SO is optimized for askers, not for answerers and intentionally so! The whole goal of the website is to make asking questions simple, finding related questions (reasonably) simple, and getting good answers quickly. As you can see from profiles of some users, some people exchanged their books for SO (why look it up - just ask). True, the rep game is a tough one, but so is life, so get over it.
Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
181–190 of 213 posts
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it addresses the post. It's certainly true that Stack Overflow is the best place to get answers to programming questions and I won't dispute that. Here, though, is what I think the problem is. I think it mirrors the OP's problem. Stack Overflow became and is the best place to get answers to programming problems because of the community it has been able to build. Ther…
To be a bit brutal: Peter Programmer knows Python very well and is a highly skilled programmer, but there is a rep hurdle Peter can't pass because there are already tons of eager Python programmers answering every question at least as good as Peter. This means SO doesn't need Peter or his contributions. At all. If your contributions are unique and useful, you pass the rep hurdle easily.
As you have mentioned Python, let met tell you that the Python community on SO is awesome. People generally upvote all the good/correct answers to a question. This will not only appreciate their good work, but also make them answer more questions. In recent days, the percentage of questions on HTML/CSS, jQuery has increased greatly. The questions related to general purpose programming languages tend to be more unique than HTML/CSS.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#183Rep 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.
I agree. I enjoy that you get answered so quickly and if you are rep whore, you can just ask good questions, they get up-voted and you get points.
But I really don't see any point, it's a serious Q&A site.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#184Earlier 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 really just depends on what you're asking about. My opinion is that IRC is a better medium for common languages with popular open-source implementations like PHP, Python, or C and SO is usually a better medium for languages with popular closed-source implementations, like C# (though freenode's ##c# is sometimes helpful) or ActionScript/Flash. More enterprise people are on SO than IRC, I guess.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#185Please stop saying that StackOverflow is 'broke.' The word you're looking for is broken. StackOverflow's overflowing stack of cash is doing quite well, actually.
Other than that admittedly nitpicky detail, the article is accurate and provides insight on a problem that I, too, have experienced. However, I don't think that StackOverflow is broken, I just think it's overcrowded. And for a question-and-answer style website, isn't that a good thing?
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
I see your point, but I really don't think that 1.5k rep qualifies as casual in the context of the discussion.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be a bit brutal: Peter Programmer knows Python very well and is a highly skilled programmer, but there is a rep hurdle Peter can't pass because there are already tons of eager Python programmers answering every question at least as good as Peter. This means SO doesn't need Peter or his contributions. At all. If your contributions are unique and useful, you pass the rep hurdle easily.
Unique and useful to lots of people, you pass the rep hurdle easily. If it's only useful to a few people passing the rep hurdle will take a very long time.
Yeah, I answered several Android development questions, and at first got NO votes, despite having the best (and sometimes only) answer.
So I trolled the "new" queue for five minutes, found a C++ question, answered it, and POOF, I had some rep. It helps that I know C++ REALLY well.
Eventually those Android answers started getting upvotes, and now I have somewhere around 400 rep, which is enough to do what I need.
The badges bust me up. It's like a video game -- for programming questions! In any event, being able to comment and vote on answers was what I wanted.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#188The other bad thing about SO is that when a question has some answers, even if they are not really right, nobody really pays attention to the question anymore.
So it feels like questions that move down in the queue with a few proposed answers are basically dead.
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
I see your point, but I really don't think that 1.5k rep qualifies as casual in the context of the discussion.
I have answered 76 in two years and 4 months (and posed 5). Let's be generous and say that's 1 answer every week. Is that not 'casual use'?
Re: Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
#190I 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.
Do you have to do something to enable this? I have over 200 rep on Stack Overflow, and my profile page there and on Super User both show each other under "related accounts", but on Super User I am still at 1 reputation.
Edit: I created an account on Cooking, and it gave me the linking bonus everywhere. I guess I hadn't created accounts on any Stack Exchange sites since reaching 200 rep on one of them.