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Tired of Stack Overflow

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Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#341

Post by abacadaba »

umvi wrote: post #218
abacadaba wrote: post #9

Anecdotal: Searching github issues has long since surpassed the usefulness of stackoverflow for me. Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. Or the people who could answer are also the people who are too busy and/or don't care enough to play the karma game.

> Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. No, I think it's the former. I use SO to find out how to do equivalent tasks in new languages. For example, I use Python a lot; JavaScript, not so much. So when I do use JavaScript, I'm always searching for things like "js iterate over object" or "js string slicing", etc.…

Very possible. In js land at least, I usually just look up syntax question in the mdn docs now, but I guess that presumes you know what to look for.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#342

Post by Trias11 »

My concern is more about moderators nazis closing relevant and interesting questions for their own reasons.

It's been countless times i derived value from closed questions, luckily too late for moderators to do their own power round tantrum trip to disable it.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#343

Post by shagie »

eitland wrote: post #319
shagie wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stack overflow model works well for a certain type of question. Part of this is the reaction to the resources of 2008 - trying to find things on page 15 of the a thread in the Java community forums. While there are many possibly helpful questions that could be asked, not all of them are a fit for the format. That was a design choice made on day 1 and is backed deeply into how the software works and the way people…

> While there are many possibly helpful questions that could be asked, not all of them are a fit for the format. That was a design choice made on day 1 and is backed deeply into how the software works and the way people interact with it. The issue I and I guess many of us here is talking about is that it seems the Stack Overflow community - or rather a vocal minority in the community I guess - are downvoting and flag…

For example?

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#344

Post by lacampbell »

airstrike wrote: post #324
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...

Do they still have a NO LOL policy?

(For those that don't know, #python used to have a bot that would sternly warn you if your messages contained "lol". Ten years later I still think it's unintentionally funny.)

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#345

Post by wruza »

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…

>For people answering questions, they’d see the same question 10,000 times, and likely miss the questions that are actually worth answering.

Me included. I was a regular answerer for interesting tags in which I have at least sort of moderate knowledge, but after just a few months I lost interest in it, since it is just a never-ending stream of the same basic low quality beggings. It is like '00s inbox with one precious email in fifteen pages of spam junk. I don’t really have too much time for that. With that in mind, it’s still unclear if my contribution was really unique and helpful, because out of many pages of answers only few see one upvote a year^. I helped mostly specific people, not the common knowledge. Statistics-wise it’s not worth it.

It is no doubt that SO may be toxic or pushing ego. But being on constructive side is a burden. ‘They’ always outweigh you even with draconian regulation. Relax a little and you’ll drown at the same instant.

I suggest every complaining guy to answer a couple of questions a day first, for some time. Not just random two, but find two really worth their time to see real costs. SO is social, and in a society every participant should play nice and take their part on a problem. We help each other, but no one has spare change for hordes.

^ not an upvote junkie, I’m mostly indifferent to community scores

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#346

Post by Nition »

krilly wrote: post #262
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 that when I search for a question online I very often find a SO question with my exact problem. But it seems like almost EVERY SINGLE TIME, the question has been locked for being unconstructive, off-topic, (wrongly) a duplicate, whatever. Despite having hundreds of upvotes and tens of thousands of views. So this page is at the top of the google search results for the query and it can never be updated with new…

Love it when you find someone who asked the same question you have, it was locked as a duplicate so no-one could help, and the question it's a "duplicate" of isn't the same.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#347

Post by chii »

jasode wrote: post #339
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.

>What happens if the same question gets asked 10,000 times? Absolutely nothing. This is incorrect and a misunderstanding (and underestimation) of the unpaid volunteer answerers who scan the queue of questions to look for interesting things to answer. The valuable high-rep SO users do not like wading through bad and duplicate questions. It's a waste of their time.[1][2] >Search engines will filter them for us. The vol…

> correct about unpaid volunteer answerers being more valuable to a Q&A site than questioners.

yep. The answerers are definitly more valuable, because it's hard to actually answer questions in the first place, and there's only the reward of intellectual stimulation for doing so.

The questioner are not as valuable, because asking questions is easy. Asking a good question is hard, but the majority of questions aren't hard to ask.

By making the site completely biased towards the answerer, stackoverflow gets good answers, at the cost of turning away some questioners. I believe the site maintainers have chosen correctly, because questioners are more desperate to ask their question than answerers are to answer.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#348

Post by lmm »

mceachen wrote: post #158
dang wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People wouldn't follow such criteria anyway.

What if downvotes led to a popdown, with a series of radio buttons: ( ) I don't agree with this comment ( ) This comment is factually incorrect ( ) This comment is offtopic ( ) This comment is rude or inappropriate (Add and replace verbiage to taste, of course) Then people's downvotes would be imbued with some semblance of nuance. And get rid of the score, and make downvote categories have hidden negative values (so…

Slashdot worked a bit like that. So does Lobste.rs. IMO that ends up worse - users are better at figuring out what kind of comments are bad for the site than a mod having to define it all up front.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#349

Post by lmm »

Avamander wrote: post #189
will4274 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of empathy I think this interpretation is colored by your own bias. Downvotes only show a lack of empathy if downvotes are a social mechanism to comment on the asker, not the question. Particularly given that the SO guidelines explicitly say that downvotes are for the question, not the asker... I'm reminded of every stop sign I've ever stopped at in my life. Some asshole is always waving me ahead of them, even…

> Interpreting downvotes as a lack of empathy is the same sort of wrong reasoning as thinking that letting somebody go in front of you at a stop sign is considerate. It disregards the well documented and publicly posted rules for something you made up. Interpreting downvotes as a considerate act is like stabbing tires on someone's car who just had a light go out. Saying nothing because downvotes don't give any useful…

Downvotes are a useful signal - they let you tell the difference between no-one looking at your question and you asking a bad question, which is huge. 99.9% of the time the alternative to a downvote isn't a thorough and considered explanation, it's no response at all.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#350

Post by viraptor »

krilly wrote: post #262
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 that when I search for a question online I very often find a SO question with my exact problem. But it seems like almost EVERY SINGLE TIME, the question has been locked for being unconstructive, off-topic, (wrongly) a duplicate, whatever. Despite having hundreds of upvotes and tens of thousands of views. So this page is at the top of the google search results for the query and it can never be updated with new…

> I don't know anything about how the SO community works, but I suspect they resent the site's status as a kind of reference to be accessed through search engine results, and would rather all it's users to be active members of the community.

Why do you think that? I guess I'm a member of that community and really don't care how people reach SO. The site is also saturated to some extent now... There's a good chance that your question's already been asked, so I don't expect the site will get many new active users really. Maybe with some new languages/frameworks becoming popular - but if you're writing C for example, you're very unlikely to get actively involved in SO at all. It's still a good reference place for C.

> the community dislikes questions that are answered in documentation or elsewhere on the internet

"the community" is not an uniform blob. On one hand side it's tiring - if someone didn't bother to do a single obvious search, why should I spend time writing the answer. On the other, if you do answer that, the are rules about including actual answer and not just linking to a document which may disappear in the future.

> the question has been locked for being unconstructive, off-topic, (wrongly) a duplicate, whatever

You can vote to reopen. Or if you can't, you can flag for moderator attention and say why it should be reopened.

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