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Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

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Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#41

Post by rhizome »

kylec wrote: post #28
SandB0x wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 It's quite likely that a user Googling for their particular issue might find an incomplete or out-of-date answer on Stack Overflow.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 Hopefully this will make Stack Overflow more wiki-like and help solve the problem with answers getting out of date.

This sounds similar to how Discogs has implemented quality ratings (via votes) for arbitrarily edited content, in between full editorial control and open wiki.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#42

Post by andrewcooke »

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 wrote a greasemonkey script that removes them. See http://www.acooke.org/cute/HidingHNKa0.html

Hmmm. I wrote it for FireFox and haven't used it recently, after switching to Chrome, but it appears to install in Chrome too (oh; but the total top right is not removed - am looking into why now).

Note - it also "unhides" most greyed out comments.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#43

Post by angdis »

ck2 wrote: post #33
Tycho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if I was an employer and saw someone that was really active on Stackoverflow, I'd consider the problem of them being on SO and other sites when they should be working.

I think employers who have that attitude would probably NOT even be reading stackoverflow.

In any case, one can reasonably argue that stackoverflow actually HELPS one get work done faster. Many times a thoughtful response to a pointed question saves hours of fumbling around with unclear documentation.

For the folks doing the answering, there is a strong benefit that comes from writing down some cogent prose. NOTHING solidifies expertise in a subject like helping or teaching someone else.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#44

Post by Gobiner »

dansingerman wrote: post #9

The thing is StackOverflow really really works. If I search Google for a programming query I nearly always find links to useful information on SO, if not the precise answer. (I've even found my own answers via Google when I have forgotten how to do something) That is SO's first and foremost use case. And I reiterate - it works extremely well. The community features are secondary to that (it's not Quora), and there ar…

I've found plenty of helpful information on StackOverflow via Google as well, but I definitely would not say that it "really really works."

I've asked two questions (C#/.NET so there's a large pool of potential answerers) and neither question ever got the answer it deserved, even though both got answers from genuine experts (Jon Skeet and Eric Lippert). I found the answer to my first question on some MSDN blog after I asked on StackOverflow, the second question is still unresolved.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#45

Post by fluidcruft »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #29
Tycho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm not sure that high karma answers indicate anything other than that the candidate is answering basic questions. Correct answers to obscure or deep questions won't be trafficked as much and won't collect upboats. You should look at something else, say the answer:question karma ratio, unless you're looking for someone to answer the phones.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#46

Post by stonemetal »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #29
Tycho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I would agree that quality not quantity matter, but quality as determined by votes isn't the quality I would be looking for. A high number of votes indicates several things:

The question was easy. Since a large number of people felt that they could determine the right answer and thus voted for it.

The answer was well written. Good this is what we are looking for.

The question was somewhat political. People tend to get in there and vote when they feel strongly about the answer.

The question was about something mainstream. Pretty much the same reasoning behind the is easy question. Playing a numbers game requires numbers. Answering questions about the factor programming language isn't going to net you a huge rep no matter how eloquent you are.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#47

Post by pgroves »

While I actually can empathize with the author on wanting to help out, he's really making stackoverflow sound awesome - knowledgeable people are falling all over themselves to answer your question, and don't worry about being a freeloader, they already have too much free labor going into the answers.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#48

Post by ddkrone »

There is nothing sucky about the stackexchange sites. They are designed to be useful and growing repositories of frequent question and answers. The whole rep/voting thing is just a gaming layer on top to make the process of participation a little more fun but if you just focus on the gaming aspect and take it way too seriously like this guy then you miss out completely.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#49

Post by jws »

The right question is as important as the right answer.

The easiest entry is to ask a good question. The next time you run into a poorly documented problem, do some research, and eventually work out an answer, reformulate it as the question you wish Stack Overflow contained and ask it. You can always comment on things in your own question so you can guide the answers if they are going wrong.

• Two question up votes and you can vote things up.

• Five and you can comment anywhere

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#50

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #21
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…

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