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StackOverflow unwinding?

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Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#131

Post by codinghorror »

wpietri wrote: post #115
spolsky wrote: post #61

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…

As far as measuring the sort of thing people are talking about: How has your Net Promoter Score changed? Do you do surveys with questions like, "How disappointed would you be if Stack Overflow went away tomorrow?" How does attrition of users with at least 3 upvoted answers look over time? I wouldn't expect the metrics you mention to capture the sort of user satisfaction issues, and I could see the above numbers not s…

perhaps, but the underlying post is remarkably light on actual metrics and details -- or even specific examples -- of what quality decline means.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#132

Post by codinghorror »

wpietri wrote: post #123
chavesn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible explanation: People here, generally speaking, like a community that is about the people . Aside from meta.stackoverflow, Stack Overflow's model makes that difficult. That's ok, because Stack Overflow is not a social network - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/128552/143601

Well, they don't want Stack Overflow to be a social network. But like Soylent Green, it's made out of people. In SO's case, inconveniently alive people. Humans are inherently social, and the amount of effort SO staff and moderators have to go to trying to stamp that out is a sign that SO really is a social network. I always think it's a bad sign when product designers think they know much better than their users what…

We do listen to the people! No other site gives so much power to regular users, up to and including moderator elections. The problem with listening to the people too much is that popularity becomes the most important metric, with predictable results:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popul...

It's a balancing act. What people actually want, and what they think they want, are often two different hings.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#133

Post by projct »

1123581321 wrote: post #4

I was disappointed by the answers to my last few questions so I'm back to asking on IRC. The answers come more quickly and the format makes clarification and follow up easier and faster. It's also easier for me to look at someone's gist/paste on IRC and give a quick answer.

IRC is great, but SE-based sites are meant to also help the nth person to ask the question you're seeking, too...

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#134

Post by codinghorror »

strictfp wrote: post #109
spolsky wrote: post #61

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…

What about measuring number of upvotes on questions closed as not constructive /not about programming? I get the feeling that the technical questions are getting saturated, and that the community moved towards more soft issues (management, people skills etc). But soft issues get rejected. Perhaps start softie-programmer.com? At least do something other than closing them.

Well, there is:

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ -- for conceptual, no-source-code whiteboard programming questions

http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ -- for questions about general professional workplace issues that aren't specific to programming

And of course the rest of the sites at

http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic

I'll be the first to tell you that our Q&A engine isn't necessarily effective at every topic. It's primarily effective at technical-ish topics where there can be somewhat definitive answers backed by a bit of research. That's still a pretty big chunk of the world, e.g.:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-su...

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#135

Post by mark-r »

andrewcooke wrote: post #45
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.

bookmark it (using the so interface - click on the star thing) and look again in a day or so. by then it will be clear if it's going to be answered or not. main trouble with this is that some simple, dumb answer may have been marked correct by then.

The marked answer may be changed, so there's still hope. The problem is when the question is asked by someone who won't be back to see your new awesome answer because they've already moved on.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#136

Post by mattrepl »

spolsky wrote: post #80
Xion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I tried to do incremental editing of a self-answered question. As I was editing and improving the post, within 30 minutes of originally posting, my question was closed for not being a real question. Which was true, the original question was a problem statement.

I continued to improve the post, including the feedback from downvoters. However, I had to flag the post to have a mod reopen the question and none of the downvoters have returned to modify their vote.

It's annoying to end up with negative feedback after attempting to be helpful and taking time to improve a post. Maybe encourage closers to come back after a post is reopened?

For reference, the post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10748274/faces-are-black-...

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#137

Post by evincarofautumn »

I disagree with the author on a few points. The branching out of Stack Exchange has been excellent—I’m mostly active on English (14k), SO (9k), and Programmers (6k), but I often browse the other sites to pick up useful and interesting information that I would never have come across if it weren’t for that diversification. Where else can I stumble across juicy morsels about mathematics, or TeX, or any of several languages I don’t speak—all in one place?

I find the idea that Stack Exchange is anti-community laughable. The chat system is excellent and has relieved a lot of the tension between contributing to the site and just having fun meeting people who share your interests. I know a lot more about my fellow language enthusiasts, C++ programmers, and Haskellers than before. And more people read my blog and watch my YouTube videos now. I call that a win.

So: the last time I asked a good question on SO? Last month. The last time I gave a good answer? This week. The system still works from my point of view. And I’m one of the guys who actively edits questions so they don’t get closed for stupid reasons—moderation isn’t restricted to just moderators.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#138

Post by codinghorror »

TylerE wrote: post #119
spolsky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Is the quality of the site being kept up, though? Questions certainly feel "worse" than they did 2 years ago when I first started following SO. Way more "homework" or "newbie south-east Asian programmer asking for THE CODEZ" type questions than there ever was back in the day. I'm not really sure how you fix that, although slightly raising the barrier to entry (perhaps require they at least pick a username?) might hel…

All true, and far more real a risk. That's why we now (as of about 6 months ago) require registration to ask questions, for example.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#140

Post by pbreit »

wpietri wrote: post #101
kmfrk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of the things that drove me away from Quora (amongst plenty of other things). It felt extremely bureaucratic and arbitrary, and the tone of the moderator replies on Quora really brought down morale - along with the downvote feature. I will grant SO that you always know when you are being moderated; Hacker News and Quora does this more surreptitiously, which is more infuriating by an order of magnitude.

I have the opposite impression of Quora, really, and I think their voting design is brilliant. It's designed to maximize viewer utility and poster enjoyment at the expense of transparency. I get how it's infuriating to a certain type of user, but in doing so they've removed a lot of opportunities for negative interactions.

It sounds like you haven't experienced or seen Quora moderation. up/down voting is not moderation.
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