Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tired of Stack Overflow

arp242.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 517 posts

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#321

Post by baud147258 »

mark-r wrote: post #272
baud147258 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their rules were too difficult for me to follow in order to vote. I had to visit every day and do menial, non-useful things just to be able to vote or answer Has it changed a few years ago? When I started 3 years ago, I could answer right from the start and I got the ability to vote quickly enough, after a pair of vote on an answer, without having to do menial tasks every day. Reputation can also be gained with edi…

Answering questions doesn't help unless those answers get upvotes. As a newbie, your answers are less likely to get upvotes, especially if you're slower than the old timers.

It's true. For my part, I started (and continued to) answer on a tag with not a lot of questions and answers, so most/some of the time I'd write the only answer. Though I had a professional interest into the tag at the time, I didn't choose it because it was easy to write the single answer on a question.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#322

Post by zabzonk »

weinzierl wrote: post #210
el_cujo wrote: post #16

I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…

If I remember correctly in early Stack Overflow down-voting did cost your own reputation points, so every down-vote reduced your own reputation. I liked this and I claim it socialized me in a way that I rarely down-vote even today and even on other platforms like HN. I like to imagine that every down-vote lowers my own reputation even if that isn't expressed in points and even if no one knows. Every down-vote is a tr…

> If I remember correctly in early Stack Overflow down-voting did cost your own reputation points, so every down-vote reduced your own reputation.

Still does.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#323

Post by perl4ever »

kryogen1c wrote: post #310
Rapzid wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite are the interrogations. Because surely the poster doesn't really want to list the standard packages; they must be needing something else and getting distracted by listing standard packages so if we press them hard enough they will spill the beans.. /s

When i was taking freshman CS classes, this was a running joke with my classmates. Wed take to google for helping fixing an error, and 90-95% of C++ 101 questions have at least one answer in the form: "why are you trying to do this? Unless you know what you're doing (which by your question you probably dont), you should by using different methods entirely." Friend having a coding problem? Give 'em the SO special: "Ha…

Never mind the people who think you shouldn't do something, it seems like most of the time when I look up something on SO these days, the solution is terrible or everybody agrees there is no solution, and after spending maybe 20 minutes more searching, it turns out that, yes, there is a way to do it that is infinitely better.

One of the most important things that is needed for finding a solution to any problem is a sense of what a good solution would look like, and a certainty that it exists even before you have seen it, and even if you can't invent it yourself. Not knowing when to settle is the reason people usually go with terrible approaches to a problem.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#324

Post by airstrike »

waisbrot wrote: post #240

Every year I see a post complaining about how unfriendly Stack Overflow is, how their pet question got downvoted so unfairly, and how Stack Overflow is dying. Everyone agrees: Stack Overflow is too mean and is dying. But time and again when I search for a question online if there's an SO version of it it has the best answer. And when I can't find an answer anywhere and I ask on SO I usually get a good answer quickly.…

#python on freenode is my go-to alternative if I can't find an answer on SO or if I'm more interested in a brainstorming session and can't really ask for one in SO

but then again not every problem I have involves Python, in which case I do feel I'm out of luck...

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#325

Post by mark-r »

baud147258 wrote: post #321
mark-r wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering questions doesn't help unless those answers get upvotes. As a newbie, your answers are less likely to get upvotes, especially if you're slower than the old timers.

It's true. For my part, I started (and continued to) answer on a tag with not a lot of questions and answers, so most/some of the time I'd write the only answer. Though I had a professional interest into the tag at the time, I didn't choose it because it was easy to write the single answer on a question.

And that's an example of the system working at its best. You were incented to answer questions nobody else could or would answer. In my experience it doesn't work out that way often.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#326

Post by juped »

Pretty much every time I search for Stack Overflow type questions online I find a good answer on Stack Overflow.

And pretty much every time I find a good answer on Stack Overflow, it's heaped with derision from Stack Overflow users and the system. I can't remember the last time I landed on a question that wasn't "closed" for "low quality" or whatever the various negative treatments are there, and piled with negative comments and possibly a snarky answer.

