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Stuck due to “knowing too much”

programmers.stackexchange.com

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Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#81

Post by JohnMcG »

tikhonj wrote: post #78
fennecfoxen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a meta.stackoverflow.com, have you considered some sort of socialization.stackoverflow.com? Then you can not only say "buzz off" but specifically give someone a place to buzz off to. It'd be one of those pragmatic concessions that keeps the idealism moving along and whatnot :)

That's what the chat rooms are for[1]. [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/04/do-trilogy-sites-need-... I really like the "third place" idea, but I don't think the chat rooms have been successful in realizing it. Unfortunately, people just don't use them very much--even the StackOverflow rooms rarely have anybody to talk to. I think the fundamental problem is that discussion in other parts of the site is asynchro…

Speaking for myself, clicking on a "chat" link crosses a threshold for me from "I'm taking a break and checking stuff out" to "I'm goofing off." Maybe I'm kidding myself that my checking out SE threads isn't goofing off, but once I enter something called "chat" there's no way I can suspend my disbelief, so I don't do it.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#82

Post by yrizos »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #72
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pick on people here, where they won't see/answer? And _they_ are bozos? Get real.

Don't take it so seriously; I said it half-jokingly (well, actually, completely jokingly!). I like how Steve Jobs called everyone he disagreed with a 'bozo', and I imitated him here :-) BTW, as that discussion is closed now, we can't directly ( and publicly) communicate with those mods there; so here is the only place we can rant (that is, unless there is a meta-programmers.stackexchange.com for meta discussions).

http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/

Also, four of the close voters are regular users, only ChrisF is a moderator (notice the ♦), but it doesn't really matter, as it takes 5 close votes to close a question and his otherwise supercharged close vote was a regular user vote here (being the fifth).

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#83

Post by yrizos »

JohnMcG wrote: post #81
tikhonj wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the chat rooms are for[1]. [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/04/do-trilogy-sites-need-... I really like the "third place" idea, but I don't think the chat rooms have been successful in realizing it. Unfortunately, people just don't use them very much--even the StackOverflow rooms rarely have anybody to talk to. I think the fundamental problem is that discussion in other parts of the site is asynchro…

Speaking for myself, clicking on a "chat" link crosses a threshold for me from "I'm taking a break and checking stuff out" to "I'm goofing off." Maybe I'm kidding myself that my checking out SE threads isn't goofing off, but once I enter something called "chat" there's no way I can suspend my disbelief, so I don't do it.

Heh ;)

So, you're goofing off on chat, a discussion oriented medium, and not on Stack Exchange, a platform that's feverishly against discussions.

But on more than one occasion you've asked for Stack Exchange to change it's stance on discussion oriented questions and become more discussion friendly. Assuming that happens, how soon do you think it'll be before you dismiss Stack Exchange as goofing off?

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#84

Post by JohnMcG »

yrizos wrote: post #83
JohnMcG wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself, clicking on a "chat" link crosses a threshold for me from "I'm taking a break and checking stuff out" to "I'm goofing off." Maybe I'm kidding myself that my checking out SE threads isn't goofing off, but once I enter something called "chat" there's no way I can suspend my disbelief, so I don't do it.

Heh ;) So, you're goofing off on chat, a discussion oriented medium, and not on Stack Exchange, a platform that's feverishly against discussions. But on more than one occasion you've asked for Stack Exchange to change it's stance on discussion oriented questions and become more discussion friendly. Assuming that happens, how soon do you think it'll be before you dismiss Stack Exchange as goofing off?

It's all about plausible deniability....

Seriously, I don't think I would dismiss the whole of SE as goofing off if its scope boundaries were relaxed a bit.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#85

Post by bp_ »

bozho wrote: post #56
spolsky wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rambling discussion, which Stack Exchange is not really intended for. There are lots of good places to have rambling discussions. We focus on answerable questions with specific answers, not long-winded, open-ended conversation starters. There are plenty of other sites for long-winded, open-ended conversation starters, including Reddit and Hacker News. After a decade or so of operating sites for programmers…

I don't think leaving the few doznes of fun questions hurts. Now some of the most linked funny "threads" are gone, and we hope someone has a backup. Apart from that, I agree - it's Q&A, not /r/funny, not a discussion forum. Though I haven't seen that many questions that aim to ignite such discussions.

