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Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#131

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

pflenker wrote: post #47

StackOverflow originated during a time when finding accurate and up-to-date documentation on the internet was a challenge. Today, however, there is a wealth of easily accessible, hands-on documentation that often includes links to support resources such as Discord. In my opinion, this has led to two types of questions being asked on StackOverflow: very basic ones that the asker could have easily found in the document…

The advanced ones don't get an answer or are too open ended for the website, which is incidentally why I stopped asking questions, they never got an answer or got closed.

Got better results on reddit

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#132

Post by josephcsible »

moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

> I had to repost my question

This is against the rules. The fact that you did it anyway makes me believe that your original question probably broke other rules too, and that the "unhelpful" and "toxic" comments were probably telling you that.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#133

Post by josephcsible »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #104
moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

> I haven’t asked question in a long time By design I literally can't add comments/engage in conversation. I need 50 reputation on each individual StackOverflow sites. https://stackexchange.com/sites

50 reputation is only 5 upvotes, and there's an association bonus that means you start with an extra 100 rep on every site once you establish yourself on one. Also, you can always comment on your own questions. The requirement only applies to commenting on others' questions.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#134

Post by josephcsible »

eterm wrote: post #98
ilaksh wrote: post #89

I stopped participating because I found that I usually was insulted somehow or my answer was not credited. If they can find any fault in a question or answer they will take the opportunity to do so. If you give a correct answer but don't include a significant amount of explanation, it will be marked down. Often times I see perfectly valid questions and people refuse to answer them but will only respond with a comment…

As someone who has sometimes left a comment instead of an answer, it's because I too am scared that if I try to answer with an actual answer it'll just get downvoted / moderated away, so rather than "risk" a lot of karma in leaving an actual answer, I'll answer in the comments because it's less likely to recieve negative attention. It's sadly working around the negativity and toxicity of the site and the people who t…

You get 10 reputation for each upvote but only lose 2 for each downvote your answer gets. And if it gets "moderated away", you don't lose any reputation.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#135

Post by josephcsible »

panza wrote: post #130

I think it will be around for a while - the volume of content is still valuable. But like many others, I've stopped contributing to it. The last time I tried to answer a question, it was marked down. My answer was correct, concise, to SO standards etc, but because the question was poorly worded and formatted, I was seen to be 'encouraging' it. I appreciate the need for high quality questions. But burying correct answ…

Can you link to the question where that happened?

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#136

Post by josephcsible »

faebi wrote: post #100

I needed to go point farming to answer a question, upvote a question or just about anything. I like points as a qualifier, but heck, give me a way to earn my first points. I don't always have answers, but when I had, I couldn't post them. That made it clear to me that this platform has no future. Look at Twitter or Reddit, somehow they manage to push the boring stuff down and the quality content up. I don't see why S…

> I needed to go point farming to answer a question

No you didn't. You don't have to earn any reputation points before you can post answers.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#137

Post by BenjiWiebe »

greazy wrote: post #120
bombcar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion that there are coding bootcamps or whatever that tell their students to do these things, as I've noticed multiple users doing basically the same (apparently point farming) thing. Gamification works until it gets gamed.

I find the gamification on SO overwhelming. So many badges and stars and points for things I don't really understand because I haven't investigated. Badges are dumb.

Badges don't do anything at all on SO. Only points actually do anything. You get more privileges/capabilities with more points.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#138

Post by MuffinFlavored »

josephcsible wrote: post #133
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t asked question in a long time By design I literally can't add comments/engage in conversation. I need 50 reputation on each individual StackOverflow sites. https://stackexchange.com/sites

50 reputation is only 5 upvotes, and there's an association bonus that means you start with an extra 100 rep on every site once you establish yourself on one. Also, you can always comment on your own questions. The requirement only applies to commenting on others' questions.

It encourages "farming" in my opinion. I'm sure it's a net positive (maybe) and keeps spam down but... it's weird. They want you to contribute in a certain way before you can contribute in the way that you're most likely to encounter (randomly landing on a question from Google during the middle of a busy day, drop a quick note, try to move on, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#139

Post by retrocryptid »

moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

I especially love the ones who tell people they don't understand their own requirements. I tried SO a couple times but the responses I got back were "oh. you should just do it in python" (it's a 50 engineer project using C# and while dotnet isn't perfect, trying to convince management and other engineers to switch a large project to BOTO just to use one particular easy to use method isn't going to work.)

Then there are the mansplainers who very calmly explain they ignored half of my question because I clearly didn't know what I was doing.

But I still click on SO search results when searching for obscure AWS errors. It's not like the AWS docs explain them. I think there's still some decent content from 5-10 years ago, but it's slowly becoming less relevant as technology marches ahead.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#140

Post by mort96 »

josephcsible wrote: post #132
moomoo11 wrote: post #85

Imo the high ranking people today on SO are annoying as fuck and on a power trip. I haven’t asked question in a long time and I had a unique situation and asked the question. Within seconds some guy adds some snarky unhelpful and honestly toxic reply and I had to repost my question. I ran a quick survey and found others who have had similar experiences and I feel this is terrible for newbies and even people like me w…

> I had to repost my question This is against the rules. The fact that you did it anyway makes me believe that your original question probably broke other rules too, and that the "unhelpful" and "toxic" comments were probably telling you that.

You an SO mod? The "I'm just gonna presume your question broke some rules and you deserve shit for it" attitude suits you.
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