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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

#111

Post by chc »

randrews wrote: post #74

I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked. But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea o…

Stack Overflow is a wiki — that's part of its design. If you're so attached to your words that this pains you, then a wiki site really isn't a good fit for you. But that's a matter of your personal idiosyncrasies, not a problem with Stack Overflow.

But just to be clear: When somebody edits your post, it's noted on the post and anybody who's curious can click to see what they changed. They are not "putting words in your mouth." They are cleaning up the question so it is more useful to others (and will get you better answers as a bonus).

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#112

Post by RuadhanMc »

alanh wrote: post #107
RuadhanMc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then why don't you provide the correct answer with the right assumptions?

I did, you should have checked. I even made a public test-case to illustrate why naïve solutions don’t work: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/web/print_textarea.html Edited to avoid sarcasm

Sorry about that. I've checked now. I even up voted your answer because it deserves at least one up vote. But I would say that perhaps your overall SO experience would be better if your comments on SO were less abrasive. Your answer might have been "right" based on your assumptions (i.e. the user has JavaScript enable in the browser) but it might not have been right if some other assumptions were made.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#113

Post by olalonde »

That's why I try to avoid StackOverflow as much as possible when I can ask my question on a smaller StackExchange site such as http://askubuntu.com or http://programmers.stackexchange.com. The quality of answers on smaller SE sites is usually 10x higher.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#114

Post by lyudmil »

ender7 wrote: post #101
jessriedel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The OP's point is that it's hard to get over the initial rep hurdle so that you can participate. This prompts the idea: is there some sort of way that new users could quickly and reliably gain a minimum amount of rep by doing a bit of maintenance on the site? Say, flagging spam or suggesting correction which must be approved by someone with lots of rep? If this is possible, why don't more people know about i…

Yes. Ask questions. Asking questions gets you rep (and quite quickly too, if your questions are voted up).

Valid, but asking questions is hard to do consistently. I've only ever asked questions if I've been unable to deal with a problem. Answering questions is something I can do on my own time because it's fun. Answering questions is what draws me to the Stack Overflow community.

The way I view it it's just a particularity of the way Stack Overflow has been set up. I think cletus is correct - rep cannot be your goal or you're bound to get frustrated as the OP found out.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#115

Post by AgentConundrum »

alanh wrote: post #91
AgentConundrum wrote: post #64

What a terrible article. I'm sorry for the rant, but this really pissed me off. Admittedly, I don't participate in StackOverflow that much right now - I sort of go through an ebb and flow where I get really gung ho about answering questions, then it sort of wears off for a while - but this guy sounds a lot like he wants to game the system, and is only in it for the points. I'm not trying to put words in Jeff/Joel's m…

xatax, I just recognized your name from an incorrect answer you provided on StackOverflow that nevertheless was accepted ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4435906/print-when-textar... ). You made assumptions and then adopted your self-confessed strategy of “quickly add[ing] an answer which …gives the asker enough to finish the answer on their own,” but failed to understand the problem inherent in the question. You…

You actually have a fair point, though you've phrased it in a needlessly combative fashion.

You are correct that the answer you linked really wasn't one of my best. I suppose that answer is a good example of failing to see the forest for the trees (rather, I didn't see "the trees for the forest" in this case).

When I read that question, I interpreted it incorrectly as being an issue where the textarea was formatted specifically for the screen, but that needed to be resized for printing. I then generalized the problem to "print styles" in general and gave an answer to that.

I went through a period in Nov./Dec. where I spent a lot of time answering questions on SO. I gained somewhere around 2000 rep in that time from my answers. Other than the question you linked, I was only downvoted on one question, but I deleted that answer when I discovered that I was wrong (specifically, I misinterpreted an svn feature I've never used, and my answer appeared to work on my single-user repository).

My point is that I actually take/took pride in crafting an answer which explains exactly what's going on, and how to fix it. Really, I don't care about gaining reputation on StackOverflow, and I'm offended by the accusation that I'm a "rep whore" when all I've ever tried to do is help folks, and I try to go "above and beyond" with my answers to make sure the asker is clear on what's going on. If I dropped the ball on this question, I'm sorry (since you seem to take this question personally), but I think it's more an outlier than the norm.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#116

Post by randrews »

frou_dh wrote: post #87
randrews wrote: post #74

I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked. But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea o…

Not worth quitting over. Editing of others' posts is part of the culture and almost never an attack.

That's exactly why it is worth quitting over: I don't want to be part of a culture where that's normal.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#117

Post by baddox »

cletus wrote: post #61

Let me add some perspective as a relatively highly ranked user (cletus) on SO. I've seen this kind of post before and frankly it's annoying. The typical template is "I tried to answer 2 questions and didn't get 1000 points so it sucks" or some variation revolving around faster answerers or whatever. Rather than being a problem, SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answer…

The situation you're describing is probably great for the askers of questions, but it's certainly not good for those of us wanting to contribute answers.

edit: That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't think that "StackOverflow sucks," but it does means that it sucks for new users trying to become useful contributors.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#118

Post by chc »

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".

Honestly, I find my high SO rep kind of embarrassing. I like helping people, but every time I see it, I feel like it's kind of a "needs to get a life" score.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#119

Post by lwhi »

randrews wrote: post #74

I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked. But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea o…

If you disagree with an edit - you can roll it back.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#120

Post by gnosis »

cletus wrote: post #61

Let me add some perspective as a relatively highly ranked user (cletus) on SO. I've seen this kind of post before and frankly it's annoying. The typical template is "I tried to answer 2 questions and didn't get 1000 points so it sucks" or some variation revolving around faster answerers or whatever. Rather than being a problem, SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answer…

"SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers."

You want an even faster answer?

Ask on IRC.

As far as programming questions go, freenode is usually the best place to go (with a minority or apps and projects off on some other irc networks, sometimes).

That said, HN, forums, mailing lists, usenet, and SO are usually better for preserving answers for others to learn from once the question has already been asked by someone else.

The quality and depth of the answers can sometimes be better in these other media that are more well suited to longer, uninterrupted, essay-like answers.

On the other hand, that's not always the case, since on IRC there is a much higher level of interaction and you also have the ability to interrupt the speaker and ask for clarification on any point, with immediate feedback.

As a very rough analogy, I generally find IRC to be more like having a real-time spoken conversation with a teacher (or teachers). Whereas those other media are something more akin to correspondence via letters and email.

Of course, you don't get upvotes or points for answering questions on IRC. But the system works very well anyway. And, honestly, who really cares about these silly tokens anyway?

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