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StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

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Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#71

Post by Retra »

christianmann wrote: post #48
scrollaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mere reader and non-user of SO, does it matter if the question was closed? The answer's still there, googlable, and it still gets updated regularly, no?

It suggests that this is not the ideal sort of question for the site, and that any future attempts at similar questions may be met with greater resistance. Additionally, if the relevant information ever changes, no new answers can be submitted.

There is a lot of linking to other SO answers, so if someone asks a question about new information, you can still refer to closed questions and expound on them.

I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it's an option.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#72

Post by Turing_Machine »

christianmann wrote: post #48
scrollaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mere reader and non-user of SO, does it matter if the question was closed? The answer's still there, googlable, and it still gets updated regularly, no?

It suggests that this is not the ideal sort of question for the site, and that any future attempts at similar questions may be met with greater resistance. Additionally, if the relevant information ever changes, no new answers can be submitted.

If SO really feels these questions are unworthy, they should add a noindex tag to the result and give up the Google juice.

Something tells me that's never going to happen, though.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#73

Post by stcredzero »

lnanek2 wrote: post #36
elorant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, as a C# developer I find tons of useful information there especially in advanced issues. And the discussion is also useful because they present solutions from different angles. Perhaps SO is better suited for those on the Desktop frontier rather than mobile or web development.

The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions. So if you are getting discussion, you are actually just experiencing the common case of getting your needs addressed before the terrible moderation kicks in and closes good content.

The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions.

That's not very smart. Sometimes, even a technical problem's context can be complicated enough to merit several different "good" answers, depending on other factors.

Maybe someone should formulate a law -- over time, any site's moderation starts to suck. There are factors involved with this, such as depletion of low-hanging fruit, popularity drawing more attention from spammers, and increasing workload of moderators.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#74

Post by stcredzero »

jlynn wrote: post #70
67726e wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. In the past two years or so, I've answered almost every one of my own answers after an additional day or two of work. Generally, when I think I've exhausted all leads on solving a problem I'll distill everything down into the smallest reproducible setup, do a detailed write-up, and list all what I've done. At best I might get a token up-vote from someone who pities me, but I never get any real attention. There…

This leaves me wondering how you might a site like SO that incentivizes participation and quality answers, but disincentivizes poaching and incomplete first answers. Could you build an incentive strategy and reputation system around collaborative answers?

What if incomplete first answers could be "merged" with better, more complete, answers, with the better answer getting the karma from the incomplete one?

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#75

Post by jonahx »

JamesBarney wrote: post #43
ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

The problem is there is an incredible amount of overlap between "too broad" and "extremely useful to large number of people".

Prioritizing the latter over the former solves a large part of SO's overmodding problems.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#76

Post by codinghorror »

DanBC wrote: post #50
scrollaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mere reader and non-user of SO, does it matter if the question was closed? The answer's still there, googlable, and it still gets updated regularly, no?

SO incentivises some stuff. You ask a question and you get points if other people upvote your question. You answer a question and you get points if someone upvotes your answer. You can't vote on closed questions or answers to closed questions. A question can't just be closed. There needs to be a reason to close it. "This question is a duplicate of this other question" is frequently used. Often the questions are simil…

Incorrect, you can vote on closed questions. You just can't add new answers.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#77

Post by codinghorror »

lnanek2 wrote: post #36
elorant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, as a C# developer I find tons of useful information there especially in advanced issues. And the discussion is also useful because they present solutions from different angles. Perhaps SO is better suited for those on the Desktop frontier rather than mobile or web development.

The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions. So if you are getting discussion, you are actually just experiencing the common case of getting your needs addressed before the terrible moderation kicks in and closes good content.

This is also incorrect. There can be multiple answers, there just should not be dozens, or hundreds. The dozen case is where you start to see that the question isn't a question, but a discussion.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#78

Post by the8472 »

zackmorris wrote: post #63

I wish that StackOverflow rewarded unanswered questions. Most of my questions are open-ended without satisfactory answers because they hint at oversights or weaknesses in methodologies. I've had people comment that they refuse to answer my new questions because my answer selection rate is so low.

Maybe you should answer your own question and accept it if you arrive at a conclusion at a later point in time.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#79

Post by codinghorror »

detaro wrote: post #69
joe_the_user wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually get closed questions but the answers are often useful. I don't see why "closed" as such is problem. I could interpret it as "someone asked this question and it's been answer, we're moving on". Sometimes I find an answer on a random web forum - if the forum still permits answers, there will 20 or 100 pages to look through and the usually the only good things will be right after the question. The web at scale…

Open questions can get updated if there is new information (years later: "BTW, since version 7.3 this workaround isn't necessary anymore/this has been renamed to/...") Closed as "out of scope"/"duplicate" isn't saying "this is finished, moving on", but "don't ask this kind of thing, go somewhere else, even if you probably would get a good answer to your related question here".

Incorrect. Closed questions (and answers) can be edited even by anonymous users.

Voting is also possible on closed questions and answers.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#80

Post by iamcurious »

jameshart wrote: post #33
ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

The trouble is, the question is completely backwards. "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks. For every answer to this question, SO would be better served with a question asking "How does [Java internal or widely used library class] accomplish [thing that seems impossible in Java]" for which the answer is "It uses sun.misc.Unsafe in [this way]". Yes, t…

"I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks.

That is an extremely good and useful question. It is called the bottom up approach. The fact that it might or might not be asked generally, has nothing to do with what we should do the times it is asked.

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