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What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

blog.codinghorror.com

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Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#91

Post by manigandham »

rc_kas wrote: post #73
manigandham wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove the entire concept of "accepted" answers and let votes decay or be withdrawn, along with scoring the rankings using time as an additional input. Quora has recently introduced secondary voting mechanisms where answers will randomly have a "is it still relevant" toggle for users to continue providing signal beyond the initial vote.

I think its harder than that. Some anwers are just timeless. Others should decay.

Decay will apply to all answers so it'll still stay at the top of the rankings unless a better answer comes along. Tons of options but better than the static scores we have now.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#92

Post by mademechuckle »

coldtea wrote: post #67
kauffj wrote: post #57

StackOverflow being a wiki is at substantial odds with the way answers are selected. If StackOverflow is a wiki, then the best answer to a question should be determined by the community, not the asker, and needs to be able to evolve and change over time. However, StackOverflow simultaneously insists questions can't be duplicated while making answer selection immutable and controlled by the asker. This results in a su…

> If StackOverflow is a wiki, then the best answer to a question should be determined by the community, not the asker. You're thinking of wikipedia. A wiki doesn't determine what the "best content" in it is. It's just a collaborative way to edit text together.

lol "You're thinking of"

I dont know what they were thinking.. but in any wiki I have used anyone can make corrections and there is a shared responsibility to keep it up to date..

it seems to me that the statement is therefor valid - the basics of what is or is not a good answer is set by the asker not the community, which is how ticketing / Q&A systems work NOT wikis IMHO.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#94

Post by bryanrasmussen »

manigandham wrote: post #91
rc_kas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its harder than that. Some anwers are just timeless. Others should decay.

Decay will apply to all answers so it'll still stay at the top of the rankings unless a better answer comes along. Tons of options but better than the static scores we have now.

If a better answer comes along in a question with 20 answers already it probably won't get up to the top anytime soon.

If a better answer comes along in a question that is then marked as a repeat of a question that has a worse answer, forget it.

At any rate if a better answer comes along it should rise to the top in the matter of <24hrs.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#95

Post by Bartweiss »

Someone1234 wrote: post #74
manigandham wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove the entire concept of "accepted" answers and let votes decay or be withdrawn, along with scoring the rankings using time as an additional input. Quora has recently introduced secondary voting mechanisms where answers will randomly have a "is it still relevant" toggle for users to continue providing signal beyond the initial vote.

Instead of decay, you could just embrace the concept of vote inflation. If a site continues to get more popular the number of votes (in both directions) will grow in proportion to that. It is normally a problem, but in this case could be an asset.

This is an interesting point. For sites like Reddit, inflation is just a (minor) drawback because it means total vote count is a measure of (quality * recency) instead of quality.

But for SO, where voting is never locked and content 'ages' at different rates, it's not so clear there's a downside. The "closed as duplicate" issue still stands, but rising user count is probably helping the problem.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#96

Post by toddh »

gonational wrote: post #20

I’m gonna catch some flak for this... Listening to Jeff try to describe what stack overflow is and the “fundamental misunderstanding” by all of us millions of unwashed masses is amazing. It’s also a bit like listening to a muskox describe why it decided to grow long hair after so much time in the snow; IOW, a complete and total lack of understanding of emergence and a rewriting of history at the behest of Jeff’s enor…

The SO strategy from the start was SEO driven, specifically so Google would pick up SO content. It worked like a charm. Sites before them were closed to Google or hid answers, so it was an important strategy and key differentiator.

Maybe today you go directly to SO to search like you go directly to Amazon for product search, but at the time being open and leveraging Google was genius.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#97

Post by wool_gather »

Thanks for writing this, Jeff! I was very cheered to see a gentle but firm defense of SO's mission -- and of the users who make it happen -- this morning. Doubly so given [the latest nonsense-bomb that SO corp decided to drop][0] on those users this week.

[0]:https://medium.com/@cellio/dear-stack-overflow-we-need-to-ta...

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#98

Post by manigandham »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #94
manigandham wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decay will apply to all answers so it'll still stay at the top of the rankings unless a better answer comes along. Tons of options but better than the static scores we have now.

If a better answer comes along in a question with 20 answers already it probably won't get up to the top anytime soon. If a better answer comes along in a question that is then marked as a repeat of a question that has a worse answer, forget it. At any rate if a better answer comes along it should rise to the top in the matter of <24hrs.

Yes, that's how it is today. That's why I want proper merging and decay, so that fresh answers actually have a shot of getting to the top while people see a single relevant thread.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#99

Post by Bartweiss »

irrational wrote: post #62
jrochkind1 wrote: post #26

One challenge not discussed here is when an accepted and highly voted answer _used_ to be a good answer, but no longer is in later versions of whatever software/platform/library is discussed. This is also something that gets worse over time, like the uniqueness problem. I think it's worse than the uniqueness problem, multiple duplicate _good_ questions/answers don't actually harm, misguide, or delay anyone looking fo…

Recently I have really started noticing this exact problem. Every answer (usually from closer to 2010) I have looked at is recommending using jQuery, even though there are perfectly fine ways of doing it without jQuery in 2018. I've taken to looking the dates of answers and ignoring any that date from more than 2-3 years in the past.

Pretty much all database questions have a severe case of this.

Huge swathes of features appear at transition points like MySQL 5.5 -> 5.6, which means lots of answers are now viable but no longer the best option. And since they are still correct, it's hard to write up new questions which won't be closed: instead of saying "Answer X no longer works", users have to say "Is Answer X still the best approach?" and get closed for duplication or subjectivity.

Worse still, lots of databases still have multiple versions in active use, so "worked great for me! - posted yesterday" isn't even a helpful reference.

Re: What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

#100

Post by Piskvorrr »

tobr wrote: post #83
rc_kas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its harder than that. Some anwers are just timeless. Others should decay.

If they’re timeless they should continue to get votes, no? Even if everyone stops voting in a thread all the votes would decay at the same rate, so the timeless answer would stay at top.

I can confirm this: I'm getting votes from stuff I have written in the Permian, Triasic and Jurassic periods, respectively.
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