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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#351

Post by sznio »

Eisenstein wrote: post #168
JohnMakin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

The thing is that oftentimes people who want to do 'X by Y' are actually asking how to accomplish Q. They think 'X by Y' is the solution and get hit by a roadblock, not knowing that it will not help them and they are wasting time. This is called the XY problem and is extremely common on tech related forums and mailing lists. * https://xyproblem.info/

which you can discuss in the comments below the question, instead of polluting the answers.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#352

Post by djmips »

no92 wrote: post #265
Culonavirus wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question maybe someone can answer for me, or maybe I'm just stupid and other people don't need it, but... What's up with the "man Y" aversion towards the usage of examples in the man pages? I don't expect some behemoth like ffmpeg to have a billion examples in the man files, but damn, every other reasonably sized CLI app would be so much easier to use, if you had just a dozen or two of examples at the end of…

tldr pages do exactly this. https://tldr.sh

bless you - I had no idea this existed!

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#353

Post by einpoklum »

seanthemon wrote: post #221
Eduard wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it. Nevertheless post the question and provide an answer. Everybody wins: you reap the upvotes, and everyone else benefits from the shared knowledge.

"marked as duplicate" pointing to a 5yo answer with links that 404

An answer relying on links rather than its own text is actually against policy, and should not have stayed up.

Unfortunately, there is a moderator strike now so I can't tell you to flag such an answer...

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#355

Post by sznio »

kentrado wrote: post #334
casenmgreen wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded re moderation. Also, the site itself - the ethos of the owners; I used to have an account, became disenchanted with the mods, decided to delete my content, close the account. I then discovered; 1. You cannot delete answers which have been accepted. 2. The mechanism for deleting your own content allows you to delete a max of something like five replies per day. I then took the time to look at the T&C, and SO…

If you live in the EU, you could do a GDPR request to delete all your data. https://meta.stackexchange.com/legal/gdpr/request

I mean, they will remove your personal information from their databases.

Your answers will most likely stay, just anonymized.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#356

Post by littlestymaar »

JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

> google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago

Oh, so maybe DDG is ahead of Google in terms of quality alone in at least one domain now? Because it definitely still gives answers from SO at the top.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#357

Post by martin_a »

JohnMakin wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

I'd like to add the "in jQuery you can do it MUCH easier like this: [...]" when you are searching for Vanilla JS solutions.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#358

Post by mihaaly »

newaccount74 wrote: post #310
JohnMakin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

The very popular Zalgo answer is a perfect example of this problem [1] The user asks a question that can be answered quite easily, and dozens of people post answers claiming that this is the wrong way to do it and that they should use some other tech to solve the problem. Some people on Stack Overflow care more about showing off how smart they are rather than answering questions, and I think the point system attracts…

Ironic, as answering an other question ("What alternatives are to do X?") instead the original one is not indicating smartness at all.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#359

Post by fouc »

sznio wrote: post #349
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

Your first point seems to be most important. > - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago SO might be horrible now, but it still holds years worth of answers that were just fine a few years ago - so why aren't they showing up now? Google's current recommendation of going to w3schools or - even worse - geeks4geeks or any other content farm is and always wi…

Google search results have a filter for time, so could potentially improve the results by changing the date range back to 3 years ago.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#360

Post by yarekt »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #317
ideamotor wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced anyone interacting on SO can diagnose something like this. The act of breaking down a problem to a tiny part so you can post it kinda guarantees this scenario. But I think it will always be up to the user of SO (not the poster or answerers) to make the real judgement on what is useful. Often I think SO is useful to use as a bunch of puzzles folks solved. You gotta decide if they are relevant.

Just some random musings about Stackoverflow: SO is at its best when it’s actual error debugging IMO. When you google some specific error whoever else has the similar error it’s right there. I feel like GitHub is replacing this more and more though - I often get the GitHub ranked specific error higher than Stackoverflow these days. Usually you get better discussions on the GitHub issues too, for a multitude of reason…

Just out of curiosity, what are the alternatives? I still find the moderation approach well made, even if it looks heavy handed. It’s important to create information for the future, not just for now
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