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The decline of Stack Overflow

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#11

Post by Terr_ »

OtterCoder wrote: post #5

This article doesn't even touch the worst problem with SO. Code rot. Answers are typically out of date and no longer good practice. Some claim that the ability to edit answers fixes this, but all it does is subvert the accept/vote functions. You end up with strange "Ship of Theseus" answers where what is written has nothing to do with what was so highly voted, or what solved the original problem. Where SO goes wrong…

Right, that also interacts with the game-ification, distorting people's incentives for answering questions.

If the site's goal is to have one problem solved forever with one top answer, then whoever manages to secure that top answer wins [0] a kind of dedicated reputational income stream, indefinitely.

Basically, I think it rewards fast answers over good answers, and rewards easy popular questions over hard specific ones. I wonder what would happen if there was a hard limit on how much reputation you could get from a particular question or answer.

[0] Unless another powerful user changes it into a "community wiki" answer, which may or may not be fair to do.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#12

Post by neurotrace »

Are we really digging up this thing again? It uses inflammatory language, cherry-picks interactions from the site, and overall shows that the author doesn't understand what it takes to create and maintain a high quality knowledge resource.

Who here has not used Stack Overflow at least a time or two for bits of information? Do a lot of newer users submit low quality questions? Yes. Do they get corrected on how to interact with the site and have their questions deleted or redirected? Yes. If no such measures were in place, Stack Overflow would become as useless as every other Programming Q&A forum out there. The highly specialized ones do well for that area, the more general ones fall apart when you're trying to get direct, accurate information.

This was a poorly written article when it came out and it still is today.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#13

Post by jazoom »

bigjimmyk3 wrote: post #8

A few years ago I felt like I should contribute something back to SO (having used it plenty of times for research), but somehow I got routed into a "gotcha" UX where the site would repeatedly tell me that my previous action was against the rules. It felt like being trained via shock collar. I certainly appreciate the goal of maintaining quality in questions and answers, but I hope there are better ways of getting the…

I tried to use it about 4 years ago and submit helpful answers etc. Apparently I did something wrong and I couldn't submit anything. It was a very hostile introduction.

Over the last 4 years there have been numerous times I would have contributed a valuable answer but since I don't have a working account I cannot.

No, I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to get my account working. I don't care about SO "reputation".

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#14

Post by pedalpete »

The interesting dynamic I've found when I post to SO lately (which I'll admit has been rare over the last few years) is I so often get a comment about "how can somebody who has X points on SO ask a question like this", as if the accumulation of points, because I've been on the platform for a while and some of my questions or answers have gathered a lot of points does not mean I can't still struggle with what other people consider simple bits of code.

The community itself it seems has become hostile, and therefore I personally don't want to post questions just to be berated for not knowing the answer.

I also think SO is so focused on the simpler questions. This is my code, it isn't working, can you help me fix it. I once asked a question which was more of an architecture problem, no clear answer, but I thought "maybe" it could get some discussion going which would lead to the answer. Nope, SO isn't interested in getting into the larger questions which could help you learn and progress. Keep it to simple errors or maybe help find the right algorithm.

The usefulness decreases over time as we become better developers if SO can't lead us to asking larger questions.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#15

Post by chasedehan »

Veedrac wrote: post #10
Const-me wrote: post #9

Not just for new users. I’ve been using SO since 2009, have over 7k reputation there and 375 answers, but recent changes make me want to stop using it. The problem I encounter most often, the community tends to closevote hard questions instead of answering them. E.g. I recently asked a question on SO, for Linux C API to monitor WiFi signal strength for the connected network. 10 minutes later it got a vote to close “m…

Sorry mate. As you might have guessed, Community is a bot. Some quick tips might help for next time: * Never, ever, write a question without tagging it with either a language or language-agnostic, though in the latter case you're still better off using a language tag as well. This is basically the only reliable way to get views. * Try to give people a jump-in point. If your question gets 50 views, which is far from g…

The fact that you need "tips" to make a question answerable is part of the problem.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#16

Post by Veedrac »

chasedehan wrote: post #15
Veedrac wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry mate. As you might have guessed, Community is a bot. Some quick tips might help for next time: * Never, ever, write a question without tagging it with either a language or language-agnostic, though in the latter case you're still better off using a language tag as well. This is basically the only reliable way to get views. * Try to give people a jump-in point. If your question gets 50 views, which is far from g…

The fact that you need "tips" to make a question answerable is part of the problem.

