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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

#131

I don't understand why Microsoft continues to make it's own rendering engine. I get that they need a web browser they can control and distribute with their OS, but why a rendering engine? Especially one that, in my region (SF bay area), runs natively on fewer than 1% of the dev machines I see out there. If somebody were inclined to test their site for IE they'd most likely have to go through the hassle of setting up…

The browser, in particular the render engine, will be more than only a simple browser. MS focus on Webdevelopment and they will transform all their products to web and later the OS too (Windows Phone demonstrates this).

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#132

Wow this is very surprising, glad to see Microsoft moving more into the commoners domain. Not a big SO user, but what would prevent them from getting IE.stackoverflow.com?

Because web development questions that have to do with IE are not off-topic on SO. Why would they need an own site? There is no csharp.SE, java.SE, android-dev.SE, etc. either.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#133
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…

[internet-explorer] [internet-explorer-{version}]

[google-chrome] [google-chrome-{version}] [google-chrome-extensions] (4,194 questions) [Chromium] (893 questions) + Chrome on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Chrome also contains extensions, that would explain why there are a lot of more questions about "Chrome" + i think more tech-savaged people prefer Chrome to IE (because of dev tools), so SO wouldn't be a good reference for an objective market share view.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#135
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?

There once was a site named "crap overflow" doing smth like that, I think (or may be smth different, not sure), pity it got closed long ago.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#136
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, in the past few years I've found that all of the most useful Stack Overflow or P.SE pages I've found when Googling for information have turned out to be questions with 25+ upvotes, with answers having 50ish upvotes. And all closed as "not constructive." It's certainly staying on track, but it's worth noting that many track-related analogies are pejoratives that focus on the way that you can't steer…

I started slant.co for this. Closed question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are... Open Question: http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards...

Yeah slant is ok, but still needs more users/moderation to be as useful as SO (even despite questions getting closed). Eg I browse to http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous... and it lists 'Visual Studio default theme' as an option with one recommendation. So I signed in but I see no way to tell a mod that it doesn't belong there? (I could add a con saying 'This is not a CI' though)

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#137

I created www.NotConstructive.com a few days ago in response to some of the challenges of posting to Stack Overflow. Launch announcement: http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/notconstructiv...

A mechanism to move / capture a SE question before it gets deleted would be nice.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#138
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…

It's not just about discussion. It's a general stance positioning the perfect against the pretty good. Here's just one example: questions often get closed as duplicate after good answers start rolling in. Sometimes, the new answers are better than the old ones. The mods argue that the users should move their answers over to the old question. Or that they should improve the old answers. It's a lot of should, should, s…

It reminds me of the Wikipedia "notability" fight from early last decade. The cost of adding an extra page to Stackoverflow/Wikipedia is beyond trivial, there is no reason to restrict additions except to please these mods who want to build a tidy card catalog.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#139
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.

That's because Stack Overflow is not a discussion forum. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. Think back; remember the time when you actually got usable, timely help on a forum? Can't think of any? I didn't think so. Why? Because forums are flooded with useless, mindless crap, like users who can't be bothered to form complete sentences, who can't be bothered to do fundamental research or learn the most basic skills of…

I get useful timely help from forums all the time.

I find voting systems tend to squelch most of the idiots on technically focused forums.

Re: IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow

#140
post #88
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google moved their support to SO for one of their products. I wasn't happy with the lack of response from their support team so I posted a message saying "What the heck do I have to do to get an answer from you guys on your product?". What do you think the response from SO was? People yelled "it's volunteers here choosing to answer questions on their own time! You aren't allowed to demand a response on SO, who do yo…

Google does not do support. This has been known for a long time. They don't hire support people, just developers.

As such, SO is the best support you're ever going to get for Google products.

(Thanks for the down votes - am I wrong? I doubt it ;) )

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