This doesn't give me a good impression of Stack Overflow, a site I've never signed up for or felt interested in signing up for.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#327

Post by Sacho »

eitland wrote: post #307
mwfunk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100%. Wikipedia is similar, in that both SO and Wikipedia have clearly defined goals, and policies based on achieving those goals. But for as long as they've been around there have always been people who get worked up over those sites not being quite what they want them to be. And what they want want them to be is usually a place where anything goes, and/or a place where they can more effectively earn some for…

> But for as long as they've been around there have always been people who get worked up over those sites not being quite what they want them to be Problem is those sites used to be better. A number of us where fighting to keep good resources good. It feels we were steamrolled by people who enjoyed playing admins instead of actually asking or answering questions. If you look into S.O. you'll find a abandoned accounts…

The opposite is true - the most common complaint from high-rep users, by far[0][1][2], is that there are too many garbage questions and not enough moderation.

[0] - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252756/are-high-rep...

[1] - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/324072/how-to-lure-...

[2] - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/324243/the-life-of-...

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#328

Post by arp242 »

waisbrot wrote: post #240

Every year I see a post complaining about how unfriendly Stack Overflow is, how their pet question got downvoted so unfairly, and how Stack Overflow is dying. Everyone agrees: Stack Overflow is too mean and is dying. But time and again when I search for a question online if there's an SO version of it it has the best answer. And when I can't find an answer anywhere and I ask on SO I usually get a good answer quickly.…

Yes, Stack Overflow is a success, but that's in spite of all of this, and not because of it. And "Stack Overflow is successful, therefore your complaints are invalid" doesn't strike me as a great argument to start with to be honest.

> The first example from the article sounds reasonable at first, but are they asking for a shell command or some Go code or what? If they just said what they tried ("I expected it in `go help list` but didn't find it"), I think it would have been fine.

You can poke holes in any question like this, and for most practical purposes all of this is pretty darn pedantic. either way, no one actually asked for these clarifications, so the OP is left with nothing but a bunch of downvotes and a feeling of frustration.

> The second question I don't see why anyone would want that on the site.

Whether or not it's a good question is besides the point; the point is that piling on downvotes like that is just a dick move, regardless of how off-topic or "stupid" the question may be.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#329

Post by keithnz »

waisbrot wrote: post #240

Every year I see a post complaining about how unfriendly Stack Overflow is, how their pet question got downvoted so unfairly, and how Stack Overflow is dying. Everyone agrees: Stack Overflow is too mean and is dying. But time and again when I search for a question online if there's an SO version of it it has the best answer. And when I can't find an answer anywhere and I ask on SO I usually get a good answer quickly.…

I agree, so many people complain about SO. But the complainers are actually a percentage of the small percentage of askers/answerers. A huge amount of SO is the silent consumers. I started in the beginning of SO, have good rep, with a reach in the millions. I still contribute these days.

SO does a good job of getting people to collaborate and produce useful results. There is no system that will be perfect and not be subject to the whims of emotive humans. I notice a lot of people saying what might work better with conviction about what results they'd get. Sorry, but I'm very skeptical of your convictions of the results you will get by changing the dynamics of collaboration. From what I've seen a lot of the complaints stem from confirmation bias, a few questions where it seemed to go wrong (which will happen). But if you looked across the many many questions on SO it mostly just works as intended. However its not without problems and the dynamics change over time, SO trys to adapt to these shifts, but it has to be careful on what levers it pulls.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#330

Post by benologist »

setr wrote: post #320
benologist wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they should employ a "no stupid questions" policy, like the /r/nostupidquestions subreddit, where the point is to share knowledge without discriminating against anyone. What happens if the same question gets asked 10,000 times? Absolutely nothing. Search engines will filter them for us. 5 more megabytes of text in SO's database. Pointless gatekeeping.

For people answering questions, they’d see the same question 10,000 times, and likely miss the questions that are actually worth answering. And in a Q&A site, the answerers are far more important than the questioners — if the questions will be answered, the questioners will flock there out of need, regardless of want. Answerers are however not so constrained. People complain about SO because, I think, it does the cor…

If a question is really easy many other people can answer it which in itself is also more inclusive.

If a question is really hard few other people can answer it, so no matter what there is a level exclusively for very smart people.

Nobody needs to take offense a question was asked or be hurt their question was removed. It's totally superfluous.

There are no such problems on /r/nostupidquestions.

Post reply on HN