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What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

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Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#61

Post by na85 »

olooney wrote: post #59
torben-friis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've soldiered on through several experiences like that, and sort of assumed it was the usual (being non American, I guess I just assumed it was cultural differences with Americans or my English being annoying). I changed my mind after asking some questions on the math stack exchange, and seeing how answers there were night and day compared to what's usual in stackoverflow. People with phds in areas I couldn't even s…

Stack Overflow is basically under siege 24/7 by every yahoo with a keyboard. The smaller, more specialized stack exchange sites have less nonsense (maybe a 2:1 ratio of bad to good questions compared to Stack Overflow 10:1) to deal with so can afford to be generally friendlier and more helpful. Although sometimes they can be persnickety about what is "on topic" for the given site.

Maybe the site needs rebranding?

It sounds like you don't want it to be "the place where everyone can ask questions" so much as "the place where only good questions get civil responses".

If SO/SE were rebranded to be less inviting it wouldn't be "under siege".

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#62

Post by olooney »

mushufasa wrote: post #46
oauea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how would you ever learn? I don't know if you've ever spent time looking for questions to answer on SO. Before weighing in on the climate, please do so. You'll encounter an absolutely shocking amount of utterly stupid questions. Yes, I know, stupid questions supposedly don't exist. Judge for yourself after spending an hour looking at the new queue for PHP and JavasScript questions. Once you've done this, and sti…

I'm not suggesting encouraging stupid questions. I'm suggesting that you can minimize the emotional impact of public shaming to newbies through progressive ui design, while keeping the same high standards for content. And also auto-suggesting documentation for newbies exactly so they can learn.

Right. "Closed as Duplicate" could be renamed "Great Question! We have an answer for you over here!" without change in functionality and it would be an improvement. They could take it further and keep the duplicate as a "rephrasing" or "alternative statement" of a question - shouldn't it improve Google search-ability, having several different ways stating a question? And asking a duplicate question in your own words shouldn't be penalized; it is, prima facae, both a good and frequently asked question. It would be so easy to make the question-asking experience better for the vast majority of users... and yet they don't.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#63

Post by tambre »

na85 wrote: post #20
fortran77 wrote: post #6

Here's my Stack Overflow user hostile experience. I asked a question as to _why_ some very well-used and robust database implementations, as a matter of "principle", don't have auto-increment fields. There must be a reason for it, like it violates the purity of a relational database, etc., but I'm not sure how or why. This question was quickly edited/changed by someone else to "How do you do AUTO_INCREMENT in Oracle"…

My best worst experience was asking how to achieve a particular effect in latex and then having the question locked for not posting a minimal working example of something I didn't know how to do.

One should ask TeX related questions on the TeX SE[0] instead of SO.

[0]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#64

Post by tambre »

yulaow wrote: post #32
fortran77 wrote: post #6

Here's my Stack Overflow user hostile experience. I asked a question as to _why_ some very well-used and robust database implementations, as a matter of "principle", don't have auto-increment fields. There must be a reason for it, like it violates the purity of a relational database, etc., but I'm not sure how or why. This question was quickly edited/changed by someone else to "How do you do AUTO_INCREMENT in Oracle"…

The entire fact that a moderator can decide what you really wanted to ask even if you are clear that's not the question you want to ask, is, honestly, ridiculous.

I don't think it's clear from the parent's post that editor was a moderator.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#65

Post by na85 »

tambre wrote: post #63
na85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best worst experience was asking how to achieve a particular effect in latex and then having the question locked for not posting a minimal working example of something I didn't know how to do.

One should ask TeX related questions on the TeX SE[0] instead of SO. [0]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/

Indeed. That's where I asked.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#66

Post by Kaiyou »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #36
Kaiyou wrote: post #9

I feel like there's an "elite" of old users who are discontent that there are both people asking questions they don't like and people eager to answer those questions. If they could just elevate those old users to a different space where they don't interfere with this asking/answering which is the point of the site to begin with, everyone would probably be much happier.

It must be a little soul-crushing to be one of the old-time users and seeing the same questions over-and-over. I think instead of booting those elite users, SO should have a quarantine (or nursery) where badly-asked/homework/do-my-job questions can be shunted off to the side instead of closed immediately. Probably with do-not-crawl robots.txt. I use SO multiple times a day and sometimes feel the urge to contribute ba…

Those aren't the only types of questions being hunted down. It's gotten really bad. Also, it's just natural that most questions are repeated. Every year there's a new generation needing to ask those same questions. Looking back doesn't always work, as technology moves to fast, last years advise can already be obsolete.

