Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#21

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:48 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #13

It sounds like this guy wants to participate in StackOverflow just to be there rather than because he finds it a useful tool for his own work. I'm glad there are hurdles for people who are just there to "get a good rep" rather than there to support their real work. A (hopefully) more common workflow would look something like this: - a developer googles a problem, the StackOverflow answer floats to the top, and he not…

Heh, in the time it took to create this comment, this post went from 1 comment to 15 comments, making mine less relevant, meaning I'll get fewer upvotes.

And as far as I'm concerned, gaming Hacker News to get karma is much more useful than gaming Stack Overflow. 500 karma is required to downvote, and it takes a long time to hit 500 karma.

Of course, now that I have the 500 I rarely downvote. I wish I would have known that earlier. :)

In my opinion, PG should adopt the Stack Overflow downvoting rule (you lose karma for downvoting), and lower the required threshold. It's hard to tell if downvoting is being used more for good than evil, but it's definitely used to express opinion more often than it should be.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#22

Post by SandB0x » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

Khao wrote: post #3

I've never seen stackoverflow as a race to get the most rep possible. Reputation is just a "bonus", not a prerequisite to participate in the website. I like stackoverflow the way it is

During the development of Stack Overflow, Joel and Jeff talked about the answers staying up-to-date in a wiki-like fashion. I think what the author means is that in order to participate in this - i.e. edit and improve an existing answer - you have to have a certain amount of rep.

It's quite likely that a user Googling for their particular issue might find an incomplete or out-of-date answer on Stack Overflow. When they finally solve it they are unable to improve the existing entry, which is unfortunate as for many "long tail" problems they are best placed to contribute.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#23

Post by sajidnizami » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

Rep whoring? Q&A sites are there to help out not to give you points and stroke your ego.

I think if SO is hindering you into getting a good rep, probably you don't have enough domain knowledge.

PS: I've been there since the beginning and I still got 114 rep. I love the place because it has gotten me solutions at times without even asking.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#24

Post by pinko » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #19

kylec wrote: post #10

It's definitely true that there are a lot of people waiting for new questions so they can pounce with a quick answer and get a few upvotes. However, there's also a large backlog of unanswered questions as well ( http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered ) that are very much in need of a "thoughtful, correctly documented" answer. And while it's unfortunate that legitimate brand-new users are unable to post comments, the rea…

I simply do not understand this ego thing with "points". A million points gets you what? An award for most wasted time? I wish HN had an option to turn off points on an account, I can't even block it with adblock because there's no element id. There's more to life than meaningless "points".

FWIW, I know at least one person whose considerable SO karma helped them land a job (and who wrote those comments with that goal in mind). It's not all about ego.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#25

Post by Tycho » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #19

kylec wrote: post #10

It's definitely true that there are a lot of people waiting for new questions so they can pounce with a quick answer and get a few upvotes. However, there's also a large backlog of unanswered questions as well ( http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered ) that are very much in need of a "thoughtful, correctly documented" answer. And while it's unfortunate that legitimate brand-new users are unable to post comments, the rea…

I simply do not understand this ego thing with "points". A million points gets you what? An award for most wasted time? I wish HN had an option to turn off points on an account, I can't even block it with adblock because there's no element id. There's more to life than meaningless "points".

I think in the specific case of StackOverflow, having a lot of points is something that indicates to potential employers that you are a useful/knowledgable candidate. And it's not just a vague signifier - they can actually go and look at your answers and see what you're about.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#26

Post by zem » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

Khao wrote: post #3

I've never seen stackoverflow as a race to get the most rep possible. Reputation is just a "bonus", not a prerequisite to participate in the website. I like stackoverflow the way it is

yeah, but that's not what the author is complaining about. the problem is that stackoverflow has reputation barriers for performing various actions, so until you acquire some rep, your site experience is pretty broken. this is well and good if you intend to put some effort into building up reputation so that you can participate fully, but it works against someone who uses the site casually but who has useful things to say.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#27

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

kylec wrote: post #17

bherms wrote: post #2

I don't really agree here.. While I do have my own gripes with Stack Overflow, I don't think this is the biggest issue. It took me two days of casual browsing/asking/answering to get a reputation of about 50 or so and another few weeks to get into the hundreds. -- Keep in mind I'm not a super genius expert or anything, I just asked a few questions and contributed a few answers in areas I was knowledgeable about. It's…

If you have more than 200 rep on SE site A, you can associate that account with your account on SE site B and get a 100 rep bonus on site B. This lets users that are already familiar with the system comment and vote up on any site without having to have gained rep first.

I just finished writing "the only milestone that matters on StackOverflow is 50 Karma", and then you point out that 200 is useful, too. Oh well it won't take long to get 30 more karma if I want it.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#28

Post by kylec » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

SandB0x wrote: post #22

Khao wrote: post #3

I've never seen stackoverflow as a race to get the most rep possible. Reputation is just a "bonus", not a prerequisite to participate in the website. I like stackoverflow the way it is

During the development of Stack Overflow, Joel and Jeff talked about the answers staying up-to-date in a wiki-like fashion. I think what the author means is that in order to participate in this - i.e. edit and improve an existing answer - you have to have a certain amount of rep. It's quite likely that a user Googling for their particular issue might find an incomplete or out-of-date answer on Stack Overflow. When th…

This used to be true, but there's a feature currently in testing that will allow anyone (even someone coming from Google) to propose an edit to a post. This edit proposal can be approved either by a moderator or several users with sufficient rep. Hopefully this will make Stack Overflow more wiki-like and help solve the problem with answers getting out of date.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#29

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #25

ck2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply do not understand this ego thing with "points". A million points gets you what? An award for most wasted time? I wish HN had an option to turn off points on an account, I can't even block it with adblock because there's no element id. There's more to life than meaningless "points".

I think in the specific case of StackOverflow, having a lot of points is something that indicates to potential employers that you are a useful/knowledgable candidate. And it's not just a vague signifier - they can actually go and look at your answers and see what you're about.

Yes, but quality matters almost as much as quantity. I'd rather hire somebody who got 1000 karma through 10 questions/answers than somebody who got 2000 karma through 100.

Although quantity is important too -- even if it's not a definitive answer, a partial answer is better than no answer to the questioner. It's just that when I'm hiring, those definitive answers really indicate somebody who knows what they're doing.

[edit: answering here because there are several good responses, who are all right. The most important thing to do as a potential important employer is to read a few answers rather than just blindingly accepting the karma. You can't do that for everybody, but you can do it for your shortlist.]

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#30

Post by stonemetal » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

bherms wrote: post #2

I don't really agree here.. While I do have my own gripes with Stack Overflow, I don't think this is the biggest issue. It took me two days of casual browsing/asking/answering to get a reputation of about 50 or so and another few weeks to get into the hundreds. -- Keep in mind I'm not a super genius expert or anything, I just asked a few questions and contributed a few answers in areas I was knowledgeable about. It's…

Why should it transfer? Just because you are a great software engineer(as determined by your 23K rep. on SO), doesn't mean you are a great chief and should have a 23K rep on the cooking SE.