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IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

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Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#41
post #7
post #2

Microsoft making a lot of moves that are starting surprise the tech community. it will take some time to convert the generation that grew up with the old closed microsoft, but slowly I believe they will have converts.

I think Stack Overflow has been getting worse and worse in recent years. Their community is outright hostile to active discussion. Only directly answerable questions are tolerated. Microsoft is (as always) a few years late to the party.

[deleted]

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#42
post #32

Given the nature and content of the specific forum, and that SO is built on a largely microsoft tech stack, moving it to SO makes sense. Still an interesting move from Microsoft. Projects hosted on github, open source, versions of the .NET runtime for mac and linux, embracing docker, node.js and avoiding getting in fights over front end frameworks... this really seems like they're trying to turn a new page.

After trying to outcompete Apple with similarly closed but way crappier controlled and closed environments (Windows 8 store and metro UI), they finally understood they had to push their own strength, that is: "developers developers developers developers".

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#43
post #30

"With over 40-thousand questions tagged "Internet Explorer", and dozens more asked every day, it has proven to be a great place to find reliable help." The announcement makes it seem that they are proud of how many questions are out there about IE issues.

Questions are the product of an engaged user base.

More like engaged developers and large user base.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#44
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a mod on a similarly hostile StackExchange site. The community has always been outright hostile to active discussion (outside of chat, the area of the site for specifically this) for all but a brief period when it was still working out what it was. The fact it's hostile to active discussion is part of what enables it to continue to be a useful resource. That's not to say Stack Overflow isn't without its problems…

Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually fantastic that they focus so narrowly on answerable questions. It's still a super useful resource, and a tight focus means it will probably be able to stay on track for a long long time. However, I wish there was a place as fantastically focused on good discussion.

Isn't Jeff Atwoods working on Discourse right now?

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#45
post #40
post #30

"With over 40-thousand questions tagged "Internet Explorer", and dozens more asked every day, it has proven to be a great place to find reliable help." The announcement makes it seem that they are proud of how many questions are out there about IE issues.

As of just now: * tag [internet-explorer]: 27,934 questions * tag [google-chrome]: 28,153 questions Since the number of questions is your metric for attributing shame, that surely imply that chrome is much worse than IE, especially considering the long legaccy and larger install base of IE vs Chrome... Or, I don't know, could it be possible that the number of questions reflects more than just how bad a piece of softw…

Chrome has by far the larger install base. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#46
post #7
post #2

Microsoft making a lot of moves that are starting surprise the tech community. it will take some time to convert the generation that grew up with the old closed microsoft, but slowly I believe they will have converts.

I think Stack Overflow has been getting worse and worse in recent years. Their community is outright hostile to active discussion. Only directly answerable questions are tolerated. Microsoft is (as always) a few years late to the party.

It may be getting worse. Not sure. There are definitely a lot of questions that have been marked "closed" or "off topic" that I would genuinely like to have seen more answers to.

The bottom line is that it's still a really important archive of software coding. I'd say 80+ percent of the issues I face in coding, someone has seen before - and therefore, a place like SO could have solved my issue with almost zero time wasted.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#47
That is one smart move by Microsoft. Microsoft definitely seems like it is heading in the right direction. I'm quite excited to see what Microsoft have under their sleeves. Faster release cycles for Internet Explorer (like any other popular browsers) would be a killer move by them, IMO.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#48
post #27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it was young you could find veteran wizards who answered all sorts of obscure things because it was fun. The last straw for me was seeing a perfectly valid question about video memory in DOS get drive-by closed by some mod.

Instead of the overzealous closing, why doesn't SO create a "Stack Overflow Opinions" Stack Exchange site where they move the offending questions?

I was one of the early mods on programmers.stackexchange.com that was kinda-sorta aimed at being just that. Some participants wanted explicitly that, where offending questions would be automatically moved to P.SE. Others wanted "anything that'd be off-topic on SO" as the key criteria for P.SE. A lot of the early questions there were pulled directly from previously-closed questions on StackOverflow. Over time, though, P.SE drifted away from that model due largely to pressure from the SO/SE leadership. It was made clear that free-form discussion was not what the StackExchange platform was for- it was for answerable questions.

And I can understand that. There exist a lot of places on the web to discuss technology (e.g., the one we’re commenting on now). Forums, IRC, blogs, and social media site have been around for a long time. They all sucked as a place to get answers. SO/SE built a better solution, and part of that was a strong anti-discussion bias. It worked, and there is now a great place on the internet to get answers instead of the endless morass of vBulletin sites. I can understand them not wanting to mess with a successful formula.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#49
post #31
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Stack Overflow has been getting worse and worse in recent years. Their community is outright hostile to active discussion. Only directly answerable questions are tolerated. Microsoft is (as always) a few years late to the party.

I agree. Considering most people with IE will be regular computer users and not power users, I can see their questions being downvoted to oblivion and their questions closed. I consider myself a power user and I already have one account that was "suspended" due to too many downvoted questions of mine.

Absolutely. Given it's a site for programming questions, I would tend to assume that end-user questions would not do well at all.

Perhaps this is why the article mentions using SO for Web Developer support and not end-user support?

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#50
post #24

Such a bad idea. The format of StackOverflow is very tightly defined. I bet all support questions don't fit that format. Then what? StackOverflow should speak up against companies doing this.

It's not as though SO hasn't been the de-facto support site for C# for years; what's one more platform? If Microsoft wants to go where folks are already asking questions on its products and answer them then more power to 'em.

We do have fairly strict guidelines for companies that want to do this however: http://stackoverflow.com/help/product-support

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