I think part of the problem is that those old users think of the place as something for eternity, when in reality it's transient. Repeating questions is desirable. Instead of closing the new questions as duplicates, it should be occasion to retire the old question. Sure, there are some answers that still hold true 10 years later, but how is the one looking for an answer supposed to know that?

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#67

Post by olooney »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #24

I 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…

Sometimes. I once asked how to find the "successor" of a floating point number. I had Googled this, in several different ways in fact, looking for phrases like "smallest floating point number strictly larger than", "next nearest IEEE 754 float" and so on, but I hadn't hit the magic combination of words that would bring up the correct answer. My question was flagged as a duplicate of this one:

> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10160079/how-to-find-nea...

Which is a terrible way of phrasing that question. "next/previous double value?" "like numeric_limits::epsilon but for given number?" "Quite self explanatory?" I didn't - and couldn't have - found this question via Google because it doesn't actually ask the question it purports to - it makes vague allusions to it and hopes the other party will know what they mean. The page would be much improved from a better question with a precise technical description of the exact problem asked because then the page would actually contain the keywords that people would be looking for. But stack overflow, by design, believes that the One True Way to ask a question is the way it was asked first, and that everything subsequent is a duplicate and should be closed.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#68

Post by contras1970 »

this reads a bit like a parody of the all-inclusive movement. the first half of the article chronicles how she took offence where none was offered, and instead of "my bad", there's a whole 'nother half of it talking about "improving the way people give each other feedback".

as others have suggested, (part of) the issue is with the nature of the site itself. we can talk about elitism, seniors shitting on "noobs", whatever. the truth is, there's all walks of people on SO. there's a continuous barrage of bare-naked prompts for "do my homework for me", there's a continuous barrage of "(i don't even know which side is up, but) what's wrong with this gymnastics equipment i'm using?" questions. if you're any kind of regular in that kind of environment, you'll eventuaatlly get exhausted. the only way they can improve the site for "beginners", however ill-defined that term is, covering both the blatant homework cheaters and honest learners, is to limit engagement by force. "you seem burnt out, you can't post comments or answers for a week. come back when you're in a better mood." that seems like a sure-fire way to drive away their knowledge pool and ultimately their revenue stream. another way is to rate-limit the crappy input, but that doesn't seem to be what the article is hinting at at all.

for all the bitching about how toxic SO is, this is not my personal experience. however, that doesn't mean i think the format of the site has merit. IMO, if you want to fix the experience for honest neophytes, you need to enable dialogue. a newbie asks a ill-posed question, a senior points out the misconceptions, asks for clarifications. the newbie comes back with more information, improved followup. senior is finally in position to provide a red-meat answer.

i just described a mailing list, and that's a format you cannot sell with the kind of margin SO has been raking in. they could ditch their programmers and employ a bunch of writers to collate the wisdom of various product-specific mailing lists into an encyclopedia, but they're not interested. i understand that, it'd be a hell of a pivot. but if they push on catering to the lowest common denominator, they're doomed.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#69

Post by olooney »

na85 wrote: post #61
olooney wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow is basically under siege 24/7 by every yahoo with a keyboard. The smaller, more specialized stack exchange sites have less nonsense (maybe a 2:1 ratio of bad to good questions compared to Stack Overflow 10:1) to deal with so can afford to be generally friendlier and more helpful. Although sometimes they can be persnickety about what is "on topic" for the given site.

Maybe the site needs rebranding? It sounds like you don't want it to be "the place where everyone can ask questions" so much as "the place where only good questions get civil responses". If SO/SE were rebranded to be less inviting it wouldn't be "under siege".

Elsewhere on this thread I argue that they are already not a site where everyone can get their questions answered, in practice or by design, and give examples of how the question-asking experience could be improved.

Re: What a bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community

#70

Post by JeremyBanks »

na85 wrote: post #61
olooney wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow is basically under siege 24/7 by every yahoo with a keyboard. The smaller, more specialized stack exchange sites have less nonsense (maybe a 2:1 ratio of bad to good questions compared to Stack Overflow 10:1) to deal with so can afford to be generally friendlier and more helpful. Although sometimes they can be persnickety about what is "on topic" for the given site.

Maybe the site needs rebranding? It sounds like you don't want it to be "the place where everyone can ask questions" so much as "the place where only good questions get civil responses". If SO/SE were rebranded to be less inviting it wouldn't be "under siege".

The contributors to the site have been begging for changes like that for more than five years.

The operators of the site refuse because it would limit their advertising reach.

Both sides have become more entrenched over time, and the result is a unhappy disintegrating mess.

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