Under "poor pedagogy" the author explains the "give a man a fish" problem on Stack Overflow, then goes on to explain that giving fish is how he gained most of his reputation. How about being part of the solution instead of part of the problem? No one is stopping you from teaching people how to fish.
Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
11–20 of 243 posts
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#12>It's possible because I did what many of the people whose questions I answered (and got points for) should have done for themselves: I saw a simple Java question, hit Google, read briefly, then synthesized an original answer.
I had a very similar experience. I got the most points (3 times as many as any other question I ever answered) from showing how to perform the most basic task in ckEditor, I library I had not used before or since answering.
On the other hand, I would often spend hours getting a demo to work to demonstrate a concept that answered the person's unanswered question and writing a detailed explanation... then nothing. No response. Out of spite, I started deleting all my answers that were not accepted and had no upvotes.
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#13Unlike the OP who was playing the Stack Overflow game, I use SO like a typical programmer: I type my question into Google which often returns results from Stack Overflow. Sometimes I'll come across an unanswered question or one with a better answer, so I'll submit an answer. If I can't figure something out after a few hours of trying, I'll ask the question on SO.
Such questions and answers represent hours of effort on my part. That's fine -- I needed to spend most of those hours for my work anyways, but crafting a good answer does add a significant amount of time. They usually don't result in many points: they're pretty obscure. But often it's the only place on the interwebs where the question is answered.
But the answer that has earned me the most points is a stupid throwaway CSS answer that's technically wrong: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1817792/css-previous-sibl...
What does really annoy me are the badges. I've got a bunch of necromancer badges, which I'm proud of. But the value of those badges is really degraded by cheap silver and gold badges, such as yearling.
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#14I got curious about something: What are then the OP's favorite languages since he hates Java and C++?
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#15I want to tell the OP to stop being such a buzz-kill, but the high-scoring example he posts is quite comical ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2387218/what-does-this-li... ). It seems that most of the OP's angst are over the relatively simplistic points system. In his Java ternary example, perhaps it could be counterbalanced with the upvotes you receive and the worthiness of the question (as marked by stars and up…
I think "the worthiness of the question" is proxied by the upvotes on the answer.
Imagine two good answers, one on an advanced question and one on a very basic one. The basic answer gets way more upvotes. Is that unfair? It helped a lot more people, apparently, which is the goal of the site. It more readily demonstrates that the author creates content that helps a lot of people, which is the goal of points.
As long as you don't imagine that more points means more knowledge, I don't see the issue.
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#16I don't really post on StackOverflow - people have tended on the rude side a little more than should be the norm there from my experience. I use IRC heavily though for my programming help needs. SO is nice for its searchability though, and how many solutions to problems are posted there. It has its utility.
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#17> There's an old cliché in English: give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. StackOverflow is filled to the brim with people giving fishes.
This hits the nail on the head, imo. While the SO system is (presumably) meant to reward "karma" based on the quality of answers, more often than not it seems that quantity is just as important. And it's not hard to see why this is the case -- there's an inherent risk in typing a well thought-out (read: time consuming and potentially long) answer, when a simple one-liner is probably all the questioner is really seeking.
On the other hand, maybe that's what StackOverflow is really for -- getting things done, NOW. Even if that "getting things done" answer is just a band-aid, and the questioner hasn't really learned anything.
In my experience, people who find themselves applying band-aid after band-aid to their code (myself included) rarely connect the dots all the way back and realize that all their subsequent problems were largely due to their initial "fix".
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#18i left so a month ago, and while i agree with one point here (creeping authoriarianism) i am completely opposed to "teach a man to fish".
for me, as a professional programmer, that site is useful because it has direct, simple answers.
but it seems to have been taken over by students who are resentful that there should be simple answers without some evidence of suffering (it really seems to be that).
why should i have to explain "what i have already done" to a bunch of schoolkids when all i want is for someone who has solved this issue before to post the right answer so i can get on with life?
i'm an adult. i can make my own decisions about when i learn and when i want an answer. i don't need someone else's priorities - from a completely different context, apparently motivated by jealousy over grades - shoved down my throat.
but anyway, while that bugged me, it was the dismissive mods that finally drove me away (at 19k points).
(am i the only one that thinks that good questions - interesting ones - are no longer getting quality answers because people that could have answered them have left? and that they're no longer being asked as a consequence? the time when i wrote answers like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7076349/is-there-a-good-w... has long, long passed)
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#19Why I still contribute to SO:
- I've gotten a lot of help there
- It's nice to help other people in return
- Any answer I put there will be available via Google in 5 minutes, so I can definitely reference it myself in the future. (I'll even ask and answer questions I just figured out so that I can find them later.)
Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow
#20While it is true that simple answers get a lot of credit, it is also true that most common questions have simple answers. Sure a bit of Googling may get you the answer but sometimes it takes an experienced user to find a Google answer. Just knowing the right thing to search for requires some skill. Dead obvious questions that can be easily Googled or are repeats are flagged and often removed.
Sure in an ideal world someone answering that very specific question that is difficult to answer would get more credit but it is not perfect. That is also why the bounty system exists because someone can have a specific hard to answer question that would be very beneficial to them while not many others would be helped and thus upvote. So that person can offer a bounty.