The best questions on Stack Overflow are, without fail, those marked as "not a good fit for Stack Overflow"
What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#22It's hilarious how self aware they are about the newbie experience[1] while at the same time having engineered an system that reinforces and enables all of those behaviors. Stack Overflow doesn't care about helping users get answers to their questions; they care about creating a Google-indexed repository of high-quality questions and answers. These two aren't the same because of the concept of a "high" or "low" quali…
> Stack Overflow doesn't care about helping users get answers to their questions; they care about creating a Google-indexed repository of high-quality questions and answers. I'll add that experienced Stack Overflow users don't care about helping other users. They care about badges and reputation, which is a proxy for helping users but not quite the same. So to me it's more like a wiki with a pseudo-Q&A gimmick with a…
A metric stops being a good metric once it becomes a target, they say.
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#23It's hilarious how self aware they are about the newbie experience[1] while at the same time having engineered an system that reinforces and enables all of those behaviors. Stack Overflow doesn't care about helping users get answers to their questions; they care about creating a Google-indexed repository of high-quality questions and answers. These two aren't the same because of the concept of a "high" or "low" quali…
> Stack Overflow doesn't care about helping users get answers to their questions; they care about creating a Google-indexed repository of high-quality questions and answers. I'll add that experienced Stack Overflow users don't care about helping other users. They care about badges and reputation, which is a proxy for helping users but not quite the same. So to me it's more like a wiki with a pseudo-Q&A gimmick with a…
>even if that means telling someone that their question is stupid – which means breaking a rule that is essentially the cornerstone of any other Q&A setting.
Although I'm sure that happens, the site is explicitly designed to be a pseudo-wiki (Jeff counted Wikipedia as one of its inspirations), so if you ask a question that's too specific to your use case (i.e. that other users will not be able to put into practice) or a matter of opinion, then there's a legitimate reason to close it as not an appropriate question for Stack Overflow. Most other Q&A settings, such as Quora, are not trying to be pseudo-wikis, so these questions make more sense for those contexts.
For example, if you asked, "Should I use MySQL or SQLite", that's not a great question for Stack Overflow. You might instead ask, "What are the key differences between MySQL and SQLite" which can then provide the insight to answer your original question as well as help other users.
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#24I have a somewhat different intepretation of the value StackOverflow provides. To me, part of what makes SO useful is the somewhat inconsistent, but still fairly obvious, requirement to do significant personal research, before asking a question. If a Here, let me google that for you link to the top result answers a users question, shouldn't there be some sort of negative feedback to cull those types of questions from the platform?
My point is, by discouraging behavior that the community is "generally" opposed to, SO helps in ways beyond just answer questions. That said, if they can make it a little nicer to ask a question, without losing the core value they provide (IMO - quality questions & quality answers), then by all means lets give it a try.
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#25HN is far more hostile than stack overflow :)
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stack Overflow doesn't care about helping users get answers to their questions; they care about creating a Google-indexed repository of high-quality questions and answers. I'll add that experienced Stack Overflow users don't care about helping other users. They care about badges and reputation, which is a proxy for helping users but not quite the same. So to me it's more like a wiki with a pseudo-Q&A gimmick with a…
>even if that means telling someone that their question is stupid – which means breaking a rule that is essentially the cornerstone of any other Q&A setting. Although I'm sure that happens, the site is explicitly designed to be a pseudo-wiki (Jeff counted Wikipedia as one of its inspirations), so if you ask a question that's too specific to your use case (i.e. that other users will not be able to put into practice) o…
> You might instead ask, "What are the key differences between MySQL and SQLite" which can then provide the insight to answer your original question as well as help other users.
I'm pretty sure if you ask that exact question, an even if nobody has asked it before so it isn't a duplicate, someone will find some reason to shoot it down.
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#27A really good post, and good point, but I also want to add that the first thing I thought when I saw the title was: "I don't think Stack Overflow should think of itself as a community".
In fact, SO is fantastic, the best ever at what it does, by far. It does what it does, really well. When it started, I occasionally asked or answered questions; now I don't, and it has nothing to do with community (good or bad). It's because, you know, all my questions are already asked on there, and answered, often multiple times.
This doesn't mean there won't be more questions that need asking, as of course there will for new technologies especially. It means that the ratio of users to questions has risen exponentially, so that the % who need to do _anything_ on SO has dropped.
You want the typical newbie experience? It's this: 1) types question into Google 2) clicks on link to SO 3) may have to repeat steps 1-2 a couple times 4) finds answer to their question 5) goes away
There is nothing in this that resembles "community". Like wikipedia, there may be a core group of ultra devoted users who keep adding new content. And you know what? That's ok. Perfect, even. The problem with SO's community, is that it's thought of as a community.
The worst thing they could do with SO, is try to make it a community. We already have Facebook and Twitter, and they didn't turn out so well. We don't have another substitute for Stack Overflow, if they try to turn it into a social network.
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
>even if that means telling someone that their question is stupid – which means breaking a rule that is essentially the cornerstone of any other Q&A setting. Although I'm sure that happens, the site is explicitly designed to be a pseudo-wiki (Jeff counted Wikipedia as one of its inspirations), so if you ask a question that's too specific to your use case (i.e. that other users will not be able to put into practice) o…
> You might instead ask, "What are the key differences between MySQL and SQLite" which can then provide the insight to answer your original question as well as help other users. I'm pretty sure if you ask that exact question, an even if nobody has asked it before so it isn't a duplicate, someone will find some reason to shoot it down.
It's "too broad".
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#29Closed as duplicate:
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve...
Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
#30> "Newbie Experience" picture + > Over the next few quarters, we’re going to be taking a step back and re-evaluating how we deliver feedback to users about their questions. We want to make sure people are getting necessary feedback without feeling called out or publicly embarrassed. My bet: they'll keep the mechanisms exactly the same and hide from the newbie user the information that their question has been flagged…
How is that an improvement to the user? In some ways, it's like a kind of shadowban. The user's question is effectively dead, but they aren't made aware of it.