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My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

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Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#111

Post by endgame »

O____________O wrote: post #73

Every time I work on a project dealing with unusual C++/Windows/COM topics, I end up hitting a high percentage of highly relevant, closed questions. The worst are the ones where I figure out the convoluted solution, but I can't answer the existing question because it's closed. So, anyone after me will suffer the same aggravation or simply give up. The worst are the ones where some new mod has trolled through four-yea…

I've given up on SO as well. Like I said last time it came up here:

> 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.

You used to be able to find stuff about ZZT-OOP on SO. Not anymore.

I don't know if you could call it an outright failure when it gets a ton of traffic, search engine cred etc., but it's certainly not a success for me.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#112

Post by eitland »

This comment at the end states it very well:

"Stack overflow has failed to understand it’s mission. Stackoverflow exists to share technology information–not to curate it. Curation should be replaced by indexing and ranking. With Stack Overflow, it is as if google had decided on a primary strategy of deleting content from its index, rather than a primary strategy of ranking good content highest."

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#113

Post by PythonicAlpha »

One of the "Soup Nazis" here:

I can understand the author. Still I found out, that my name was also in one example of "Soup Nazis" (how embarrassing!).

The point is, that with some experience, you are "invited" to review other posts. You can also see it as giving some of the benefit taken back. But as reviewer, you should take responsibility for the quality of questions and answers. And I must say, that there where many cases, where I wanted to vote differently but knew, that the system is intended differently -- the vote I made in the example was one of them. You are softly pressured by the system, to adhere to the "group standard".

I think it is a little similar to the Wikipedia problem. Wikipedia also is less attractive to authors today, than it was, because many are chilled by the rigid system. The problem is, that some system is needed for the quality, but how could you reduce the chill factor for newcomers?

I think, a little less rigid system would be beneficial to stackoverflow (as it does not need to be an encyclopedia). Some "Soup Nazi" behavior is fostered by any (more or less) rigid system. Here, more sense of understanding of the more experienced users (especially reviewers) would also be good.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#114

Post by apetresc »

jofer wrote: post #27

First off, a caveat: I'm about to complain about a lot of people I respect and rather like. I'll probably take a lot of heat for it, but it needs to be said. I feel like a lot of the closing of niche questions these days comes from the chat communities. (By "chat", I mean: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ ) There's a huge rash of "cv-pls" in the chat rooms. I don't have a problem with it in general, but the culture aro…

Is that really as widespread as you say? I looked at the last few hours of the six most popular chat rooms and control-f'ed for "cv-pls" on all of them, and found a grand total of ONE hit: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28568303/python-3-object-...

The question was closed because the asker himself answered it apologizing for posting it, the problem being something completely unrelated to the code he had pasted. Everybody agreed.

I don't think it happens that frequently.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#115

Post by apetresc »

angersock wrote: post #109
codinghorror wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will look into this. Not very different than voting rings on HN or other places. You want vote diversity.

Sure, but my job isn't affected by voting rings on HN, nor does YCombinator justify a totalitarian moderation policy by claiming to be the best google-able SEO-optimized source for whatever it is I'm questioning.

He's agreeing with you. He said they're going to look into [preventing] it.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#116

Post by ToastyMallows »

O____________O wrote: post #73

Every time I work on a project dealing with unusual C++/Windows/COM topics, I end up hitting a high percentage of highly relevant, closed questions. The worst are the ones where I figure out the convoluted solution, but I can't answer the existing question because it's closed. So, anyone after me will suffer the same aggravation or simply give up. The worst are the ones where some new mod has trolled through four-yea…

You should post a question and then answer it yourself, so that people in the future will see it.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#117

Post by jofer »

apetresc wrote: post #114
jofer wrote: post #27

First off, a caveat: I'm about to complain about a lot of people I respect and rather like. I'll probably take a lot of heat for it, but it needs to be said. I feel like a lot of the closing of niche questions these days comes from the chat communities. (By "chat", I mean: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ ) There's a huge rash of "cv-pls" in the chat rooms. I don't have a problem with it in general, but the culture aro…

Is that really as widespread as you say? I looked at the last few hours of the six most popular chat rooms and control-f'ed for "cv-pls" on all of them, and found a grand total of ONE hit: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28568303/python-3-object-... The question was closed because the asker himself answered it apologizing for posting it, the problem being something completely unrelated to the code he had pasted. E…

At least looking through sopython, with the exception of today, it's an average of 1 every ~20 minutes during "peak" hours. There are deliberately fewer today, due to the room's discussion of them this morning, but have a look at: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/search?q=[cv-pls]&Room=6&sort=... as an example (particular days before today).

The majority of those are questions that should be closed.

It's just that a lot of wheat gets thrown out along with the chaff.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#118

Post by VLM »

angersock wrote: post #108
mkremins wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get more results searching for "deletionism vs inclusionism", which seems to be the most widely used name for the debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in...

What's the current general stance on that these days I wonder? What's the prevailing wind?

The deletionists won and quite a few people refuse to participate anymore. Which leads to declining quality of article and moderation...

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#119

Post by aaronchall »

codinghorror wrote: post #104
jofer wrote: post #27

First off, a caveat: I'm about to complain about a lot of people I respect and rather like. I'll probably take a lot of heat for it, but it needs to be said. I feel like a lot of the closing of niche questions these days comes from the chat communities. (By "chat", I mean: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ ) There's a huge rash of "cv-pls" in the chat rooms. I don't have a problem with it in general, but the culture aro…

We will look into this. Not very different than voting rings on HN or other places. You want vote diversity.

I'm close to being able to close Python duplicates in a single vote when I get my Python gold badge (9/10 of the way there.) http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/254590/541136 - Also, considering the huge close vote queue, I can see why SO would want to close-close-close (or at least vote-vote-vote). What you really need are more voters voting. Not sure how you get there, though.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#120

Post by quanticle »

jobu wrote: post #42
jofer wrote: post #27

First off, a caveat: I'm about to complain about a lot of people I respect and rather like. I'll probably take a lot of heat for it, but it needs to be said. I feel like a lot of the closing of niche questions these days comes from the chat communities. (By "chat", I mean: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ ) There's a huge rash of "cv-pls" in the chat rooms. I don't have a problem with it in general, but the culture aro…

Wasn't there a similar debate over Quality vs Quantity with the Wikipedia community a few years back? It's been a while, but I remember seeing complaints about thousands of articles getting culled for being trivial (comic books, movies, anime, moderately famous people or places). It's hard to find many articles about it anymore, but I did find this from 2007: http://grouplens.org/wikipedia-quality-over-quantity/

Well, it was more than a few years ago at this point, and the long and short of it is that the deletionists won.

Gwern has a fairly thorough elegy for the (now dead) inclusionist beliefs: http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism.

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