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

Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

michael.richter.name

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 243 posts

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#201

Post by robryan »

orclev wrote: post #193
k-mcgrady wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "the primary motivator StackOverflow offers to users are those very internet points" I disagree. The reason I answer questions on SO is because of the incredible help I get from it form my own questions and those already answered. I think a lot of people contribute as a way of giving back and internet points don't encourage them in anyway. Sure there are people who internet points are important to but I would gues…

Some data points. Took a poll around our office (it was kind of thin because of the holiday) and of the 4 devs that responded and said they use SO, all 4 said they don't actually care about or pay attention to the points, they just use it as a source of information.

The vast majority of people using stack overflow are simply consuming questions/ answers they have arrived at via a Google search. These people won't care about points but it doesn't tell us anything about the motivations of those that are regularly answering questions.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#203

Post by protomyth »

Shog9 wrote: post #125
cruise02 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally accepted by the community at Stack Overflow that you don't edit other people's answers except to make improvements to formatting and punctuation. Changing the code should be left to the original author of the post, as that changes the meaning of the answer. The people who rejected the edit probably didn't notice that it was the same person who suggested the edit. Mike could have avoided that by just us…

FWIW, I've merged his accounts now. Probably too late, but... If he ever decides to come back, he'll be able to edit his own posts without review.

Did you fix the edit also?

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#204

Post by interpol_p »

jaydles wrote: post #69

DON'T TRUST ME BLINDLY: I work for Stack Exchange, so I'm totally biased. On the other hand, I left a lucrative career in finance for a lot less money here because I believe in what we're doing, so there's that. MOST IMPORTANTLY: I appreciate Michael's feedback, and he worries about a lot of the same things I do. Moreover, we are incredibly grateful for all he's done over the years - my honest belief is that his cont…

> No one in their right mind is spending time on the site with the empirical goal of getting points.

But isn't that exactly what Michael was doing? He was posting help for two languages he loathed — help he probably wouldn't otherwise give — just because it got him points.

In addition, the Java help he was giving was not even his own knowledge. Just a Google search.

I like that you believe points aren't the point. That's good to hear. However, my experience on SO is as Michael describes.

The most helpful answers I've posted (especially the ones that are obscure workarounds for difficult bugs) have gained very few points. Most of the time I've gotten good answers to very difficult questions is when I either: answer them myself later, or offer a bounty. People strongly react to the points.

That's not to say SO isn't helpful. It helps me five to ten times a day — I find code snippets that achieve the effect I'm looking for. I could spend more time and read the documentation, figure out the right APIs, but that's a waste of time when I develop the same understanding by reading someone else's implementation.

It would be great if the point system scaled by the complexity of the question and answer. Though that seems impossible to determine.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#205

Post by endgame »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

Please everybody, please post your "obscure" questions to Stack Overflow. Yes, it's unlikely that you'll get a good answer in any sort of useful timeframe for many of the reasons the OP lists. Sometimes you do get a good answer quickly, saving you hours of frustrating searching. But most times you will have to spend hours figuring it out yourself or you'll end up giving up. Answering your own question won't get you a…

No thanks, after seeing a perfectly valid DOS question get closed by incompetent moderation.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#206

Post by thedufer »

JimDabell wrote: post #118
cruise02 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.99% of the time, rejecting a suggested edit that changes code is the right thing to to. The competence of the reviewers isn't really the issue. The author should have just used his original account to make the edit and this would have been a non-issue.

You're using the fact that he had two accounts as an excuse, but it really doesn't hold up. This was an edit with inarguable merit. Yet users rejected it because they were using the heuristic "changes to code is bad" as a substitute for understanding the edit . That's bad moderation. If you don't understand a change, you shouldn't vote on its worthiness.

So instead of taking the one in a thousand chance that its the wrong thing to do (which, from what I've seen, is generous) they should let edits languish for days or weeks until someone sufficiently knowledgable shows up? That just doesn't sound like a worthwhile tradeoff.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#207

Post by dinkumthinkum »

I feel the same way and in a similar position as the OP.

I don't think #1 and #2 are really a big deal. #3 is the real issue. The problem is SO still follows slavishly an ideology proposed by one of its founders, I think it was not really Joel's views so much if you followed the podcast discussions. This ideology has persisted in the mega meta bureaucracy that is SO now.

Of course, it is always funny that their presumable goal was to be the destination for technical for answers but yet any question you might google and find answers on StackOverflow, the answers will, with a probability of nearly 1.0 that it will be locked, closed, and marked some kind of horrible thing that should haver appeared on the site. Good job, I guess. If SO was meant to fix the wretchedness of forums .., what fixes SO? I don't know. But with the fury that it attacked the other forms of communication I just expect more than endless "philosophizing" about "what makes a good question" and all this meta ideological nonsense. Maybe it's just me.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#208

Post by dinkumthinkum »

nathan_long wrote: post #10

StackOverflow is a machine designed to do one thing: make it so that, for any given programming question, you will get a search engine hit on their site and find a good answer quickly. And see some ads. That's really it. Everything it does is geared toward that, and it does it quite well. I have lots of SO points. A lot of them have come from answering common, basic questions. If you think points exist to prove merit…

No, you're wrong. If this was true, why is it that nearly any question you find on SO from Google is marked as "closed for not conforming to ideology or other arbitrary reason."

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#209

Post by unlimit »

I learned a lot from answering questions, I became an expert IMO on regex just by trying to answer some of the questions. My work does not expose me to a lot of interesting stuff, but reading SO does. And yes, I like my internet points. :-)

Also, I hate the new black bar at the top. It is the reason I don't visit the site that often now. It hurts my eyes. :-(

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#210

Post by itsadok »

protomyth wrote: post #203
Shog9 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I've merged his accounts now. Probably too late, but... If he ever decides to come back, he'll be able to edit his own posts without review.

Did you fix the edit also?

Somebody else already had, a month ago.

http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/11318414/4

Post reply on HN