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

Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

stum.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#11

Post by DanBC »

I love Stack Overflow.

I'm interested in fragmentation. Reddit has it, and Stack Overflow has it too. I have no idea how they'll fix it.

If you want to ask a question you need to ask the right SE site. Some are obvious, but others have overlapping sites and it's confusing for the target audience.

What's worse is that some of these sites have made agreements with each other to funnel the "wrong questions" to the right site - that's great, but a bit confusing; while others have just decided independently that some particular style of question is "off topic" and they'll shunt you off to another site, and that other site will close your question.

I love SE, but I understand the frustration that some people have with it.

They have the Main sites, and the Meta sites, and the chat stuff. I think they could also have a branch off "discussion site". Any questions deemed as wrong questions go to that discussion site. You re-brand it, so as not to dilute the strict question only format of the main sites.

And, for all the "META IS DEATH" (true) sentiment there's a heck of a lot of meta going on over there.

But I do like SE.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#12

Post by DanBC »

quizotic wrote: post #7

Raising my glass to stackoverflow! It had done more to improve my productivity than anything else. Jeff Atwood and the whole community have changed the world for the better. Why is it that stackoverflow is so much more useful than expertsexchange or quora?

Very tight focus and strict rules.

Some people don't like that, and they kind of have a point, but Stack Overflow has a mission and they stick to it.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#13

Post by ygra »

ape4 wrote: post #3

You need to edit at least a certain number of characters (might be 6). So if you want to correct a = into a == you can't. Well, you can... you have to make a few other bogus changes. This bugs me.

I can ;-) (having enough reputation helps)

But agreed, some limitations are a bit stupid and annoying at times. E.g. you downvote an answer based on the belief that it is wrong, further discussion reveals that it is in fact correct, but since more than five minutes have passed you cannot remove the downvote or turn it into an upvote unless the question is edited again. Which leaves to bogus edits just for being able to change a vote again.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#15

Post by balpha »

ape4 wrote: post #3

You need to edit at least a certain number of characters (might be 6). So if you want to correct a = into a == you can't. Well, you can... you have to make a few other bogus changes. This bugs me.

Once you've earned the 2000 reputation to edit without peer-review, you can edit as little as you like. But until then, your edits are reviewed by other users before they're applied, and there has to be a certain threshold so these (volunteer!) reviewers don't just waste time by reviewing tons of mini-edits.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#16

Post by markdown »

Maybe it's just me, or the type of questions I ask, but I've found SO to be a little elitist.

I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almost every time I've asked a question, the responses or lack thereof have been pretty brutal.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#18

Post by ygra »

markdown wrote: post #16

Maybe it's just me, or the type of questions I ask, but I've found SO to be a little elitist. I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almost every time I've asked a question, the responses or lack thereof have been pretty brutal.

It's a little messy sometimes. Trivial beginner questions are usually answered within a minute and you get about three correct answers immediately.

But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. Can be very frustrating.

If you have mostly questions of the latter kind then there's a bit of luck involved whether the right person sees your question or whether it just goes unnoticed and dies.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#19

Post by varunrau »

quizotic wrote: post #7

Raising my glass to stackoverflow! It had done more to improve my productivity than anything else. Jeff Atwood and the whole community have changed the world for the better. Why is it that stackoverflow is so much more useful than expertsexchange or quora?

I strongly think that expertsexchange is a poor name for a website.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#20

Post by ygra »

balpha wrote: post #15
ape4 wrote: post #3

You need to edit at least a certain number of characters (might be 6). So if you want to correct a = into a == you can't. Well, you can... you have to make a few other bogus changes. This bugs me.

Once you've earned the 2000 reputation to edit without peer-review, you can edit as little as you like. But until then, your edits are reviewed by other users before they're applied, and there has to be a certain threshold so these (volunteer!) reviewers don't just waste time by reviewing tons of mini-edits.

In my experience reviewing tiny edits creates little to no burden on the reviewers. The backlog of ~500 flagged posts (where you often have to read the question, the answer and then decide whether the flag was really warranted) is much worse.

And then there is the other problem where edit reviewers have no clue of what they are rejecting and instead alienating the person who suggested the edit (rightfully). But that's a completely different point, admittedly.

Still, I don't think less-than-six-character edits would be a particular problem to handle as the edit review queue is often enough empty or very short.

Post reply on HN