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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

#51

Post by jsmeaton »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #22
meesterdude wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH i didn't know it was for active discussion. It's been purely Q&A in my experience, and I'm OK with that. I think other places, like here, or reddit, better facilitate more freeform discussion. Although I do agree I've noticed a change in community tone and tolerance that i don't like either; I think that's just the nature of it though, of any community. I don't know that it HAS to be that way, but that seems to b…

Not all questions have a single, definitive answer. Many engineering questions have trade-offs that need to be evaluated and different people have different experiences with those trade-offs. SO is a great site for the first five years of a developer's career. After that, it's value wanes as the questions become less "how do I do this?" and more "how should I do this?"

That's kind of what I found codereview and programmers stackexchanges are more useful for. I've also started drifting towards more and more mailing lists for specific discussions on particular topics, though that can be hit or miss depending on the community.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#52

Post by jsmeaton »

farmdve wrote: post #31
sajt wrote: 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.

The topics being moved to stack overflow are "web development with IE" not "IE web users".

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#53

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

solistice wrote: post #44
lelandbatey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A good online community comes from the users and the management, not the software.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#54

Post by jsmeaton »

zanny wrote: post #38
px1999 wrote: 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.

This might just be another embrace phase. They have been cyclical in the past. If they were to get a large portion of market share on their proprietary tech platforms they would certainly move to lock in their users and cripple the open platforms they are now adopting. They are only restarting the cycle because they are losing ground. And I'm not coming at this from a malicious Microsoft angle, they are just in the s…

This makes no sense to me. There is no opportunity for "extend" or "extinguish" for either StackOverflow or GitHub. Similarly, if they ended up destroying the various non-microsoft .NET implementations (mono..), it would affect the platforms they run on very minimally. There'd be a couple of pissed off people, but meh.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#55

Post by xanderstrike »

jsmeaton wrote: post #52
farmdve wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The topics being moved to stack overflow are "web development with IE" not "IE web users".

Which is basically what was happening already. Like the article says, over 40k questions are already asked and answered on stack.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#56

Post by vezzy-fnord »

arrowgunz wrote: post #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.

I don't see what's so amazing about this move. SO is well established at this point and Microsoft are just moving a small subset of their vast technical support effort to another platform.

It is an excellent publicity stunt, though. It'll certainly fuel more of the "Microsoft has turned over a new leaf" discussion, but in the grand scheme of things with all their previous announcements like open-sourcing the C# compiler and .NET platform, this is a pretty negligible move.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#57

Post by Renaud »

andreasvc wrote: post #45
Renaud wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now it does, but there was a time, at least when SO came online, when IE had a much larger install base, and older, troublesome versions of IE were still fairly popular.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#58

Post by fidz »

lelandbatey wrote: post #37
fredley wrote: 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.

What do you think about Quora?

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#59

Post by the_af »

solistice wrote: post #44
lelandbatey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Isn't Discourse software aimed at improving internet forums rather than a discussion venue in itself? It's not comparable to stackexchange, which is software plus a community.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#60

Post by xanderstrike »

hoodoof wrote: 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.

They're just formally recognizing the state of affairs as it already is. When I have a problem with IE, I don't go to whatever MS had before (I don't even know what it was), I'd Google it and the first would invariably be StackOverflow.

MS has realized that they can save money and provide effectively the same support (since nobody used their support anyway) by recognizing the third party tool.

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