Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

StackOverflow unwinding?

williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 210 posts

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#201

Post by wpietri »

cruise02 wrote: post #199
wpietri wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the guy can say what he wants on his blog, and it's arrogant of you to think otherwise. And your notion that Hacker News users can't discuss what they want on their own site is crazed. My point, and I think his, is that the ever-narrowing topic definitions may be what the participating community wants, but it is driving off people with different ideas. If you're happy with that, fine. But insisting that out…

I never said the guy couldn't or shouldn't post on his blog about it, nor did I say it can't be discussed here on HN. If you want something to actually be done about what you perceive as a problem though, you need to join in the community discussion at the site set aside for that purpose. Decisions about SE policies are made by the communities on SE sites, not on HN.

Honestly, I don't need to do that. Having been driven off by what I consider bad moderating, I'll spend my time elsewhere. The same apparently applies to a number of people posting here.

If you guys are happy to lose users in that fashion, by all means keep asserting that the only way you'll listen is if people put the right cover on their TPS report and submit it to the proper forum.

Whether you like it or not, SE users and former users are going to keep on discussing SE policies where they please. You guys can learn from it and even engage with it. Or you can just keep defining it as illegitimate, putting your hands over your ears, and going "la la la".

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#202

Post by cruise02 »

martmarc wrote: post #200
cruise02 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said the guy couldn't or shouldn't post on his blog about it, nor did I say it can't be discussed here on HN. If you want something to actually be done about what you perceive as a problem though, you need to join in the community discussion at the site set aside for that purpose. Decisions about SE policies are made by the communities on SE sites, not on HN.

I fully disagree when you say that if you want things to change you have to go to discuss this on SE. The entire point is that SE is not just "SE policies" and "SE moderators": SE is first and foremost users and these users have their right to read criticism about SE on HN / reddit / blogs / etc. And the day a topic shall pop-up on meta saying that some introspection from SE may be needed, the more users have read we…

This isn't my opinion, so I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Would you expect HN to change because of comments you read on Stack Overflow? Of course not. Everyone is perfectly welcome to discuss things where and whenever they want, but ultimately the ideas need to be discussed by the community of people who actually use SE sites. So yeah, I fully agree that you can go ahead and discuss things as much as you want here on HN and on blogs. I join in that sort of thing all the time. But if you want things to actually change, those ideas need to be posted and discussed among the community of SE users.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#203

Post by cruise02 »

wpietri wrote: post #201
cruise02 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said the guy couldn't or shouldn't post on his blog about it, nor did I say it can't be discussed here on HN. If you want something to actually be done about what you perceive as a problem though, you need to join in the community discussion at the site set aside for that purpose. Decisions about SE policies are made by the communities on SE sites, not on HN.

Honestly, I don't need to do that. Having been driven off by what I consider bad moderating, I'll spend my time elsewhere. The same apparently applies to a number of people posting here. If you guys are happy to lose users in that fashion, by all means keep asserting that the only way you'll listen is if people put the right cover on their TPS report and submit it to the proper forum. Whether you like it or not, SE u…

I didn't try to define anything as illegitimate. I don't make policy at SE, the community there does. There are thousands of active users who discuss policy issues on SE. Most of them are never going to see random blog posts and comments on HN. If you put ideas in front of them where they're actively discussing SE policies you might have better luck at changing what you don't like about SE.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#204

Post by martmarc »

niels_olson wrote: post #67

I 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.

Wait until said author or the author of another tool / API enters in an argument with one of the elected moderator and gets banned: you're going to be "unsold". This is precisely what this discussion is about: it's about obviously knowledgeable SO users that are getting more and more pissed off by the behavior of these "close-trigger-happy" moderators. And this is relatively new: it wasn't anywhere near as bad two years ago on SO. The one thing that prompted me to leave is twice I spend time answering a question only to see the whole thread getting deleted: this is a waste of my time (I don't care about the b*llshit reason invoked by those overzealous mod to close the question: I care about my time spent helping people being lost). I'm not bringing anything anymore to a "community" that is so prone on wasting their user's time.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#205

Post by wpietri »

cruise02 wrote: post #202
martmarc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully disagree when you say that if you want things to change you have to go to discuss this on SE. The entire point is that SE is not just "SE policies" and "SE moderators": SE is first and foremost users and these users have their right to read criticism about SE on HN / reddit / blogs / etc. And the day a topic shall pop-up on meta saying that some introspection from SE may be needed, the more users have read we…

This isn't my opinion, so I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Would you expect HN to change because of comments you read on Stack Overflow? Of course not. Everyone is perfectly welcome to discuss things where and whenever they want, but ultimately the ideas need to be discussed by the community of people who actually use SE sites. So yeah, I fully agree that you can go ahead and discuss things as much as you w…

