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Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#181

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #165
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reddit is probably even worse though with its auto-closing of comments after a short time, and tolerance for reposts. (Both of which make for netiquette violations !) P.S.: this is also an issue with hn, though at least dang et al. work tirelessly to identify reposts. It still makes it awkward when the best discussion that you would like to contribute to is locked, or worse, has now bits spread in consecutive discuss…

I never had a problem with a post closed on reddit and was able to ask very open ended questions, so independently of the rules, it was possible for me to get the help i needed, which wasn't possible on stackoverflow

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#182

Post by barrad0s »

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 used to contribute to another community at stack exchange and 100% stopped a few years back because of this. A handfull of individuals completely ruined the website for me. I haven't asked or answerd a question in years with the exception of the home improvement community.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#183

Post by Izkata »

gavanwilhite wrote: post #150
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…

Seriously.. I just posted a rather nuanced question (can a CSS gradient extend into over-scroll like color can), and it just got instantly closed by someone who didn’t understand the question at all. Apparently I need “cred” to even request review on this using their meta channels. Really bad FTUE. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75240915/is-it-possible-...

I see two issues with your question, which I just edited:

* The images should be inlined so people can see it without having to click to another site. Stackoverflow also has its own image server so it doesn't have to rely on the other site (giphy) not deleting the image, and you add images just by clicking the "image" icon above the edit box.

* The title of the question didn't match the body, which is probably what got it closed. The original title was an obvious "yes" because you already had an example of it in the question.

Edit: Left closed I guess, not originally closed. I see in the history the question was much improved, but it still didn't get past the review queue.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#184

Post by Izkata »

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.

> 50 reputation is only 5 upvotes

On answers you get 10 for upvotes, on questions you only get 5. Then you can also get 2 at a time by making edits to others' questions/answers to improve them (this only works up to some limit, you stop getting the bonus past that).

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#185

Post by Izkata »

mort96 wrote: post #145
josephcsible wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not a reasonable assumption that someone who you know broke one rule probably broke others too?

Oh wow. I was going to write this whole thing about how just because someone posts a question twice doesn't mean that there's anything rule-breaking about the question itself; that the two seem almost entirely orthogonal. But I went searching for some rules, and I could not find the rule you're talking about. Hell, I wasn't even able to find anything which calls itself "rules" for how you're supposed to ask questions…

"Rule" is a bit strong, but it's true that you shouldn't do that. One of the courtesy assumptions stackoverflow works on is that you looked for an answer before posting your question, and the second post would have been closed as a duplicate of the first.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#186

Post by Izkata »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #137
greazy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gold badge for a tag lets you close questions with that tag unilaterally instead of needing 3 users to vote on it. It's assumed you know enough about the topic you can do that, and it can still be overridden by 3 votes to reopen from other users.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#187

Post by fattless »

A lot of the problems people are having in this thread ive been having while trying to use reddit for anything useful.

Im trying to put together a small project using a raspberry pi and figured the subreddit would be a good place to start. I couldnt find good recent answers so I make a short post, what pi would best handle quality video streaming, best ways to go about it ect. Deleted because I was supposed to ask it in a specific thread. Ok sure whatever. So I ask that question in the proper QnA thread and only response I get plainly and unhelpfully says to look at an faq question which dosent answer my question at all. I feel like if your going to have and run a community because your passionate about something, and offer help about that thing, you could probably do better than leading me down the "your question is to generic/easy for me to bother" like an automated help line.

SO feels like that to me, you need to go in with a "worthy" question to get any kind of help and not just stomped down

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#188

Post by pflenker »

arp242 wrote: post #111
pflenker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, though it aims to cater the use case for „I need support now“ and not for „I want to archive this question and its solution“.

Stack Overflow was never intended as "I need support now". A significant amount of friction comes from people using it as such, misunderstanding what the site's purpose is. This is understandable, because it's not easy to explain and the on-boarding experience doesn't help with it either.

I think it is. They advertise with „ask questions, get answers“, which is precisely what users are doing when they are in need of immediate support.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#189

Post by fomine3 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #137
greazy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People still want anything like badge that doesn't do anything, see game lootbox

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#190

Post by weatherlite »

mort96 wrote: post #94
jasfi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons ChatGPT is so refreshing is the lack of toxic replies.

One of the reasons it's useless is that if there's no way to do exactly what you're asking, ChatGPT will just invent a way. I've wasted a bunch of time trying to find docs for functions ChatGPT claims exist, only to conclude that it made them up. ChatGPT is like a smart human inventing a hypothetical API which would solve your problem. A service like StackOverflow has people who are actually familiar with what actual…

Sounds solvable though once LLMs like ChatGPT become "live" (e.g connected to the internet) they can perhaps verify their answers. They will probably have their own development environment at some point. So these things might still happen in the future but rarely.
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