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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

#91

Post by Lapsa »

raesene6 wrote: post #48
Lapsa wrote: post #5

top 2% here i can understand the reasoning but i left SO when they broke it into pieces with StackExchange network i actually enjoyed stuff like code golfs, joke questions (minus endless flow of repetitive xkcd references) have always been interested in THAT programming part where problem meets consciousness meets technology. spent a lot of time puzzling around questions on design, patterns - more ethereal side of pr…

interestingly I thought that breaking things up helped a lot and that they could do better by continuing that trend.. For me a big part of the problem of SO (as opposed to other SE sites) is that it's too big for the mods to really have much option other than applying blanket rules without exception. On the smaller sites there seems to be more scope for a more flexible approach to moderation as the question/answer fl…

it's a trade off

on current trajectory - i suppose it does get cleaner and more focused, better integrated with google and whatnot

but i find contributing unpleasant. and it doesn't attract the greatest minds anymore (when SO appeared - it was like a nuclear explosion in software development field. i remember it was enough to follow some tags i were interested in to easily ride THE bleeding edge without losing all the good legacy bits. blogs, tools, ideas, fun, community sentiment - it had it all

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

#92

Post by Bartweiss »

Gracana wrote: post #68
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.

I think this depends a lot on how good the "official" docs are. For some topics (like a depressing amount of Android stuff), the official resources are unclear, out of date, or fundamentally wrong. If the official API is just a list of functions and parameters, Stack Overflow is a great place to find out about hidden side effects and other issues.

For me, Stack Overflow helps to bridge the gap between crummy official documentation and how tools actually work.

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

#93

Post by dcosson »

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…

I agree, I actually really like that there's a high bar for asking. It makes it more likely someone will be able to fully understand and give a good answer. And I would say probably 50% of the questions I start typing on SO, I actually figure out on my own by the time I've written it. I'll notice that I've glossed over the details of one part so I'll stop to dig in further and sure enough I had been making a bad assumption and fixing it leads to the answer.

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

#94

Post by kzisme »

Bartweiss wrote: post #88
kzisme wrote: post #74

I've recently began using SO more actively (providing answers). Most of the questions I've found and tried to answer were duplicates, but since I didn't have enough reputation to mark it as duplicate. (or enough rep to comment on a post to ask for more information on a poorly asked question) It's fairly depressing to attempt to try to be active on a site like SO when it's setup for failure in the beginning. It's irri…

One of my least favorite SO patterns is seeing a top answer with ~150 points that's simply wrong, and then a second or third answer with ~20 points that's actually correct. For high-profile questions this gets sorted out eventually, but it sometimes persists indefinitely for niche questions, and it's really unfortunate. I know "first mover advantage" is hard to solve (cf. Reddit), but it's a really big deal for SO.

It's frustrating as well when the question that was asked gets answered by me, and I receive a slew of down-votes since I answered it first.

The next few answers are essentially copy/paste of my answers or other answers on the question...but I'm still negatively impacted by the down-votes since I only have ~39 rep and wow has getting started been a pain.

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

#95

Post by pjc50 »

Annatar wrote: post #72
pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"learn how to create an OS package to ... " is also the wrong answer, firstly because it will take a tremendously long time, and secondly because there should already be an OS/distro mechanism for handling resolv.conf.

So what if it will take a tremendously long time? Computers are hard and complex systems; that's their most basic property.

Most users are trying to get something specific done, and know that they could spend their entire lives learning about bits of the hard and complex system that would not move them towards the immediate goal.

(I do understand where you're coming from, but I'm now firmly in the other camp. There are several small easy home computing projects that have been on my round-tuit list for months because I don't have time for that. I used debian for ages but never quite got round to building debs for things, because make-installing into /opt or /usr/local is good enough)

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

#96

Post by onewaystreet »

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…

Your two advanced questions are answered on SO:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6246719/what-is-a-higher-...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27190934/implementation-f...

These are only two questions of many on these topics.

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

#97

Post by d0mine »

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…

> 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.

If you want to helps others; post an answer, a comment (if it is a minor correction to an existing answer).

If you can't post an answer or if the question is not the exact duplicate; ask a new question:

- describe your specific problem

- link to the duplicate (the back link is created automatically but you can also add a comment under the duplicate question explicitly if you'd like)

- describe how it is different, how exactly existing answers have failed for you (what behaviour did you expect; what did you get instead, step by step)

If you follow https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve then your question will be better than most questions already (and even if it might be closed as a duplicate; it would attract additional attention—if the question is the exact duplicate you could also create a bounty: it is unlikely to help with difficult questions but it would also attract some attention).

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

#98

Post by domador »

I never even STARTED contributing to Stack Overflow, because of the high barrier to entry for new users. Since now you essentially can't post a question without answering several yourself, I didn't bother asking questions about certain thorny technical issues. I tried a couple of times, ran into the barrier, and gave up. Maybe some of these could have been the kind of thought-provoking questions that the blog post's author would have enjoyed. Who knows how many other would-be Stack Overflow users have had a similar experience. Could Stack Overflow be cutting off its own long tail by having such restrictive barriers to entry for casual, minor would-be contributors like myself?

Fortunately, many of the questions I've needed help with have already asked and answered by others on S.O. But I've had to find help for my more exotic questions elsewhere.

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

#100

Post by pjc50 »

bendbro wrote: post #55
Mithaldu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ninety percent of the time it works every time!

(Jokes on HN fail about 90% of the time, which is a shame because yours is subtle and has been missed)

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