What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by ndnxhs » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 4:24 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #172

Someone1234 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way SO is moderated encourages out of date information. For example, if you find a question from 2015, with all out of date answers, if you ask it again today it will be flagged as duplicate with a link to the 2015 answers and no further discussion is allowed. The older SO gets the worse the content gets. They're trying to make a "Wiki site" but in a Q&A format, it doesn't work and doesn't make sense. Until they…

Per the wiki comparison, there's an edit button on every answer and question -- it works even if you're not logged in. Try it! I'm starting to think that calling the edit button "improve this answer" and "improve this question" was a mistake..

I always had the idea that the edit button was for minor corrections or clarifications of the post and not to radically change the post itself.

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

#192

Post by ndnxhs » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

fweespeech wrote: post #117

skohan wrote: post #46

I feel like Stack Overflow has gotten less useful to me as a programmer over the years, and these days I more often find the answers I need on a forum geared toward whatever technology I have a question about. I have a hard time telling whether this reflects a change in developer culture online over the years, or a change in the types of questions I tend to ask as I have become a more experienced programmer.

> a change in the types of questions I tend to ask as I have become a more experienced programmer. That is probably 50% of it. I find myself using google to solve problems about once a day these days. When I first started, it was easily 5-10x that. > I have a hard time telling whether this reflects a change in developer culture online over the years SO no longer really tolerates hard questions that an experienced pro…

Stack exchange has another site called softwareengineering which accepts questions like the one you gave as an example while stack overflow sticks to questions that have an objectively correct answer.

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

#193

Post by ndnxhs » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 4:29 AM UTC

eberkund wrote: post #156

Your score on stackoverflow has always been a weak indicator of knowledge/community involvement/any other virtuous attribute. This should be clear to anyone who has browsed upon questions like "How do I perform this common operation in Git?" or "What Bootstrap class do I use?" and seeing the accepted 1 liner answer with 1000s of up-votes while at the same time some in depth answer to a question about operating system…

That relates to another point in the post that your questions and answers are scored based on how many other people you helped.

I have a super high rep on the blender stack exchange just because I happened to ask all of the noob questions when the site was in beta. I still get almost daily upvotes even though I haven't used blender in years.

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

#194

Post by mixmastamyk » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

foxfired wrote: post #186

mixmastamyk wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the Accepted label, however they are sorted at the top by default. They probably should change that to "sort by votes," so the best answer can change over time.

Accepted answers are not necessary at the top. Here is an example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6121203/how-to-do-fade-i... The chosen answer was not the best, so my answer ended up reaching the top. But note that after 7 years, my answer, although still correct, is no longer the most efficient way to do things. Better alternatives are rising up.

It's being sorted by votes. Many times, the accepted is at the top despite higher number of votes being cast for those below.

I'm not sure what the deciding factor is now, perhaps there is a more complicated scoring system happening in the background or it recently changed?

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

#195

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

dantiberian wrote: post #190

codinghorror wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly a perk for the question asker. Nobody (that I know of) stops reading at the first answer, because there are usually multiple good ways to solve any problem in programming. And if the accepted answer has a fraction of the upvotes of the answer just under it.. that's another strong signal to "keep scrolling"

People definitely stop reading after the first answer, especially if it looks like a reasonable solution. It is a very common experience for me, where I won't realise that there is a much better rated answer below the accepted one, especially if the top answer is long enough so that the second one isn't visible without scrolling. From a UX perspective, you want to put the most relevant information at the top. The vot…

There's zero evidence that people stop reading at the first answer. Otherwise no other answers would have any upvotes, and you can see that's not the case.

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

#196

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

ndnxhs wrote: post #191

codinghorror wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the wiki comparison, there's an edit button on every answer and question -- it works even if you're not logged in. Try it! I'm starting to think that calling the edit button "improve this answer" and "improve this question" was a mistake..

I always had the idea that the edit button was for minor corrections or clarifications of the post and not to radically change the post itself.

if the information in the answer is incorrect as of a certain version of the library / environment, it's perfectly fine for anyone with a web browser to edit that additional information into the post.

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

#197

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 5:36 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #187

codinghorror wrote: post #163

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. This is also something that gets worse over time, like the uniqueness problem. It's not discussed because the solution is kinda obvious.. wikis mean editing , right? Even by anonymous users? That's also how it works on Stack O…

The solution to dups is obvious too, right? Close em as dups? Yet that is a large focus of the article. The solution to out-dated answers might be obvious, but apparently obvious isn't stopping it from being a problem... it's a big problem. If it's obvious, why is it still a problem? If the answer is "because the userbase isn't doing what I want", then _that's_ a problem to which the answer is apparently not obvious.…

It's a problem that is within your power to fix, and in fact within the power of anyone in front of a web browser to fix, because it requires no permissions or even a login. When you see an obsolete answer in need of clarification (such as this only works on versions 1.0 - 5.3, or this functionality was removed in version 2.3), press the edit button and make it so.

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

#198

Post by geezerjay » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:01 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #148

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.

Editing someone else's question or answer (comments can't be edited by others) is a very aggressive move and not something that anyone other than a handful of very experienced / high rep users are likely to do very often. And it is far from a perfect solution either. Editing an answer substantially upsets the entire up/down vote system, as well as the comments. A better system would be something like question/answer…

> Editing someone else's question or answer (comments can't be edited by others) is a very aggressive move and not something that anyone other than a handful of very experienced / high rep users are likely to do very often.

Do you really believe that adding a tag with a version number to a post is something that can be classified as a very aggressive move, particilarly if it's an old post?

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

#199

Post by collyw » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:40 AM UTC

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.

There is also the problems of frameworks and languages evolving, with better ways of doing things in subsequent versions.

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

#200

Post by dagw » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:47 AM UTC

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 big problem.

As someone who primarily interacts with SO via search engine results, it's one of the biggest problems with SO. The number of top voted/accepted answers that are 'wrong' in one way or another keeps going up and thus the chance of me finding the 'right' answer on SO keeps going down.