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StackOverflow unwinding?

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Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#71

Post by papsosouid »

tgrass wrote: post #18
thom wrote: post #3

Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away. I feel a bit like StackOverflow has extrapolated from a huge pent-up demand for decent…

I treasure and trust StackOverflow for my programming questions precisely because of the elitist, purifying attitude. I'm confident the answers are vetted and the best has risen to the top. I'm a self-taught programmer with only a few years under my belt, so this resource is valuable. As for the other Q&As...especially the non-engineering ones, this culture is counter productive. In a field like history, the experts…

>I'm confident the answers are vetted and the best has risen to the top.

That really doesn't have as much meaning as you think it does. The best answer out of three bad answers is still a bad answer. If they have driven away the people who give good answers, no amount of filtering the leftover bad answers will get you a good answer.

I don't see very many experts on stackoverflow. It may be a useful resource for beginners, but as someone more intermediate, I've had no questions answered satisfactorily in the time I've tried using it. And all those questions I ended up getting answered by asking in the appropriate IRC channel. My concern is that more and more open source projects are saying "if you have questions, ask on stackoverflow", but not actually watching for those questions and answering them. When a project has no mailing list, no IRC channel, and says "use stackoverflow" I'm pretty much out of luck for getting help.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#72

Post by nathan_long »

adventureful wrote: post #48
nathan_long wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That guarantees the stagnation of their community" Not from my perspective. I'm a Rails developer, and between our continuously evolving platform, the proliferation of gems, and my changing projects, I've always got new questions. Meanwhile, new technologies keep appearing to become the New Hotness.

Here's why it guarantees overall stagnation (not necessarily on a specific topic): Let's say you have 10 super segments, eg: PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Javascript, etc. Once you build those out to a high degree, reasonably the amount of new content possible in relation to existing content, will plunge. Then if you add a new language that becomes popular and mass adopted, the best you can hope for is perhaps an addition…

I don't see anything in this that bodes badly for Stackoverflow, financially or as a community.

If all the PHP questions are answered, every PHP programmer is now able to Google and find what they want to SO. That means they 1) learn that SO is the place for answers and 2) see ads.

2 years from now, when they're working in another language with less established Q&A, they'll know where to go.

"Excitement overall" really doesn't mean anything here. I don't care how much or little activity there currently is in the Objective C section because I don't use Objective C. I'm able to find the info I want and get questions answered if they're not already there. That's all that matters.

What's going to stop that from happening?

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#73

Post by pcopley »

debacle wrote: post #16

The 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…

I answered one question on SO, and I haven't logged back in since. I'll use them to read others' answers but I refuse to participate in that site outside of occasional traffic.

It was a beginner-to-intermediate level PHP question but was very poorly worded. I asked a clarifying question and within 5 minutes my question was deleted and a mod told me answers were the place for questions. Seriously? It was directly related to original question and (I felt, at least) you couldn't give a thorough answer without the clarification.

Not surprisingly my message to the moderator about why I "wasn't allowed" to do that went unanswered, both on the question itself and via PM. IIRC the question was later closed for some tangentially related reason.

Don't take this comment as anything against Joel or Jeff - I think they've both done wonders in their respective careers, but the type of people they've got moderating SO is just ridiculous.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#74

Post by tgrass »

nathan_long wrote: post #39
tgrass wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"love it or leave it" is only a proper response in a regime that seeks to protect the status quo.

OK, perhaps I was a bit harsh. But there is already a very active place to discuss how SO should do things; it's called meta.stackoverflow.com. This discussion has been going on for years. It's great to try to influence it, but as time goes on, the chances decrease that a newcomer has a point that hasn't been considered. That's just life. You don't see HN changing its format every week; newcomers adjust. And if someo…

HN frowns on the single sentence comment that does nothing but concur, so there ought to be an upvote which a parent can give that says, I agree, nice retort, I modify my concern and cheers, mate.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#75

Post by yrizos »

debacle wrote: post #46
sp332 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of closing those questions, they could move them to the "Programmers" site. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq?mnu=1 All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions: -inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. -tend to have long, not short, answers. -have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone. -invite sharing experiences over opini…

The mods on programmers are even worse than the mods on SO, in my opinion.

Bunch of obnoxious punks, them Programmers moderators... Especially the Greek guy...

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#76

Post by SonicSoul »

adventureful wrote: post #28

It seemed inevitable that 95% (some very high %) of StackOverflow was destined to be little more than an archive, leaving a very stagnant system as the speed of activity & build out slowed to a crawl. Large, highly active development technology doesn't change every day. PHP has been around for 15 plus years, Python for 20 years. And those are two of most popular. How many questions can ultimately be asked about PHP o…

I develop in .Net, WPF, and Javascript, and StackOverflow is a gem for these technologies. Not to mention there is a new version of .Net and WPF coming out every 2-3 years, and JavaScript is constantly evolving in form of frameworks and new browser versions (each with different support and intricacies). I don't see your argument as valid in my universe, and I also doubt that PHP and Python are most active technologies on SO.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#77

Post by spolsky »

buro9 wrote: post #22
debacle wrote: post #16

The 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…

And yet, Stack Overflow gets 7000 questions a day, and manages to maintain a very high quality compared to sites with less moderation.

The very moderation which detracts from the community feeling is what's keeping the quality of the site up and helping create a valuable permanent resource on the Internet, which is our primary goal. Like Wikipedia, strict rules are what lead to a valuable artifact. Stack Overflow's rules and values are not intended to create a warm and cuddly discussion area for long-winding, far-reaching conversations, social networking, and "community" whatever that means. They are intended to create a body of precise questions and answers which are peer-reviewed, editable, and high-quality that you can search with Google.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#78

Post by edanm »

excuse-me wrote: post #62
fusiongyro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This was actually discussed to death on StackOverflow's Meta site in the "old days".

The reason they stick to this system: They prefer people answering quickly. This is the perfect incentive to get people to answer ASAP.

And to the argument "but I have a much better, more thought out answer", most people will say "Yes, but I want my answer now. I don't care about the history behind git, I want to know how to stage removed files".

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#79

Post by tgrass »

papsosouid wrote: post #71
tgrass wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I treasure and trust StackOverflow for my programming questions precisely because of the elitist, purifying attitude. I'm confident the answers are vetted and the best has risen to the top. I'm a self-taught programmer with only a few years under my belt, so this resource is valuable. As for the other Q&As...especially the non-engineering ones, this culture is counter productive. In a field like history, the experts…

>I'm confident the answers are vetted and the best has risen to the top. That really doesn't have as much meaning as you think it does. The best answer out of three bad answers is still a bad answer. If they have driven away the people who give good answers, no amount of filtering the leftover bad answers will get you a good answer. I don't see very many experts on stackoverflow. It may be a useful resource for begin…

After I wrote that, I realized I had written about experts in History. Any well-studied historian is as much, if not more, interested in historiography as the actual historical record. And I know that programming experts are the same. It is the meta discussions that truly inspire any expert. And being a novice, I am not capable of participating in those programming meta-questions, and certainly I'm not asking them, and consequently wasn't considering them in my comment. Though I should have. The Q&A format likely does not work with any meta discussion.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#80

Post by spolsky »

Xion wrote: post #64
fusiongyro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not weird, it's intentional, and desired. The short and to-the-point answer is marginally more helpful if it arrives sooner, because it solves the problem quickly, so it will tend to earn a little more reputation. Coming back later and embellishing the answer with details, sample code, whatever, and you will earn a flood of well-deserved reputation. Doing both--providing a quick answer and then embellishing the details so that the Internet has a great resource--is the ideal outcome and therefore rewarded with the most reputation.
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