I would absolutely expect HN to change because of discussion about HN on StackOverflow. Why? Because a lot of smart nerds talking about it could have something useful to say. Smart product managers don't wait for their users to come to them with suggestions.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#206

Post by wpietri »

cruise02 wrote: post #203
wpietri wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't need to do that. Having been driven off by what I consider bad moderating, I'll spend my time elsewhere. The same apparently applies to a number of people posting here. If you guys are happy to lose users in that fashion, by all means keep asserting that the only way you'll listen is if people put the right cover on their TPS report and submit it to the proper forum. Whether you like it or not, SE u…

I didn't try to define anything as illegitimate. I don't make policy at SE, the community there does. There are thousands of active users who discuss policy issues on SE. Most of them are never going to see random blog posts and comments on HN. If you put ideas in front of them where they're actively discussing SE policies you might have better luck at changing what you don't like about SE.

You seem to be very insistent on not getting what I'm saying. Here's my last try:

If the community and/or SE's owners are interested in serving the public, then they should engage with people where they are. Some of those people are on SE; most aren't. That's especially true for people who have gotten fed up with SE and left.

It's not my job to fix SE's brokenness. Nor is it that of the blogger whose article is linked at the top. Making SE better is the job of SE's owners and moderators. So if somebody should be putting forth extra effort here, it isn't the people who have never used or have given up on Stack Exchange. And even if it somehow should be those people, it won't be, no matter how much you suggest otherwise.

Personally, there's no way I'm going to go put my ideas in front of the SE community. From my experience there and the behavior of SE reps in this article, I have no reason to believe anybody will do anything but argue until I leave. I'm a little sad to think that SE's on the slow road to doom, but I've got better things to do then to try to sweep back that particular tide with my very modest broom.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#207

Post by cruise02 »

wpietri wrote: post #206
cruise02 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't try to define anything as illegitimate. I don't make policy at SE, the community there does. There are thousands of active users who discuss policy issues on SE. Most of them are never going to see random blog posts and comments on HN. If you put ideas in front of them where they're actively discussing SE policies you might have better luck at changing what you don't like about SE.

You seem to be very insistent on not getting what I'm saying. Here's my last try: If the community and/or SE's owners are interested in serving the public, then they should engage with people where they are. Some of those people are on SE; most aren't. That's especially true for people who have gotten fed up with SE and left. It's not my job to fix SE's brokenness. Nor is it that of the blogger whose article is linke…

If you want your complaints to reach people who can actually do something about them you'll go where those people are. If you don't really care, that's fine. Keep posting your complaints on blogs and in comments on sites other than the one you're complaining about.

I'm glad this guy's complaints got some attention by staff and volunteers at SE, but that's only because it got to the front page of HN. How many others are out there that will never be found? Post them in the right place and people will read them.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#208

Post by asymmetric »

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.

I love SO and the SE network, but I have to admit that far too many interesting questions get closed on SO for being too broad or not having a specific answer. I understand that they want SO to be a fact-based QA site, but sometimes I find myself looking at a very interesting, closed SO question and wishing it hadn't been closed.

That, and the fact that the SO/Programmers distinction is rather confusing and unnecessary in my opinion.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#209

Post by niels_olson »

martmarc wrote: post #204
niels_olson wrote: post #67

I 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.

Wait until said author or the author of another tool / API enters in an argument with one of the elected moderator and gets banned: you're going to be "unsold". This is precisely what this discussion is about: it's about obviously knowledgeable SO users that are getting more and more pissed off by the behavior of these "close-trigger-happy" moderators. And this is relatively new: it wasn't anywhere near as bad two ye…

I agonize with a similar problem, but I think anyone with a blog will agree there is a real curatorial challenge there. I know Edward Tufte; he routinely deletes his own contributions to his own forum, and will not hesitate to delete material contributed to experts in their fields, often post-publication.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#210

Post by willvarfar »

wpietri wrote: post #196
cruise02 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think you're being willfully ignorant. He explicitly says "broaden allowed topics for discussion." He understands what's on topic and what isn't. He wants a place to have discussions that are off topic for Stack Overflow, but doesn't want to go to one of the many sites that already exist for that purpose. I don't think asking users to take off topic discussions to one of those other places is asking too much.

You're demonstrating the problem. There is a disagreement about which topics should be allowed. Broaden means increase the number of topics considered to be on topic. He understands your definition of "on topic"; he just thinks it makes for a poor user experience. And I agree with him. The problem here is that you and others confuse your view of "off topic for Stack Overflow" with some sort of universal truth. You ge…

(its a bit late, but as blog author, I can confirm your interpretation of what I meant)
Post reply on HN