, read many" community. For top questions, it looks kind of like Quora.

Checking my own stats: I've been a member for 7 years, asked 4 questions, and given 45 answers while reaching ~86k people [1]. My karma is not super high at 936. However, I've gleaned so much value from the SO community (and saved so much time), that these numbers only begin to scratch the surface.

Using these numbers as metrics doesn't reflect the value of SO's knowledge base. I don't think Stack Overflow is on the decline at all.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/149428/tedmiston?tab=profile

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#74

Post by joekrie »

junke wrote: post #56
joekrie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it to be a great resource if someone has already answered your question, especially if I find it via Google. As for asking questions, it's a bit off-putting to be immediately downvoted without explanation, and to not get a single answer. Point is, it's good resource to free-ride but not actively participate.

Did you eventually find out why you were downvoted?

Not really, but I did eventually get upvoted.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#75

Post by Eupolemos »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #34

Disclaimer: I work in the Q&A team at Stack Overflow. What people don't understand is that SO serves literally all developers. No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over. Do we keep moderation as is? People complain we are too strict (or not enough). Do we allow only English? We are elitist. Do we allow SO in other languages? We are fragmenting the comm…

What do you mean by "vampires"?

I have an interest in forums, but I'm not familiar with that "category".

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#76

Post by obj-g »

I worship SO like the all-knowing deity it is, but I don't love it. It's a cruel god, like that of the Old Testament. I've never contributed to the site, though I've used it for years, and I never will -- simply because it's too arcane and silly and I don't wish to play the reputation game just to leave a simple comment or whatever. When a new god appears, I'll surrender completely.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#77

Post by kjhughes »

None of the Stack Overflow moderation irritations matter to me in the end.

All that really matters to me is that SO has employed a reputation system that provides a strong quality signal for answers to questions that I have. This allows me to quickly assess the quality of any given answer based upon the reputation of the answerer and the upvotes that the answer has received.

All other SO problems, including any aggravations encountered while trying to give back to that community, are relatively insignificant.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#78

Post by tedmiston »

wslh wrote: post #5
okket wrote: post #2

(2015) Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837442 (1 year ago, 39 comments)

More decline in 2016. Questions are not being answered in general or there are professionals responders who don't really understand what you are talking about. In the other hand there are exciting discussions in the other *.stackexchange.com sites (e.g. reverseengineering, ethereum).

I'm not so sure I agree. I've answered a few Python questions this year. Most of which have gotten several answers pretty quickly. If they didn't get answers, it was often a question that was a poor fit for Stack Overflow (e.g., very specific to a framework, something readily available in the docs).

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#79

Post by hjnilsson »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #4

I've found that if you go to Stackoverflow for a fast-moving topic like Javascript, the first answer isn't correct in modern terms. The next set of answers, without check marks, are likely more correct. So you have to read the entire page to get a glimpse of the truth. This can be bad if you're just looking for an immediate solution, however for learning its fantastic because it shows you a recorded history of how th…

I think the crusade against duplicates worsens this problem. If duplicates were more accepted, it would both make it more welcoming for newcomers to ask questions, and encourage people to update the answers to old questions (by answering the new questions).
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