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

My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

embeddedrelated.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 239 posts

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#171

Post by bigger_cheese »

teh_klev wrote: post #53

I would like to defend Tim Post's meta-answer because it's quoted out of context. The OP's question was about the reduction in quality of questions being asked on SO, which I myself have noticed in my particular area of expertise [0]. I don't think Tim comes off as "elitist"/"cool kids" (also Tim is genuinely a really nice person, not at all uppity or "elitist" [1]). There is a rising deluge of utterly shit quality q…

I have noticed the same thing I do not visit the site all that often I usually check it once a fortnight or so in my lunch break. I tend to browse the "Linux" section. Everytime I visit it feels like Deja-Vu the same questions keep appearing, there will almost always be questions like "How can I get my program to run as a daemon?", "Why am I seeing Zombie processes?" and some variation on "How can I get the PID of my running process?".

Quite a lot of questions seem to have a negative score or are locked for seemingly no good reason and the ones that aren't are questions like the above that are easily googleable.

A lot of the time it feels like the person asking the question hasn't bothered to a) read man page or b) do a google search beforehand or they lack basic knowledge about Linux - such as what the /proc file system is for.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#172

Post by O____________O »

ToastyMallows wrote: post #116
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.

That's a good point, and an idea I hadn't thought of.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#173

Post by greggman »

I really wish there were better options on SO for dealing with "offtopic" questions

Sometimes a question seems like someone is just asking for an answer, like posting their homework, and hasn't tried anything or even googled at all for help. Maybe those questions should be closed and deleted with prejudice but if I was giving the benefit of the doubt I'd prefer to move them to "pergatory.stackoverflow.com". I guess that's what they are by closing them but.

But, often there are noob questions that are similarly frustrating but giving the person the benefit of the doubt maybe they really don't know where to start. If wish I could click a button that said [Move to noob.stackoverflow.com] or something like that where people with more patience or that just like helping noobs could be more helpful.

I also wish it was easier and required when marking as duplicate to provide a link to the duplicate.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#174

Post by reitanqild »

aaronchall wrote: post #119
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.

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.

> What you really need are more voters voting. Not sure how you get there, though.

Or maybe, as I have already answered ircmaxell, Stack Overflow could raise the bar for asking questions ever so slightly from being the one thing you can do without rep?

If torrents of new users asking stupid questions are the biggest problem on the site this seems like a first obvious step.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#175

Post by sergiotapia »

jusben1369 wrote: post #32
_almosnow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I did ask, strange you didn't notice that since it's right there in the link you posted. And yeah, you are right, I used the word 'cunt' after they started behaving like that, I'm sorry if that scared you; I did it because I was really pissed off by all their bs. Have you ever felt annoyed some time in your life? Apparently not, lucky you.

Good Lord. The sense of entitlement it takes to use language like that and _then_ post it here and expect people will be supportive of your argument. This is a side topic but one I see often. I think it's very important that Europeans/UK/Aussie's realize the "c word" is one of the few swear words that doesn't travel well in the US. It's never used here and is extremely vulgar. So I would not use it on the web unless…

The web is global, deal with it.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#176

Post by worldsayshi »

i3arnon wrote: post #126
gnarbarian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than outright closing a question it would be more productive if moderators could move the question to the forum it belongs. This type of question is quite common and if the powers that be have decreed that it doesn't belong in the general stack overflow area then a place for these questions should be created.

What forum is that? SO doesn't have forums AFAIK, only questions and answers.

I would assume that previous poster was referring to stackexchange forum other than stackoverflow.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#177

Post by teh_klev »

ircmaxell wrote: post #161
teh_klev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PHP chat room is/was quite bad in that respect and there's a small handful of particularly caustic individuals who go out of their way to spread unpleasantness for less well informed users.

That's absolutely a valid experience. There are plenty of others who've had positive experiences as well. And those "caustic individuals" have a LOT to share if you're willing to engage in an open and healthy way.

Sure, but they don't have to be caustic and quite so unpleasant in the chat room.

I am outing, specifically, Terenko. In all my years as a forum contributor/mod I don't think I've encountered such a poisonous dick as that person.

I know you do a lot of good work for the PHP community, along with Gordon and many others, but, my friend terenko is truly a knob end and sadly encourages others who are up and coming PHP debutants to behave the same.

It really made me weep as a diamond mod why you guys tolerated his snide comments and activities.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#178

Post by ircmaxell »

reitanqild wrote: post #162
ircmaxell wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been discussed time and time again: - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/256501/338665 - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271899/338665 - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/278092/338665 - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/285471/338665 Etc... And especially: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120275/is-asking-oth... Basically, there's nothing wrong with the concept, unless it's used incorrectly. So if someone c…

And still the audience here find it interesting. Happily this isn't Stack Overflow and this discussion hasn't been closed yet just because a few admins didn't think think it would fit within "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups." Edit: to clarify - there are a number of reasons why this topic is interesting to quite a few of us[1]. Here are two: * the usabil…

That's definitely valid. However, in the vast majority of cases where someone complains about CV-PLS in my experience, it's because they had their question closed.

For example: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158712/147370

Look in this very thread. You have people saying it's a horrible practice. Yet nobody really saying what should be done instead.

The fact of the matter is that there is a huge problem on SO of under-moderation. Over 11,000 questions have >=1 closevote right now. CV-PLS is one technique that the community has found effective in keeping the site searchable and with good content.

The people who are against it, I'd love to hear ideas on other effective methods. But to say it should be forbidden is a bit short-sighted.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#179

Post by ircmaxell »

teh_klev wrote: post #177
ircmaxell wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely a valid experience. There are plenty of others who've had positive experiences as well. And those "caustic individuals" have a LOT to share if you're willing to engage in an open and healthy way.

Sure, but they don't have to be caustic and quite so unpleasant in the chat room. I am outing, specifically, Terenko. In all my years as a forum contributor/mod I don't think I've encountered such a poisonous dick as that person. I know you do a lot of good work for the PHP community, along with Gordon and many others, but, my friend terenko is truly a knob end and sadly encourages others who are up and coming PHP de…

Why did we tolerate it? Because we weren't given the tools to do anything about it. We couldn't kick or ban people. We couldn't moderate our own room. All we (as owners) could do was move messages or flag. We got yelled at every time we flagged something, so we learned to live with it. The only other option we had was to leave (which many users did, even leaders).

Today, we have the ability to kick-ban. Awesome. But he's also calmed down a lot. And is seen as a resource.

It's gotten a lot better over the years, but there is still work to be done in there. But now we're starting to get the tools to handle it. Which is awesome.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#180

Post by reitanqild »

ircmaxell wrote: post #178
reitanqild wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still the audience here find it interesting. Happily this isn't Stack Overflow and this discussion hasn't been closed yet just because a few admins didn't think think it would fit within "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups." Edit: to clarify - there are a number of reasons why this topic is interesting to quite a few of us[1]. Here are two: * the usabil…

That's definitely valid. However, in the vast majority of cases where someone complains about CV-PLS in my experience, it's because they had their question closed. For example: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158712/147370 Look in this very thread. You have people saying it's a horrible practice. Yet nobody really saying what should be done instead. The fact of the matter is that there is a huge problem on SO of unde…

> The people who are against it, I'd love to hear ideas on other effective methods. But to say it should be forbidden is a bit short-sighted.

As I mentioned earlier: If this is the biggest problem the raise the bar for asking questions.

Today the site practically begs new users to ask questions as it is one of a few options that are always available for unexperienced users.

Post reply on HN