Tired of Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#421

Post by paulmd » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 4:59 AM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #249

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.…

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. 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 form of imaginary internet points, or at least not have meanies downvote them or reject their contributions.

This is a straightforward downside of gameification. You've attached badges to being assholes to people who are part of your content creation process, what you get is people who are assholes. Then you end up in a spiral where your community is so toxic that everyone normal leaves, and the only people you are left with are the toxic assholes.

The problem is that Wikipedia and SO are both classic examples of Sayre's Law in action: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake". It's such a meaningless argument that any reasonable person comes to the conclusion that it's not worth the trouble and leaves, so you are left with only the unreasonable people.

In reality, the type of person who takes pleasure in being a Wikipedia moderator or Stack Overflow badgeguy is the last person in the world who you would actually want to be a moderator. But everyone who's not toxic has left.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#422

Post by scardine » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

Nition wrote: post #346

krilly wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can flag it for reopening (but you need at least 3k rep IINM).

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#423

Post by hgoel » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:05 AM UTC

eitland wrote: post #298

Aperocky wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we should make downvotes only ok with a comment. But then again there's a fine line that both side seem to constantly walk over. 30% of question consists of "how to do this on my homework, please submit a full solution", while the other 30% that are legitimate question being over zealously patrolled.

> 30% of question consists of "how to do this on my homework, please submit a full solution" I've suggested a few times already that part of this problem might be that asking questions is the first privilege you get and you get it for free. If it costs something people would be more careful. The cost can be anything: - Classify 5 answers correctly - Pick answers from a multiple choice - Pay a dollar - Wait a few days…

It'd be interesting if the cost were something like "vote on these items in the moderation queue", and they'd only get through if they voted in line with existing votes (with a few new items mixed in). The idea being to help cut down on work for mods by getting some prioritization based on new/young user votes. By mixing in topics that have been voted on, the user can be convinced that they have to vote honestly, and by gathering a large number of votes on actual posts mixed in, things can be roughly classified reliably.

By voting I'm referring to things like whether or not a question is a duplicate of another etc.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#424

Post by eitland » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #372

Const-me wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56843086 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57064879 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57323981

Of those three, only the last one is one that I can view. Consider the original question: https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/57323981/1 which... really is "design an entire system for me" type question. The refinement, while better is still getting into discussions in the comments. While its from a different site on the SE network, consider: Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad? -- https…

> That should be ok, there are many other places where such questions can be asked.

Won't say "citation needed", but I will say that outside of reddit I do not frequently visit any such places.

And reddit has its own problems and also hardly counts as "many".

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#425

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #171

jodrellblank wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't make it good for the site or it's users. It's a very poor excuse. Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research. Agreeing to follow the site rules, then not following the site rules and deciding it should be run the way you want it to be run instead, isn't good for the site either. > Are you a high…

> Excuse for what? SO has the UI instruction that you /should/, as a user who agreed to follow the rules, downvote low effort questions which show no research. Agreeing to follow the site rules, then not following the site rules and deciding it should be run the way you want it to be run instead, isn't good for the site either. How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research? I've seen a ton…

> How many questions that get downvoted actually haven't done any research?

The guidelines say "shows research" - hover over the downvote arrow on StackOverflow and read the tooltip - so who knows how many? That said, you're discussing it for you writing a well researched question, but the META arguments are usually for the thousands of "give me the codez pls" homework dumps which get filtered out before most people see them, because the downvotes put them into the review queues and effectively cause them to be filtered.

> the existence of a guideline is not a good reason for the guideline to exist

SO have not changed this policy, despite lots of feedback, for years and years. Shouldn't we assume they have good reasons even if we don't know what they are?

"we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming."

The users of a library are not the book authors. The feeling of the book authors about the reviews on their books doesn't come into the design of a library, for one example. So maybe we do know what their reasons are - their actions say they bring in a 'welcoming' policy before they change the downvotes.

> How is "explain why you are downvoting" a punishment if what you're doing is actually reasonable?

You said "high-rank users will be more accountable for their behaviour [which is] being snarky asses", that is very different from "every downvote should be explained".

> You're definitely lacking empathy right now if you don not see that downvotes will never have the "intention" you said, at least for most people.

I have argued the same thing on HN before, downvotes is a terrible UI design for SO. But they are the design, and here I'm arguing that should be respected.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#426

Post by danielovichdk » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

neves wrote: post #383

Children, SO is a blessing for humanity. Their creators should be canonized. You don't remember the pre SO times. You couldn't find anything to fix your problems and must read the source code or pay zillions for some sh*tty support. In the pre-internet times, you just would hit a wall and have to quit. I really love Jeff and Joel.