If people's time was an abundant free resource, sure.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#17

Post by Const-me »

Veedrac wrote: post #10
Const-me wrote: post #9

Not just for new users. I’ve been using SO since 2009, have over 7k reputation there and 375 answers, but recent changes make me want to stop using it. The problem I encounter most often, the community tends to closevote hard questions instead of answering them. E.g. I recently asked a question on SO, for Linux C API to monitor WiFi signal strength for the connected network. 10 minutes later it got a vote to close “m…

Sorry mate. As you might have guessed, Community is a bot. Some quick tips might help for next time: * Never, ever, write a question without tagging it with either a language or language-agnostic, though in the latter case you're still better off using a language tag as well. This is basically the only reliable way to get views. * Try to give people a jump-in point. If your question gets 50 views, which is far from g…

> by then it was too late

“By then” it had a single vote for close. Other four people choose to support the vote, after they already saw the second edition. Why did that happen, herd instinct? If yes, theoretically there’s a moderation mechanism on SO for that, doesn’t work either?

Anyway, I don’t care too much about my particular question. You might be right about the initial version wasn’t good. I’ve copy-pasted it to a new one, let’s see whether I’ll get a relevant answer.

But I’m using SO quite a lot, and I see many good questions downvoted and/or closed. Especially questions about niche technologies. Apparently, too many people think if they didn’t understood the question, it must be something wrong with the question, not with them.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#18

Post by Veedrac »

Terr_ wrote: post #11
OtterCoder wrote: post #5

This article doesn't even touch the worst problem with SO. Code rot. Answers are typically out of date and no longer good practice. Some claim that the ability to edit answers fixes this, but all it does is subvert the accept/vote functions. You end up with strange "Ship of Theseus" answers where what is written has nothing to do with what was so highly voted, or what solved the original problem. Where SO goes wrong…

Right, that also interacts with the game-ification, distorting people's incentives for answering questions. If the site's goal is to have one problem solved forever with one top answer, then whoever manages to secure that top answer wins [0] a kind of dedicated reputational income stream, indefinitely. Basically, I think it rewards fast answers over good answers, and rewards easy popular questions over hard specific…

On the contrary, my longer, in-depth answers tend to score much higher (>10x) than my less in-depth answers; compare

    https://stackoverflow.com/users/1763356/veedrac?tab=answers&sort=votes&page=1
    https://stackoverflow.com/users/1763356/veedrac?tab=answers&sort=votes&page=16
All a reputation cap per answer would do for me is discourage writing good answers.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow

#19

Post by Const-me »

Veedrac wrote: post #10
Const-me wrote: post #9

Not just for new users. I’ve been using SO since 2009, have over 7k reputation there and 375 answers, but recent changes make me want to stop using it. The problem I encounter most often, the community tends to closevote hard questions instead of answering them. E.g. I recently asked a question on SO, for Linux C API to monitor WiFi signal strength for the connected network. 10 minutes later it got a vote to close “m…

Sorry mate. As you might have guessed, Community is a bot. Some quick tips might help for next time: * Never, ever, write a question without tagging it with either a language or language-agnostic, though in the latter case you're still better off using a language tag as well. This is basically the only reliable way to get views. * Try to give people a jump-in point. If your question gets 50 views, which is far from g…

Another example: https://superuser.com/q/1258345/31483

It’s now open (and unanswered) because in this case moderation mechanism worked.

But again, it was close-voted as “exact duplicate” even after I’ve updated the question explaining why it’s not a duplicate. Too many people just love confirming other people close votes, without thinking too much and without even reading the question.

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