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I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

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Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#51

Post by kefka »

I work in emergent technology and R&D.

My questions don't have a SO question, let alone an answer. I get that in general programming, SO is great. Or if you need to know how to generate a N-dimensional array and initialize it for floats -- sure.

But what about: How can the Hololens be used in an Academic sports setting as training hardware? I'm brainstorming rapidly, then digging in what the Hololens can do (by experimentation, no less), and then investigating the API for what's exposed.

The API is the easy part, as it the simple programming.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#52

Post by Mithaldu »

Fuxy wrote: post #4

I don't quite agree as someone with few points on StackOverflow the mods can be quite hostile and inflexible when it comes to the rules. For instance I found a browser bug in the code submitted on a stack overflow answer [1] and I edited it and it got rejected because it wasn't in the spirit of what the original author intended or something like that. I also had no way of replying to the rejection motivating what my…

I ran into the same problem myself recently. Only in my case the original poster didn't agree with the edit either, since the wording was "obvious to him". He recommended i propose an edit and let mods decide (failed twice already, same reason as for you), or write my own answer (question was locked).

It led me to try and find the mission statement of SO and it only says it wants to be the biggest resource of questions and answers. No word about quality.

I suspect they only care about answer amount as that helps their google rank, and quality doesn't.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#53

Post by p333347 »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #47
p333347 wrote: post #35

There are three ways to use stackoverflow - ask, answer and lurk. Asking is hard as the admins are quite intolerant of anything that doesn't abide by the rules, in their opinion. That said, small quick queries, those that would get shot down when posted as questions, are best asked in chat rooms and you will get a useful answer. The notification comes in handy when a chat room question is answered after an extended p…

To be fair, asking on SO isn't all that difficult. It just requires a little patience, to read and understand the guidelines, and to craft a high quality question. Unfortunately, when someone's blocked on some tricky programming task they've already been banging their head against for hours, it's probably a time when patience is in short supply. But, that patience is often rewarded with a solution. I'm amused to see…

> To be fair, asking on SO isn't all that difficult. It just requires a little patience, to read and understand the guidelines, and to craft a high quality question.

This is what is troublesome. There are far too many questions with many impassioned comments that suggests they were closed and reopened multiple times. It seems the interpretation of rules is done too stringently and arbitrarily for most people's liking.

> I'm amused to see programmers.stackexchange get a positive call out, because it used to be the paragon of moderator intolerance. Perhaps that culture has changed for the better.

I had a nice run there as a participant compared to stack. Even as a lurker, I don't find that many questions meted out the stack treatment.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#54

Post by pjc50 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

Stackoverflow works great for me, and I don't know why more people don't appear to use it like I do. 1) When you've got a problem, Google it. 98% of the time the answer will be in top 5 links to stackoverflow or documentation. You upvote the answer and question. 2) 1.5% of the time, stackoverflow will have a related question, but either it doesn't have an answer, or the answer has issues. You figure it out yourself,…

As others have said, the first objective of stackoverflow was to destroy expertexchange, which it has succeeded admirably at. Finding answers through search engines is now far easier.

I've posted very rarely on the software stackexchange, but I've been very active on the electronics stackexchange to the extent that I'm in the top 2% and rank #28. It has very aggressive moderation of 'bad' questions, and I sometimes wish there was somewhere chattier and less fussy we could gently steer the less well formed questions to. It does feel bad when someone asks a question and gets the door slammed in their face. But on the other hand there are a lot of repetitive 'bad' questions from people who've not yet understood what a resistor is.

Remember it's been gamified, so we might as well treat it as a game. Consider the motivation of the question-answerers.

(I also opportunistically karma-snipe the "hot network questions", so I have 1.4k rep on math.stackexchange from only two answers)

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#55

Post by bendbro »

Mithaldu wrote: post #45
bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

Stackoverflow works great for me, and I don't know why more people don't appear to use it like I do. 1) When you've got a problem, Google it. 98% of the time the answer will be in top 5 links to stackoverflow or documentation. You upvote the answer and question. 2) 1.5% of the time, stackoverflow will have a related question, but either it doesn't have an answer, or the answer has issues. You figure it out yourself,…

All the "works for me" answers like yours and the articles are just another example of what's wrong with SO. I was tempted to qualify this more, but honestly, if you can't see why "works for me" is one of the worst kinds of answers you can give in tech, then i doubt i can convince you.

Sorry, I fail to see that. Works for me works great for me ninety percent of the time.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#56

Post by qznc »

p333347 wrote: post #35

There are three ways to use stackoverflow - ask, answer and lurk. Asking is hard as the admins are quite intolerant of anything that doesn't abide by the rules, in their opinion. That said, small quick queries, those that would get shot down when posted as questions, are best asked in chat rooms and you will get a useful answer. The notification comes in handy when a chat room question is answered after an extended p…

> It seems every problem you have is already answered in like 2010

And that is often a problem, because in 2016 the answer has changed. ;)

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#57

Post by rubidium »

kefka wrote: post #51

I work in emergent technology and R&D. My questions don't have a SO question, let alone an answer. I get that in general programming, SO is great. Or if you need to know how to generate a N-dimensional array and initialize it for floats -- sure. But what about: How can the Hololens be used in an Academic sports setting as training hardware? I'm brainstorming rapidly, then digging in what the Hololens can do (by exper…

The closer you are to actual research, the less helpful anything in print or online will be in answering your question.

SO is for questions that have known solutions or quickly knowable solutions.

Sounds like you're actually looking for a collaboration tool.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#58

Post by ci5er »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
ci5er wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them This is probably true. I'm not a Windows developer and on a recent project I had to use their IDE (which turns out to quite nice, if you are an IDE person) and a set of their APIs. I read, but did not understand, some pretty fundamental/basic MS-authored documentation. I found a few answers to questions related t…

One of the weird things about MS documentation is how slow MSDN is. It's often faster to find the answer through Google->Stackoverflow than it is starting at the top and drilling down MSDN.

Now that you mention it, I've noticed that. The pages seem to load quickly enough, but take a while to appear. I might be some funky client-side JS rendering "stuff". It reminds me of how a lot of material design web-component/apps take forever to change after you "load" or "click" (for example).

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#59

Post by dhimes »

corobo wrote: post #50
Chathamization wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue I run into is finding a Stack Overflow question that exactly matches the issue I've run into, find that it's been closed for being a duplicate, click the link to the question it's supposed to be a duplicate of, and find that the other question is completely unrelated. Not only can I not find the answer from SO at this point, but if I find the answer on my own I can't even help others. Another issue I've run…

The ones that really get my gripe are the ones that are flagged for being off topic.. Off what topic? This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered and this is a technical question that needs answering - Why is it closed?

Exactly. Double frustration if it was the first return from google.

Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

#60

Post by p333347 »

qznc wrote: post #56
p333347 wrote: post #35

There are three ways to use stackoverflow - ask, answer and lurk. Asking is hard as the admins are quite intolerant of anything that doesn't abide by the rules, in their opinion. That said, small quick queries, those that would get shot down when posted as questions, are best asked in chat rooms and you will get a useful answer. The notification comes in handy when a chat room question is answered after an extended p…

> It seems every problem you have is already answered in like 2010 And that is often a problem, because in 2016 the answer has changed. ;)

Yes, especially web front end development. I still get hits from as far back as 2008. I do do a quick read though because some of the experts are decent enough to point out the changes for the current time, either as an update to the answer or a comment.
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