What a load of BS.

Sounds like you couldn't program before SO.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#427

Post by eitland » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

hgoel wrote: post #423

eitland wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 30% of question consists of "how to do this on my homework, please submit a full solution" I've suggested a few times already that part of this problem might be that asking questions is the first privilege you get and you get it for free. If it costs something people would be more careful. The cost can be anything: - Classify 5 answers correctly - Pick answers from a multiple choice - Pay a dollar - Wait a few days…

It'd be interesting if the cost were something like "vote on these items in the moderation queue", and they'd only get through if they voted in line with existing votes (with a few new items mixed in). The idea being to help cut down on work for mods by getting some prioritization based on new/young user votes. By mixing in topics that have been voted on, the user can be convinced that they have to vote honestly, and…

You could also have a gradual onboarding process, this should help a bit but might be over the top :

- first: multiple choice. You get 5 good questions and 5 good or bad answers. For each of the questions you have to answer if the answer is good or bad.

- Next: 5 known questions, that might be good or bad. You have to answer if it is good or bad.

- Finally: the moderation queue where the answer is only used as an weak signal to the actual moderators.

Success rate of 100% required for stage 1, 60% for stage 2 and just completion for stage 3.

This would leave a new user with a good understanding of what the site is for before they can spam.

It will also make their account seem somewhat valuable.

And if someone wants to pay someone to take their test, fine with me, at least the account isn't free anymore.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#428

Post by gyan » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 5:59 AM UTC

squiggleblaz wrote: post #410

jasode wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your 4 examples: /r/NoStupidQuestions/, /r/AskHistorians/, /r/legaladvice/, /r/personalfinance/ I see why those 4 subreddits influence your thinking in how StackOverflow should work so it seems like it could adopt the same (social) mechanisms and it would only improve the site and not degrade it. However, notice that there is no reddit.com/r/ProgrammersAskAnyQuestion/ comparable subreddit that has more traf…

I tend to think the person who can truly identify that the question is a dupe is the questioner. The moderators who are insufficiently annoyed by a duplicate question that they want to link it can surely propose a link, but just like answers are accepted, a duplicate closure should be accepted. It is always so frustrating to me when I find exactly the question I need an answer to on SO, but it's closed as a dupe of a…

I tend to think the person who can truly identify that the question is a dupe is the questioner.

Not IME. It depends on whether the Q is a XY problem or if the asker is acquainted with the problem-domain. I engage with Qs on the use of a specific set of tools, and I see users pose the same problem (with incidental variation) with imprecise/vague terms or phrasing.

Also, there are a couple of novice pain points for which I regularly see duplicates with similar description and terminology. I tend to think the users just didn't spend a lot of time looking through search results, if at all.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#429

Post by isodude » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #387

isodude wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier than you think. And I've thought that I was doing the right thing for a long time except I wasn't. Any time you explain something you first need to establish that you are on the same level as the submitter, then you can give advice. Like, "I see that you really tried with this question and you almost made it, if we rephrase it a bit it would improve even further!" It's true that most people have a problem…

> most people have a problem with listening on feedback That is so true, even people giving negative feedback have trouble when they get negative feedback from someone else. Therefore I think the system, the site, should make it easier to give positive feedback, than negative. To you know bring about a positive community feeling. The purpose of the site should be to help its users not to make oneself the over-arbiter…

Make it possible to only be positive and you will reach a better goal. Rather than moderate the users, moderate the mods such every response they give is purely positive.

This will spread and people will cling on. Soon you will reach self moderation due to the positive nature of the community.

Learning to accept feedback is much about learning that you may actually receive positive feedback and that your self worth is enough.

So I was listening to l to this guy Jim Thuresson which is a mental coach. His life is basically breathing positiviness, and his take on it is, it works, you shoukd do it too. If you fill your head space with 100% positive thoughts there's no room for anything negative. Maybe going on strong here, but it's such an important message. I just winder how we bring that thought onto the Internet.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#430

Post by falcor84 » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #415

ssalazar wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of languages, libraries and APIs we have to regularly deal with Is this because this Web programming innately needs lots of tools, etc. to work, or because the modern programming ecosystem (including stack overflow) has allowed it to grow to be this way?

I would say a little bit of both. Since modern networked programming is much more complex than before (having to care about security, distributed storage, systems, worldwide connectivity over vast range of devices etc.) it has more moving parts and thus more combinations of various systems possible. Naturally complexity grows exponentially.

>...complexity grows exponentially

Just to nitpick a bit, I would say that complexity grows quadratically - proportionally to the number of potential interactions between subcomponents.