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Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

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Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#21

Post by PommeDeTerre »

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 is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics.

In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information.

For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly.

When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products.

Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#22

Post by adventured »

Stackoverflow has made my life a lot easier. They've saved me an immense amount of time over the years, and for that I have to say a big thank you. I remember what it was like hunting for answers before they existed. Almost reminds me of what it was like switching to Google from AltaVista.

The site has some flaws of course, as others have pointed out, but it's leaps and bounds above every other Q&A site in their segment.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#23

Post by adventured »

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?

Experts Exchange has betrayed their users / community numerous times over the years in experimenting with how to make money. So far I would say that Stack Overflow has done a great job of not compromising their mission in the name of revenue. That's a very difficult balancing act.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#25

Post by gus_massa »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #2

I used to be a heavy stackoverflow user in the early days, and I have enough karma to put me in the moderator tier now. However, I don't use the site much anymore, except for getting questions answered. In a way I suppose that's a testament to the fact that the site still works, and works well. They solved most of the problem they set out to solve originally, which is a major achievement. Nevertheless, I still have a…

Most of that is by design. It was designed as a questions-answer site, to collect every question of every programming language and provide the correct answer. It was not designed as a forum, where you go to talk with friends. The problem is what to do when all the questions had been answered?

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#26

Post by dasil003 »

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?

The big reason is the purpose was to create the best Q&A site for programmers (Quora is better than most Stack Exchange sites, just not Stack Overflow) and there was a relentless focus from the very beginning on making that happen. Compare to Expert's Exchange where the whole thing is designed like a liquidation sale flyer. It feels like a cheap commercialization of knowledge that is freely shared and thus feels exploitative, like it runs directly against the hacker ethos that enabled it to collect that information. Stack Overflow is very clearly designed by programmers to help programmers, and it was seeded with a great community to start it off on the right foot.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#27

Post by UnfalseDesign »

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.

The limitation, though annoying, is there for a few reasons. One being that it discourages users from making quick edits just for the reputation or badge. I have seen many users get more wrapped up in getting a badge than actually using the site as a means to help their fellow users.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#28

Post by bigiain »

gus_massa wrote: post #25
InclinedPlane wrote: post #2

I used to be a heavy stackoverflow user in the early days, and I have enough karma to put me in the moderator tier now. However, I don't use the site much anymore, except for getting questions answered. In a way I suppose that's a testament to the fact that the site still works, and works well. They solved most of the problem they set out to solve originally, which is a major achievement. Nevertheless, I still have a…

Most of that is by design. It was designed as a questions-answer site, to collect every question of every programming language and provide the correct answer. It was not designed as a forum, where you go to talk with friends. The problem is what to do when all the questions had been answered?

Cynical me thinks "it's time to _monetize!_"

How long till it follows expert sexchange.com's model?

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#29

Post by UnfalseDesign »

chrisvineup wrote: post #10

I do love SO, but the moderation can be really hard to deal with when you aren't sure how to articulate your question.

It is somewhat like reading a magazine before you actually submit an article for publication. Many new users don't bother reading through some of the upvoted questions in the category they are seeking help on and hence never bother understanding what makes a good question. However, it is true that some of the users are brutal towards new users and downvote and move on without ever going back to see if the question was ever improved. It takes an even understanding on both sides to provide a meaningful -- and sometimes enlightening -- experience.

Re: Five Years of Stackoverflow.com

#30

Post by stinos »

Been a member for over 3 years I still think it's the one and only. Like the usenet groups for programming used to be, but better organized. While the moderation of quesitions works very well, which is what probably makes it as good, there's two things that bothers me: the vast amount of questions that shouldn't be there but don't reach the close vote threshold. Not a problem per se, but annoying when searching sometimes, and more annoying when you're like "hey lets review some and see there's 55k of such questions" :] Second, sometimes it doesn't feel fair. I've ansered questions with one-liners that are a no-brainer and gained massive amounts of rep for it, while I've also answered questions spending more than an hour and trying to pass on some deeper knowledge about a large topic and got only an accepted answer, not even knowing if it really helped the author.
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