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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

#81

Post by leepowers »

xigency wrote: post #12

One big problem as a Stack Overflow viewer who comes from Google is that many times the top result for a search leads to a question/answer that is a dead end. The question is valid but it is closed because it was asked on the wrong website (Stack Overflow vs. Stack Exchange), it's too subjective, it's a duplicate, etc. Or the question is downvoted and there are no useful answers. Another issue which comes about from…

I've often thought that SO should archive questions past a certain age. With the archive being a button click away, so those questions can still be browsed, in case of miscategorization. Or if I could choose to archive an answer once I see it's no longer relevant.

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

#82

Post by shagie »

eitland wrote: post #75
xigency wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, it was obliterated: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630/sqlite-vs-mysql And the reason: closed as not constructive by Kev Feb 28 '13 at 13:12

I cannot even see it :-/

You can find it in the Wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20140327041948/https://stackoverf...

Note that as time went on, it became one liners and anecdotes... and everyone has their own anecdote of what the differences are and how important those differences are to that person... and that leads to discussions and page finding the answer you're looking for on page 40 of the answers somewhere deep in the comments of an answer.

That wasn't the goal of Stack Overflow.

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

#83

Post by fortran77 »

bluntfang wrote: post #37
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"…

I see what you're saying and it's hard when something you care about gets changed in a way that doesn't align with your original intentions, but this is something professional Software Developers have to deal with on a daily basis when working on teams, and granted, is a very hard mentality to embrace. WHY questions are not good use cases for what Stack Overflow is trying to accomplish. WHY questions to a community t…

There's no excuse to completely change the meaning of a question. Perhaps a comment that "why" questions don't really fit the format of StackOverflow would have been a better choice.

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

#84

Post by oauea »

na85 wrote: post #58
oauea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you haven't seen how many poorly written questions there are. Would you rather have your question outright deleted?

You're implying that there's no middle ground between "moderators unilaterally edit your question, including substantial semantic changes" and "question deletion". I find that simultaneously troubling and, given my experiences on SE, unsurprising from someone whom I assume is a SE mod. If that's the position that most moderators take, no wonder it's such a caustic place.

Not an SO moderator. I've answered a few questions over the years, and I've browsed the new queue. I suggest you do the same before forming an opinion.

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

#85

Post by na85 »

oauea wrote: post #84
na85 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implying that there's no middle ground between "moderators unilaterally edit your question, including substantial semantic changes" and "question deletion". I find that simultaneously troubling and, given my experiences on SE, unsurprising from someone whom I assume is a SE mod. If that's the position that most moderators take, no wonder it's such a caustic place.

Not an SO moderator. I've answered a few questions over the years, and I've browsed the new queue. I suggest you do the same before forming an opinion.

No thanks. The SO community made it very clear they aren't interested in having me be a part of it.

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

#86

Post by altereds »

For me SO has been useful when I search on google and the 1st result is a similar question on the platform. Almost never get the answers on stack overflow, but I find alternate ways to search on google for the answers that I need, which is often found on other sites. With the focus on questions and phrasing , the site has become an useful resource to find ways to rephrase your questions, but very rarely find the required answers on the site.

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

#87

Post by apple4ever »

wvenable wrote: post #52

I have never participated in StackOverflow. In the early years, it was because they didn't allow logins except through Google/Facebook. And then it was because as an experienced developer with answers, I can provide value to the site but I don't have enough "reputation" to anything useful. I have to do a bunch of meaningless crap to earn the privilege of doing anything useful. Most of you probably don't have this pro…

Exactly this. There have been numerous occasions I could answer a question or at least add some helpful information. But I couldn’t because I didn’t have enough reputation, with no helpful way to get it.

I think they have it backwards. They should prioritize answering questions and adding comments, not asking questions.

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