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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

#61

Post by PretzelFisch »

dx034 wrote: post #26

I would love to use stackoverflow actively, but wasn't very successful so far. It's great to use as a passive user. It's a great encyclopedia. But all my attempts to ask questions were unsuccessful. I posted 3 questions where I did not receive any answers or clues at all. The questions seem to have a lot of views, so I tried to answer them myself later (in cases I found one). Which is ok, but makes it like an encyclo…

At this point in time SO is not the place for that. But that kind of question is more in line of their sister sites like code review, and programming.

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

#62

Post by ryanbrunner »

4ad wrote: post #18
ubertaco wrote: post #17

SO is another area where I feel "out of sync" with the rest of the "programming world", in that I've... * ...never posted a question to SO (because I've never found it either necessary or helpful to do so), * ...only ever "copy-pasted" from SO once (it was a CSS polyfill for iOS having broken "support" for vh/vw) * ...only attempted to answer questions on SO twice, exclusively out of a feeling of "am I missing someth…

I don't think you are missing anything. I also have never asked anything on SO, and never used SO as a reference. SO only seems to work for factual simple answers that are found in the documentation or manual pages. For higher level discussion SO is not appropriate; mailing lists and IRC work best for that. I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them

> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them

That's a dismissive way of framing it. There's nothing anti-intellectual or lazy about using the tool that will most efficiently retrieve the information you're looking for. If I'm faced with a non-esoteric problem that I don't immediately know the solution for, I'd much rather spend 5 seconds Googling it and being brought to a highly relevant Stack Overflow answer that addresses my specific problem than having to find my way through a poorly-searchable manual.

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

#63

Post by wyldfire »

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?

I don't necessarily agree with the logic, but SO's "topic" is software development. Many questions that are technical but not regarding software are closed for being off topic. Some/many are migrated to sibling stackexchange sites. Some questions are closed because they require opinion-based answers ("What's the best ...?", e.g.).

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

#64

Post by bandrami »

SO is problematic when combined with the current trend towards CADT release models. The "non-duplicate" question you get pointed to was seven releases ago, and the solution in the answer has been deprecated. Doesn't matter, though: still marked as "duplicate".

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

#65

Post by Jemmeh »

Chathamization wrote: post #30
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,…

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 duplicate thread thing is the most common annoyance I have with it. Feels like the people moderating are not fully understanding what they're reading/not reading the whole thing.

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

#66

Post by Jemmeh »

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.

Of course there are "works for me" answers. There are so many different setups out there. Just between chrome and IE for example. "This works for me on most browsers, but I don't know what the answer is for IE" is perfectly valid.

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

#67

Post by Something1234 »

Chathamization wrote: post #30
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,…

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…

Just add code highlighting if your edit falls short. It's like 20 bytes.

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

#68

Post by Gracana »

ubertaco wrote: post #17

SO is another area where I feel "out of sync" with the rest of the "programming world", in that I've... * ...never posted a question to SO (because I've never found it either necessary or helpful to do so), * ...only ever "copy-pasted" from SO once (it was a CSS polyfill for iOS having broken "support" for vh/vw) * ...only attempted to answer questions on SO twice, exclusively out of a feeling of "am I missing someth…

I have the same feeling. The official docs, experts' websites, code from relevant projects, and books are always better than getting a quick answer from SO. Sometimes when I've exhausted my available resources (often the case is that I don't have the necessary book), I'll click on an SO link... only to find that the question is closed because it's not a bite-sized chunk that fits the SO format.

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

#69

Post by johnslegers »

I’m the author of the article "The Decline of Stack Overflow". I initially published it in July 2015, when it got ±65,000 views in two days. I republished it @ Hackernoon this weekend at their request, which resulted in ±125,000 additional page views, bringing the total page views of the article since its publication in 2015 to ±245,000. The fact that this article went viral TWICE (while none of my other articles even got to 5000 views) illustrates how many people experience the same frustrations.

On SO, I currently have 11,914 rep, 9 gold badges, 66 silver badges and 73 bronze badges. I’ve posted 492 answers and 6 questions (that haven’t been deleted). I’ve been programming since 1999 and I’ve worked as an IT professional since 2006, and my experience ranges from PHP and JS to SAP and PL/SQL. I also released my own open source frontend framework and several other open source projects on Github. So I know how to program and understand many of SO’s intricate workings!

Those rare times I’m stuck on a programming issue, I find it impossible to find any useful answer on SO. My questions either get no answers at all or downvoted and/or closed (for arbitrary reasons) by people who clearly lack the experience to even remotely understand what I’m talking about.

During my time on SO, I’ve been bullied by 20+k users several times and even got a temporary ban by one of them moderators for no other reason but pointing out that another user was acting like “a little Hitler”… in a private conversation with moderation.

Yes, other communities have similar problems, but never have I been a member of a community where bullying and trolling was so common among the most privileged segments of its membership.

Considering the popularity of my article, I’m considering writing a follow-up and go in greater detail on my experiences with SO and how SO could be improved.

However, I’m quite busy these days, so it may take a while before it actually gets published… if it ever gets published.

Nevertheless, these are my 5 cents I’d like to add here…

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

#70

Post by wyldfire »

Jemmeh wrote: post #65
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 duplicate thread thing is the most common annoyance I have with it. Feels like the people moderating are not fully understanding what they're reading/not reading the whole thing.

That's certainly possible in many cases. But it's so terribly common for duplicates to show up on SO that many folks have itchy trigger fingers. :/
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