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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#111

Post by rodgerd »

Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

> People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile.

For anything involving Linux, the Arch wiki is light-years ahead. It's not even a close competition.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#112

Post by astrobe_ »

reitanqild wrote: post #14
okket wrote: post #2

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

Doesn't get old. SO is so amazingly useful that I'd like to upvote discuss it weekly if it would result in either SO getting fixed or someone making a better one.

I imagine the better/next one would be build around an AI that learns from users in order to answer to users, all through a chat-like interface. No up/downvote or moderation needed, the AI determines by interacting with the users what is useful and correct, and what is not.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#113

Post by samastur »

tlogan wrote: post #24
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

The SO is in decline. And decline is caused by its own success. - The SO was great because answers for noob questions where hard to find. At this point of time (thanks to SO and their knowledge database) there are so many other resources to get these noob questions answered or they are already answered. And some of these other resources are updated to reflect the most recent technology changes while SO answers are st…

> Now people start asking hard stuff - but engineers (I intentionally do not say developers) who know answers on these questions are not interested in answering.

I can't speak for others, but in my case it is not for lack of interest. I don't have enough 'reputation' to be allowed to answer questions and am too busy to find earning it a good use of my time.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#114

Post by douche »

martinald wrote: post #18
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…

Agreed. I usually use 'site:stackoverflow.com [[query]]' in Google with search terms limiting pages that have been updated in the last year or so. Filters a lot of the very old answers out which often can send you on a totally wrong direction because the ecosystem has changed so much. Perhaps SO will end up getting overtaken by a new similar site, not because it is intrinsically better, just because they reset the co…

This is really a much smaller problem if you stick to languages outside the churn'n'burn whizzbang web world. A lot of answers from the Java 1.6 era, or about .Net 3.5, or Python 2.7 are still largely relevant. Best practices in C/C++ have been even more static, aside from a few additions in recent modern standards that few seem to actually use.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#115

Post by sklivvz1971 »

shkkmo wrote: post #90
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…

I'm not impressed by this response to some very valid criticisms. > No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Of course no matter what you do, people will complain. This doesn't this this a valid reason to dismiss criticism out of hand without engaging with the complaints. The correct response is to look for ways to address the very real problems that are being brought up in a way that increases the…

I am not dismissing anything, and I am, instead quite worried. I am sorry that you had the wrong impression.

What I meant to say is that handling such a large site is like playing whack-a-mole. Seeing problems popping up is not a symptom of decline. Is a symptom of size.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#116

Post by marcosdumay »

jerf wrote: post #81
reitanqild wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. I can often stick with second best in class as long as it doesn't have a habit of biting you for no apparent reason all the time. > People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. People keep saying that and I keep wo…

"People keep saying that and I keep wondering if we either never visited the same forums or if I'm somewhat blind to all the vile bullying that must have been going on." It wasn't bullying so much as low-quality content. It is quite likely you didn't have this problem, as I didn't very often either. If you know where to go, help has always been available for many languages/runtimes/environments/etc., and generally th…

My pre-SO experience was similar to yours, but things change, and alternative forums improved a lot.

I'm not saying there's any generic forum better than SO out there. But they are not that far behind anymore.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#117

Post by exstudent2 »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #108
exstudent2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Help vampires" aka people with a question that's been answered, are only a problem if you don't have proper search tools to show that a question has already been asked (or answered). If you provide those, and people still ask, maybe their question actually is different. If you provide similar question tools for answerers, let them link to the other question/answers but there's no value in closing the question. That'…

Help vampires: people that ask questions which have no value other than themselves. Duplicate questions are not "help vampires" by any means. This is a good example of that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30721824/near-syntax-erro... Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting.

First of all, if someone wants to answer that, more power to them.

I'm talking about stuff like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/378959/is-there-a-static-...

Good work closing that one!

> Side note: don't pass judgement on stuff or people you don't know. It's quite insulting.

You don't know who I am so I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't know about community management or content generation. I'm simply telling you that calling your users names is insulting. It's good advice not a reason to attack me.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#118

Post by pjc50 »

dustingetz wrote: post #11

Point based moderation generates toxicity, hacker news gets toxic too. Stack Overflow went all in on moderation before they understood the social consequences of it. There's an opportunity here for a social network with a moderation system that cares about how it makes people feel and how feelings impact user generated content.

> moderation system that cares about how it makes people feel

Definitely something that's very much needed. But I don't think anyone knows what it would look like and what the distribution of emotional labour would be.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#119

Post by dgregd »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #63
grecy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For the first time in a while, I've picked up a language I have not used for almost 15 years. Google is helping immensely, and I've been shocked at how often (>95%) of the time the first result is SO, and that answer is perfect. So much so I've stopped searching google, I've just got a lot of SO tabs open. It might not be perfect, though I'd say it's the best by a massive margin.

> So much so I've stopped searching google, I've just got a lot of SO tabs open. with all due respect but SO search isn't quite stellar.

Yes, SO search is average quality. Therefore I add site:stackoverflow.com to all my google searches.
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