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My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

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Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#201

Post by aaronchall »

mlitchard wrote: post #183
speeder wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that most new users became new users to ask questions, including users that are not high rep veterans. I think that if you do what you propose, the site will just freeze in terms of user base.

Would it be reasonable to have an invitation from a person with x reputation bump someone up to the required rep to ask questions? One could spend time in meta, and the chat room where people could get to know them. For the well-intended but naive, this would encourage getting to know the site and expectations of the culture. For the people who are just a bad fit, they could be filtered with minimal effort. Would the…

I've given this some consideration, but they have put the barrier to entry to the chat feature above a minimal reputation ranking.

One can easily overcome that with ten skillful edits, 2 upvotes (or 1 upvote and an accept) on an answer, or 4 upvotes on a question (20 rep is required for chat).

It's fairly easy for an individual to get into the chat, if they want.

That barrier does keep spammers from flooding the chat, though. And if you consider it an interview process, that's what the earning of reputation points accomplishes, and I'd argue it does so rather elegantly.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#202

Post by alecco »

tptacek wrote: post #200
alecco wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the mods, it's not them but users clicking the report button. If so, it's abused and any story that is negative for any YC/HN related company, against bad social norms in tech hubs, denouncing anti-privacy issues at Google/Faceboo, talking against celebrities like Bill Gates, or anything about NSA tends to go quickly below the fold and mostly ignored. The ranking system is gamed. I used to come here seve…

There is a huge availability bias at work here. You don't notice the stories that you don't like getting flagged off the site, but you naturally do notice when it happens to stories you like. For at least some of these topics, Occam's Razor suggests it's the bias that's stinging you, not gamesmanship. What plausible gaming could be at work on behalf of Bill Gates? For others, I have a really hard time believing that…

Availability bias? A major story about a chain of suicides of entrepreneurs on a Las Vegas tech hub was moved below the fold in spite of deserving the top position. And it quickly went to page 2 after that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8404207

There were many HN stories promoting that place for a good while. But when things go sour HN looks the other way.

Dropbox problem story first moved below the fold, then deleted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568267

Those are just 2 examples. I'm not all day on the site, so I very likely miss most of these cases. This is just a tip of an iceberg.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#203

Post by alecco »

reitanqild wrote: post #160
alecco wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the mods, it's not them but users clicking the report button. If so, it's abused and any story that is negative for any YC/HN related company, against bad social norms in tech hubs, denouncing anti-privacy issues at Google/Faceboo, talking against celebrities like Bill Gates, or anything about NSA tends to go quickly below the fold and mostly ignored. The ranking system is gamed. I used to come here seve…

> against bad social norms in tech hubs, denouncing anti-privacy issues at Google/Faceboo, talking against celebrities like Bill Gates, or anything about NSA tends to go quickly below the fold and mostly ignored. The ranking system is gamed. Interesting. I usually find the mix that hits the front page about perfect. A few times I have seen what I consider interesting topics being flagged of after an initial boost but…

I'm not talking about repetitive insignificant content. I'm talking about original and relevant content that is censored or allowed to be censored by small groups of users with financial/personal stakes.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#204

Post by angersock »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #185
angersock wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is your job affected by voting rings on SO? I'm not challenging you, just asking for more clarification because I don't follow and am curious!

So, GP suggested that the behavior of people in the chats was to basically rally to close questions, and likened it to voting rings on HN (which are, I believe, algorithmically regulated or at least are supposed to be).

My issue is that SO is a dominating first-hit for lots of technical questions, and that by setting themselves into that position they kind of owe it to the community to make sure they don't have jerks (via voting rings or any such analogue) screwing up the quality of their results.

For example, I've searched for "what is the best x for y?" or "what are the tradeoffs for x vs y", and had even (a long time ago) contributed answers to similar questions in their game development exchange--however, they (or their users) have decided that there is no value whatsoever in fielding questions of that variety.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#205

Post by jusben1369 »

sergiotapia wrote: post #175
jusben1369 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Web is indeed global which is my point. The word in question has a very different meaning so best not to use it unless you're prepared for the fallout.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#206

Post by jason_s »

Shog9 wrote: post #55
jasode wrote: post #9

To me, I see this strange contradiction in how stackoverflow is evolving. Joel Spolsky (one of the founders) gave a very interesting presentation[1] in 2009. The key takeaway I've always remembered from his comments was the idea of "anthropology". The science of trying to really understand human behavior and make the website amplify good communities. What I see 6 years later is a lot of " why is this question closed…

It's both. The former is inevitable - most people, like the author of this article, spend the bulk of their time up-front: post a lot of answers, enjoy the experience, get tired of it, pull back to only answering the occasional post that piques their interest. So there's a fairly constant fall-off of activity from people who've previously posted a lot. And this gets worse when these folks find fewer questions that in…

>most people, like the author of this article, spend the bulk of their time up-front: post a lot of answers, enjoy the experience, get tired of it, pull back to only answering the occasional post that piques their interest.

I didn't get tired of answering the questions, even the not-so-great ones from low-rep users; I got tired of putting lots of energy into a website with a culture I no longer agreed with.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#207

Post by code_duck »

reitanqild wrote: post #155
Latty wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that happens, you revert the changes. Editing to change the nature of the question is definitely not a valid edit. If people do it consistently, a mod should intervene.

Problem is it is the mods who do it, isn't it. New users cannot edit questions?

New users can make suggested edits, which are sent into a moderation queue before being applied. Once you reach a certain level of reputation (2000), you can edit other users' content without moderation.

http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/edit

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#208

Post by Falkon1313 »

Sounds like early Wikipedia. It started out fun - people from all over working together and helping each other out to create something that was going to change the world. My contributions may not have been the best quality possible, but others would edit or offer suggestions for improvement. Sometimes others would start something and get stuck, and I could offer an edit or suggestion to get them going again. To see the entries grow and improve, and be a part of a group helping each other to become better and achieve more, was one of the great things about it. Together, we made something from nothing.

Of course, it wasn't long before obnoxious pedantic tyrants swarmed in and took over, reveling in their chance to get a cheap power trip. Volunteering to contribute wasn't fun under a constant barrage of rudeness from people who contributed nothing and couldn't even be bothered to offer alternatives or suggestions while insulting and deleting other people's contributions.

It would be an interesting case study for someone to find out how Wikipedia survives despite the best efforts of its own moderators to destroy it.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#209

Post by code_duck »

stickperson wrote: post #64

I've been using IRC to ask questions instead of Stack Overflow for some time now. Each room has its own character, but I've found people are generally very helpful.

It depends, I suppose. The last time I used IRC in a technical help channel, someone asked for a simple way to open a bare X screen. I gave the answer I knew, which I got from a mandrake system script. It has worked for me for years on Debian and Ubuntu:

    xinit -- /usr/bin/X :1
And right away, a group of 3-4 clueless people or trolls told the asker that I was attempting to harm their system and not to listen to me. It wasn't very productive or fun.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#210

Post by kiruwa »

monksy wrote: post #146
sejje wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: your position is that SO needs moderators who don't downvote "cunt" because it's not offensive enough? Anyway, doesn't matter--throwing insults, weak or strong, deserves downvotes. I don't understand why you're defending his right to be a complete asshat on a moderated forum. It's only just barely even related to the topic at hand, since he earned his downvotes.

Really they don't even need to downvote at all, it'll get downvoted (as it probably did) by others. Asshats are going to exist regardless.

Yeah... it really shouldn't have been downvoted.

Should have just been purged.

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