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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?

#131

Post by duxup »

fweespeech wrote: post #112
duxup wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being a community manager is a thankless, unrelenting assault on your confidence and emotional and social stability." Oh man I volunteered to moderate on a large gaming related forum ages ago. The amount of BS you deal with along with personal attacks and etc is pretty high. I never felt emotionally upset by it as I felt you had to maintain an even keel .... but it certainly is not a job for everyone and the rub is…

> but it certainly is not a job for everyone and the rub is the folks who WANT to do it the most are often the worst at it. This is correct. As someone who has run forums for a number of years, I can honestly say I've fired 70% of the volunteers for exactly that reason. They wanted to impress their clique and use the power. In reality, it is more about using that power as little as possible except for things that mig…

Amen. It's about using it judiciously and doing your best to communicate with / be seen by the regular users / available.

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

#132

Post by TeMPOraL »

some_random wrote: post #101
PudgePacket wrote: post #4

I've used stackoverflow for years and have never heard it put like that. "Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in common with Wikipedia than a discussion forum. By this I mean questions and answers on Stack Overflow are not primarily judged by their usefulness to a specific individual, but by how many other programmers that question or answer can potentially help over time ." Personally I would have been much more…

> Personally I would have been much more understanding of the process of using stackoverflow if I knew this, and so would many of the people who get stung expecting an answer to their question. What do you mean here? Why does a separate answer to unknown future readers take precedence over the answer the poster (and other future readers) was looking for?

Why is probably explained somewhere on codinghorror.com. Probably in many places.

The issue isn't why that is, but the very fact that it is so. It's not obvious, and it's not really how people use StackOverflow, in the same way Kickstarter used to believe (probably still does) it was about investing in indie creators, whereas people really used it as a preorder store and a marketing platform.

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

#133

Post by ufmace »

wool_gather wrote: post #97

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...

Quick summary of that Medium post for everyone - Some unknown people accused a SE site of... something on Twitter. People got mad about it. A SE employee weighed in in support of the tweeter. Some other people claim the accusation of whatever it is is nonsense. And I don't have the slightest idea what happened or whose side to take.

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

#134

Post by geezerjay »

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…

> 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.

That's not a big problem. Questions and comments can be edited by other users, which includes adding and altering tags that reflect software versions.

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

#135

Post by thaumasiotes »

geezerjay wrote: post #134
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…

> 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. That's not a big problem. Questions and comments can be edited by other users, which includes adding and altering tags that reflect software versions.

That's not a solution. Tags are hidden at the bottom of the answer. Accepted status and vote count are prominently highlighted. Accepted status locks the outdated answer to the top of the page regardless of whether it's valid.

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

#136

Post by teh_klev »

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…

This is a pretty good example of this problem which got a top of front page hit for my google search (and it's been viewed 15k+ times):

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36747293/how-to-specify-...

The question is tagged for ASP.NET Core 1.0 so there's answers that are applicable to that version. Then things changed in 2.1, which removes some friction when adding custom view locations, and another user posted an answer specifically for that version.

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

#137

Post by dragontamer »

There was an online game I used to play called "Utopia" (closely related to Earth: 2025). It was structured in "seasons", where every 3 to 6 months, the game would reset from scratch.

I think Stack Overflow would benefit from a similar reset cycle. Perhaps users / badges / moderators can remain the same between seasons, but every 5-years or so, just reset the entirety of StackOverflow.

That means:

1. Making "old StackOverflow" read-only. The goal being, these answers may be stale and no longer relevant.

2. Migrate "fresh" stuff over to the next season. Say, everything within the past year is assumed to be fresh-enough to continue to the next season. This is automatic.

3. Users would only have to worry about duplicates within the current season.

4. Referencing an "old season" of StackOverflow is encouraged. If an old answer is still relevant, then you can ask / answer it in the new season. Provide badges for this easy job so that the community can easily push and "renew" the data to ensure it remains relevant.

5. Historical answers can remain archived. There's a lot of answers which are important for history's sake, but changing the text to be relevant for today's programmers may lose the history of some answers. As such: a historical archive of what programmers thought was best in 2013 is best left alone, but "new answers" which reference the old post + updates with new recent developments would provide context. IE: "Don't use std::shared_ptr with new[] in C++" (correct in 2013, but incorrect after C++ 2017, which allows shared_ptr to use the correct delete[] operator in these cases). Documenting the history and changes of languages is important too!

--------

Yes, StackOverflow is a lot like Wikipedia. But unlike Wikipedia, the tech world is incredibly fast paced. Answers for Java 1.4 are likely irrelevant in today's world.

I dunno, maybe 5-years is too long, or maybe not often enough. But some "season" cycle would be a good rebirth / renewal period for the website.

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

#138

Post by geezerjay »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #135
geezerjay wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's not a big problem. Questions and comments can be edited by other users, which includes adding and altering tags that reflect software versions.

That's not a solution. Tags are hidden at the bottom of the answer. Accepted status and vote count are prominently highlighted. Accepted status locks the outdated answer to the top of the page regardless of whether it's valid.

> That's not a solution. Tags are hidden at the bottom of the answer.

Yes, it really is. Tags are used to filter results. Stackoverflow specifically lets users run searches only on specific tags, or even exclude certain tags from the search results. As tags reflect technologies and their versions, stackoverflow enables users to run queries only on specific versions.

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

#139

Post by ldiracdelta »

caymanjim wrote: post #90
EGreg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before StackOverflow, this was Q&A for programmers: https://xkcd.com/979/

Whenever that happens to me, it turns out that I'm the one who had the same question ten years earlier, and I still don't know the solution.

Ask it again. See if you get a duplicate flag pointing to your old question. Happened to me..

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

#140

Post by wool_gather »

dragontamer wrote: post #137

There was an online game I used to play called "Utopia" (closely related to Earth: 2025). It was structured in "seasons", where every 3 to 6 months, the game would reset from scratch. I think Stack Overflow would benefit from a similar reset cycle. Perhaps users / badges / moderators can remain the same between seasons, but every 5-years or so, just reset the entirety of StackOverflow. That means: 1. Making "old Stac…

Intriguing. I like this idea...and I say that as someone who's spent quite a lot of time posting well-recieved answers.
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