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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

#111

Post by recursive »

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.

A common theme for new users I've noticed is questions regarding a code snippet. The question claims the code doesn't work - that it throws or produces an incorrect result. However, the code is completely correct.

How else can you respond, other than saying "the code seems to be correct, and there's not enough to reproduce the problem here. can you provide more information?"

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

#112

Post by dionidium »

crispyambulance wrote: post #105
dionidium wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SO mod on comments: "You should expect comments to get deleted. If they are oh-so-important, they should get rolled into the post they are commenting on. At which point they are obsolete." http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255140/592746 So, your problem, clearly, is that you think your "thank you" is "oh so important." If your ego wasn't so big, you'd get that.

Just pointing out that one of the things the parent says gives him joy on stack-overflow is actually "not allowed". I don't have "a problem". I use stackoverflow quite productively, appreciate its utility, and help folks out with answers when I can. I've gotten acclimated to the rudeness but I wish it were a nicer place.... more skeet less passant.

I was sarcastically criticizing the SO mod's comment, not actually claiming you have a problem.

[Edited for snarkiness.]

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

#113

Post by corobo »

wyldfire wrote: post #63
corobo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.).

What's stopping them setting up an opinions.stackoverflow then if they've already got sibling sites? Somewhere to contain all of the opinion-based questions.

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

#114

Post by Mithaldu »

recursive wrote: post #111
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.

A common theme for new users I've noticed is questions regarding a code snippet. The question claims the code doesn't work - that it throws or produces an incorrect result. However, the code is completely correct. How else can you respond, other than saying "the code seems to be correct, and there's not enough to reproduce the problem here. can you provide more information?"

That is honestly a completely different kind of answer, that imo is perfectly fine. Although, it should come as a comment first, not an answer, but deserves promotion to answer if no further info is given.

The difference between your phrasing, and a blunt "works for me" is that you actually bother to inquire further and don't desire to just shut things down so you can move on to the next question and make more points.

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

#115

Post by crispyambulance »

dionidium wrote: post #112
crispyambulance wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pointing out that one of the things the parent says gives him joy on stack-overflow is actually "not allowed". I don't have "a problem". I use stackoverflow quite productively, appreciate its utility, and help folks out with answers when I can. I've gotten acclimated to the rudeness but I wish it were a nicer place.... more skeet less passant.

I was sarcastically criticizing the SO mod's comment, not actually claiming you have a problem. [Edited for snarkiness.]

oops, sorry!

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

#116

Post by deong »

dcosson wrote: post #86
wyldfire wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.).

What's kind of interesting is a lot of the target SO questions are implicitly opinion-based. For any "How do you do X" there might be multiple ways to do it so the question is actually "what's the best way to do X" which is up for anyone to interpret "best". And this tends to work out nicely, you'll often see multiple answers where the top upvoted one is not the selected one, or some answers build off of other ones a…

The historical significance thing is particularly annoying. It's an explicit statement of "We want this type of content, but the system of rules that we created and can change any time we like does not allow this type of content, and what do you mean, 'that seems like something we should do something about'?"

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by kzisme »

Bartweiss wrote: post #109
kzisme wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A weird observation: starting with SO is particularly punishing if you come to it as an established programmer. The karma restrictions don't chafe much if you're a novice who mostly asks questions, and occasionally answers a simple topic they recognize. If you're experienced, you want to give more complex answers, and perhaps comment on other answers that you think are suboptimal. Doing that, you feel the new users r…

Fortunately the only tag I've been following is C#

I try not to ask trivial questions (or things that have already been answered) so, providing answers to things I have a decent grasp of is the next best thing.

I'm still a fairly new programmer (in the industry), so I'm not claiming to know all of the answers, but if the OP didn't take the time to look themselves - then i'll gladly look for them and answer it. Their question just becomes non-unique and will probably be closed by someone with more reputation than me.

Last week I reached I think 52 rep, but the question I answered got closed/deleted so I lost all of that rep.

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

#119

Post by forgottenpass »

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 must be missing something, given the "reverence" SO seems to get.

You have bit of experience, Stack Overflow's usefulness applies mostly for novices. See the people who said they learned to program with SO in this thread, or otherwise find the material there useful. They're the target userbase, not you.

I suspect the audience is not limited on purpose. The work required to answer questions, and incentive system seems to select for questions that are already google-able but the person asking just doesn't have enough domain knowledge to productively google for that answer.

The only time I get a useful stack overflow google result is when I've jumped headfirst into an area outside my skillset and need to do a common operation but the toolset doesn't make obvious. The kind of questions where I'd be desperate enough to ask SO are either complicated and - at best - get "don't do it like that" answers. Or I'm looking to better understand the technical considerations going into a design decision, which is too opinion-based (or whatever SO calls it) to be asked.

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

#120

Post by fiatjaf »

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,…

Exactly what I do. Exactly what happens to me. I am a serious Necromancer.
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