None of the actual metrics of the site bear this out. I don't know what "myspacing" is, and "floundering" is pretty subjective, but in terms of actual measurable things, we have more questions asked, more questions answered, more people active on the site, more sites with more activity and most metrics are up about 100% in the last year. Some of the things that we track pretty closely (like number of users who ask or answer 5 times monthly) are steadily growing.
StackOverflow unwinding?
61–70 of 210 posts
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting. I also found that my more difficult questions never got answered. Perhaps a fix to create an incentive to answer hard questions would be to create a ratio to estimate difficulty (how much time has gone by without an accepted or high-voted answer? number of views that don't add a good answer?) and then give more reward points to someone who successfully answers a "hard" question.
I've had this happen to me a lot, but I also have noticed that sometimes I see an interesting question that deserves a long answer and I want to answer it, but I have this nagging suspicion someone else is already working on an answer and by the time I write mine theirs will already have received some kind of critical mass of upvotes and my work will not get any upvotes at all.
There needs to be an embargo period where votes don't show up for the first 15-30mins to stop the snowballing effect of the first answer - like with real election results
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#63A couple of points (from a top 0.47% user, but that's not why I'm on SO):
* imagine googling for a programming questions and be stuck in 2008 - I don't want to go back
* imagine researching a wittgenstein paper - do you need philosophy.stackexchange.com - probably not; the numbers show, that SO's still the metrics vanguard - I think the demand for the niche sites is certainly there, but large communities have formed around traditional forum sites - and people are happy with that - so there is no pressing need to switch to the new format
* concerning questions - it has been a phenomenon since the beginning, that the simplest answers (C-C C-V the docs) got the most upvotes - interesting hard questions don't earn you much reputation, if that's what you're after - I still get a lot of upvotes for year-old answers, which everybody could have written, while the answers I invested hours in remain relatively untouched; but the main value for me comes from learning by answering questions: try to bring your point across in a few words, collect useful references and show working code - it's like a daily workout equivalent in the tech field
* open questions: I'm trying to make it a habit to answer one hard, unanswered, maybe older question each week - because it's true, the "reputation clock cycle" leaves a lot behind...
* moderation: most moderators have been long around - and I can somehow guess, in which tags a person is active, because I likely saw their comments, answers, flags already a couple of times - can't really blame them for closing a lot of questions - it's hard; if you can, sift through http://stackoverflow.com/tools/flagged and you might know what I mean
* tldr: SO rocks if you're a programmer, for other SE sites YMMV; unsatisfied with closed questions? reopen them or discuss it on meta - it's not possible that moderators don't make mistakes and it's not true, that you can't at least try to discuss specific issues; unsatisfied with unanswered hard questions: find one and write up something great
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting. I also found that my more difficult questions never got answered. Perhaps a fix to create an incentive to answer hard questions would be to create a ratio to estimate difficulty (how much time has gone by without an accepted or high-voted answer? number of views that don't add a good answer?) and then give more reward points to someone who successfully answers a "hard" question.
I've had this happen to me a lot, but I also have noticed that sometimes I see an interesting question that deserves a long answer and I want to answer it, but I have this nagging suspicion someone else is already working on an answer and by the time I write mine theirs will already have received some kind of critical mass of upvotes and my work will not get any upvotes at all.
The best strategy seems to be incremental editing. Post a short and to-the-point answer first and then edit it to expand and add finer points. This way your answer is already competing with others even as you write it (properly).
It feels slightly weird to be forced to employ such a tactic, but at SO's scale it might just be necessary.
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's possible that the site floundered and closed because it just wasn't a good fit for the StackExchange model. Literature doesn't strike me as a field where there are obvious right answers.
Well; maybe. But SciFi SE survives - and that would seem to have a similar issue :)
But a much bigger audience with the SO crowd
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#66The problem with SO is that easy questions get answered quickly and hard questions don't get answered at all, in most cases. I'm a semi-competent programmer with a few thousand SO reputation (or whatever it's called). Every question I have ever asked there has gone unanswered or has been answered insufficiently. The moderators are also awful. They manage the community in a very autistic fashion - quality questions wi…
Maybe a simple answer to having a question closed/moved as subjective would be that at least two mods find flag it as such.
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#67I disagree. I recently picked up pyparsing, and in trying to understand (I'm not a comp sci major), I made an account on stackexchange. The author of pyparsing answered my question. I'm sold.
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#68IMHO StackOverflow jumped the shark when it started adding karma or whatever the fuck they call it.
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#69Closing questions - no, deleting questions - really really grinds my gears. Nothing is more frustrating than finding a google result to SO, clicking through, and arriving at a 404. Nothing is more frustrating that searching for that great answer I read last year and not being able to find it because the question has been deleted. These are often questions that have been kicking around for 4 years, and, well, gone. Of…
Due to this problem I think the site would be much more useful if the deleted posts just had a red warning at the top like wikipedia. "this question was flagged for being funny" "a little off topic" let the user decide if he wants to look or not. Buyer beware.
Re: StackOverflow unwinding?
#70The problem with SO is that easy questions get answered quickly and hard questions don't get answered at all, in most cases. I'm a semi-competent programmer with a few thousand SO reputation (or whatever it's called). Every question I have ever asked there has gone unanswered or has been answered insufficiently. The moderators are also awful. They manage the community in a very autistic fashion - quality questions wi…
With communities in general (not explicitly referencing SO here), I've always felt that moderators are their own worst enemies. They dictate the terms of use through enforcement. It's not fun to use something until you find that you aren't allowed to. The best tools do not limit their usage patterns, and communities adapt and evolve to make these tools solve their problems. These aren't always the same problems that…
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html