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

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#151

Post by nlawalker » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:23 PM UTC

Headline is misleading - the real complaint isn't that participating is impossible, it's that reputation is hard to earn. In SO's nascent days, you could earn rep simply by showing up and answering questions. Now that it's popular, if you want to gain rep, you have to muscle your way in using methods like the author describes.

I find it amusing that SO's creators chose the term "reputation" for their participation points, as opposed to "karma" or something else, because in this aspect it's pretty similar to real-life reputation. When supply is high, it's hard to gain reputation without gaming the system. That's not SO, that's life.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#152

Post by tmachinecharmer » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:29 PM UTC

In this article you say that you are a pretty and smart "a pretty smart guy". Then you are definitely welcome at SO.

NOT participating in SO is neither a solution to your problem nor a decision that a pretty smart guy would take.

Give it a shot buddy! and I am sure you will NOT write an article about how awesome SO is because you won't find the words to describe SO awesomeness.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#153

Post by gnosis » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

khafra wrote: post #148

gnosis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 on…

I've asked a question in freenode channels then idled for the better part of a day, or even a few days, with little traffic and no answers. SO is faster, often much faster.

It could have just been the case that more experts for the particular area you're interested in were on SO at the time you asked that question. Had you asked a different question on a different topic, perhaps there would have been more experts ready to answer it on IRC than on SO.

Having spent a long time on IRC, I can attest to seeing many people's questions getting answered there constantly, and usually (on the active channels, at least) very quickly (ie. often within seconds or a minute or two). Fifteen minutes is usually considered a long time to wait in an active channel for an answer to a question that isn't really obscure.

Of course the likelihood of an answer decreases with the obscurity of the question, the lack of popularity/appropriateness of whatever it is you're asking about, and depends on when and how you ask the question. The same goes for any other medium of communication.

I'm happy that you've had a positive experience on SO, and sorry that you haven't had much luck with IRC. But that doesn't mean that your experience is a typical one.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#154

Post by Confusion » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

petsos wrote: post #143

Confusion wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you take the trouble to upvote those answers that are helpful to you? I think that, given some time, the best answers of all questions will slowly bubble up, but that only happens if folks like you and me upvote the answers that are actually good

You need rep to upvote and downvote.

Yes, 15 to upvote, 125 to downvote. Asking a few serious questions is bound to earn you the three upvotes (you get rep for your questions being upvoted) required to be able to upvote. Honestly, I don't understand the fuss. You really only need to use the site as a consumer to gain enough rep to participate.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#155

Post by smackfu » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:53 PM UTC

cruise02 wrote: post #80

smackfu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is how it doesn't tell you that you can't upvote until you try to do it.

It tells you in the FAQ. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation

I meant that it is surprising that they don't hide the controls that you can't use.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#156

Post by Confusion » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:58 PM UTC

mendicant wrote: post #138

Confusion wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'initial rep hurdle' is so low that any dimwit -- pardon my French -- can overcome it... As some others have pointed out, too easily actually, judging from the number of bad answers from people with a few K of rep.

I don't care to participate in SO often. I don't have high rep. I _can_ provide insight. every once in a while I find somewhere that I can provide some value or insight, whether via editing an answer with a url that's out of date, a comment expanding on the answer, etc... and it seems like I never can. I don't care to jump through the hurdles to get to that point. I didn't come there to ask a question. I didn't come…

You do realize that they can't just grant anyone the right to edit questions or answers and that they don't have magical insight into your abilities? I don't know how you propose to solve the problem of automatically allowing those that have ability to bear responsibility, but I don't think there is any site that does it better than SO.

  It sucks for the casual user.

I'm a casual user (I have 1.5K rep and subscribed reasonably early, so we're talking about 10 decent answers per year) and I don't think so.

  Which I already wasted trying to help someone in the 
  first place.

Then SO is not for you, because SO only makes sense if its users want to help others, for whatever reason. I personally like trying to explain something clearly and concisely and I like solving the problems that are sometimes posed. I answer questions for my own good, but it is gratifying that someone else also profits.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#157

Post by guelo » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 9:59 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…

I've been a casual via-Google user for 2 1/2 years. I have 5 answers and 2 questions with a total of 1 upvote. My rep is 11. Whenever I go to SO I go in with the mentality of not even trying to participate because anything I try will be denied.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#158

Post by kgutteridge » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 10:05 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #123

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…

The 'initial rep hurdle' is so low that any dimwit -- pardon my French -- can overcome it... As some others have pointed out, too easily actually, judging from the number of bad answers from people with a few K of rep.

Agreed I have not really been participating for long but have managed to get myself upto a point where I can participate easily. It just requires some effort and some knowledge

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#159

Post by CrLf » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 10:14 PM UTC

jwtanner wrote: post #11

Is Stack Overflow a game in which the goal is to get the most reputation and badges? Or are you using it as a tool to discover solutions to programming problems? Or Both?

Any community where you get "points" of any kind becomes a game, which eventually becomes more important than the community itself.

Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

#160

Post by RobertKohr » Tue, Feb 01, 2011, 10:22 PM UTC

Who cares?

If I hit a wall while working on a problem, I toss into the gladiator pit known as Stack Overflow, and after it has been mawed to pieces by a bunch of brilliant people, I stop by and get my answer and can continue whatever I was doing. Usually this all happens in the time it takes for me to get some coffee and maybe take a short walk.

It is a beacon of hope and joy to someone who has wasted too much time in the past trying to find the answers to hard problems.

So they are at each-others' throats trying to out answer other users so they can increment up a point counter. Gamefication is a great motivator, and I am happy that I don't have to use the typical motivators of begging, pleading, or -ugh- paying for quality technical support.

Emotional reactions to the competitiveness is the success of a very well designed game that has the outcome of great answers to problems that are typically hard to find.