"Fun" questions are bumped over and over again; thus, they accrue ALL the votes and farm ALL the badges. They're just constant noise on the homepage.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#86

Post by boxy_brown »

spolsky wrote: post #74
praptak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Exchange in general - yes, definitely, couldn't agree more, please keep it that way! But Programmers? Programmers is and always was an exception. Seriously, almost none of the questions are answerable with specific answers. It is a pit of vague non-answerable questions that don't degrade into flamewars only because they are boring . What kind of fabric is best for covering programmers' chairs?

although programmers.SE was originally meant to be the "anything goes" dumping ground for subjective conversations to get them off of Stack Overflow, that is not its current mission. See the FAQ ( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq )

This comment demonstrates the absolute worst thing about Stack Exchange: on sites with content policies that are not crystal clear, even if you submit content that passes the policy test and is accepted on the site, that content might be capriciously deleted a year later if the policy changes. Programmers had been around for a while and had a great community when the mission changed. Few experts would participate in a forum if they knew the content they contribute could vanish.

It's not quite as hostile an approach to community building as experts-exchange, but it's close.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#87

Post by bp_ »

JohnMcG wrote: post #75
spolsky wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rambling discussion, which Stack Exchange is not really intended for. There are lots of good places to have rambling discussions. We focus on answerable questions with specific answers, not long-winded, open-ended conversation starters. There are plenty of other sites for long-winded, open-ended conversation starters, including Reddit and Hacker News. After a decade or so of operating sites for programmers…

I think the reason I find myself resisting this is that what you are saying is that you don't want us as whole people, you just want the specific parts of us that "make Stack Overflow great." This desire is understandable. I sure would like to pick and choose the aspects of people's personalities that I had to deal with. But, in most cases, life doesn't work that way. In some cases, asking us to leave behind parts of…

"I want to be in places where I can be myself, which might include chuckling at the same old jokes or discussing how much my job sucks. The more SO/SE is a place where I cannot be myself, the less desirable a place it is for me to be."

There's nothing stopping you from being your whole self on chat, but it's the relentless focus on signal that makes Stack Overflow what's wholly Stack Overflow.

You can't just build communities by randomly amassing people together. Communities need to have a common goal; in our case it's the building of the best goddamn Q&A sites we can possibly make out of the SE engine. That's what leads us to be "all business" on the site while wholly goofing off on chat :)

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#88

Post by bp_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #13
frankc wrote: post #7

The moderation on programmers.stackexchange.com is completely overbearing. How can a question about analysis paralysis be closed for off-topic? If stackoverflow is for technical question/answer, what is the point the linked stackexchange if not for discussion of a common programmer problem like this? I see stuff like this closed all time time and it's really annoying.

Ditto for StackOverflow itself? I just can't understand why so often a really valuable topic that collects insightful answers gets closed up because of not fitting some template. Also, I don't get the idea of "protected questions" - the ones marked by: "This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site." Wha…

Most of the time protection kicks in _because_ the question has received many "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. Indeed, the third deleted answer on any question automatically triggers protection.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#89

Post by wpietri »

LnxPrgr3 wrote: post #80
wpietri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the original intent of a startup almost doesn't mater. What a business does is always an intersection of what the producers and the consumers want. If users want something divergent but reasonable, the answer shouldn't be, "Well, fuck you then." The right response is, "Boy, that's a a great opportunity." As proof, look at Friendster. They owned the social networking space before Facebook even existed. But i…

The original intent of a startup doesn't matter much if your real goal is just to get a lot of users and sell them to advertisers. Then, who cares what you build, as long as it attracts users? The original intent matters a lot more if your goal is to build something you want to see exist. I, for one, am glad Stack Overflow is the site that it is today. There are plenty of other places on the Web for more open discuss…

How you make money is irrelevant for this.

Original intent doesn't really matter if you intend to serve your users. What you want to do matters, and what they want to do matters. Startups are a learning process where you explore the intersection.

If you hold on too tightly to original intent, exploration is impossible. You either end up frustrated that the people won't do what you want, or you end up trying to force them to do what you want. Both suck.

Re: Stuck due to “knowing too much”

#90

Post by wpietri »

spolsky wrote: post #50
frankc wrote: post #7

The moderation on programmers.stackexchange.com is completely overbearing. How can a question about analysis paralysis be closed for off-topic? If stackoverflow is for technical question/answer, what is the point the linked stackexchange if not for discussion of a common programmer problem like this? I see stuff like this closed all time time and it's really annoying.

This is a rambling discussion, which Stack Exchange is not really intended for. There are lots of good places to have rambling discussions. We focus on answerable questions with specific answers, not long-winded, open-ended conversation starters. There are plenty of other sites for long-winded, open-ended conversation starters, including Reddit and Hacker News. After a decade or so of operating sites for programmers…

I get your perspective, but that hard-and-fast rules thing is a trap. One that Wikipedia cleverly avoided:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IAR

I can't tell if your claim is that a) You just don't want to run a site that has some good content that doesn't follow the rules, or b) you don't know how to run a site with some good content that doesn't follow the rules.

But you're definitely throwing out good content and driving away good contributors because of your inflexibility.

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