StackOverflow modding itself out of existence • Hacker News Board

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#101

Post by rancur » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

jakub_g wrote: post #25

I find myself from time to time having questions that I know would be immediately closed at SO by hyperactive mods, though probably many users, potential googlers etc. would like to find the answer to the same question. What is a good place to pose such questions? I don't believe Ask HN is one, since time-on-frontpage is very short, and if thread does not get upvotes quickly, it goes into oblivion, and also, while to…

make a blog and write about each one. bonus: webtraffic bonus2: resume item bonus3: StackOverflow aka ModOverflow commentary

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#102

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

jimhefferon wrote: post #58

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…

> The winning strategy is That's true, if you care about the points, badges, etc.

> That's true, if you care about the points, badges, etc.

Jeff Atwood has discussed this subject fairly extensively, and it does matter to a lot of people, which helps make SO more successful than it would otherwise be.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#103

Post by anonymousab » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

Why not have a 'request move' flag on SO posts? Keeping a discussion alive and having it moved to the right place seems more useful and friendly than just shutting it down.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#104

Post by mmphosis » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

I think that there is an opportunity for a different exchange like when SO started, without so many mods. I used to post on SO because it was new, exciting and there were lots of answers and comments, and most of all: activity.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#105

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #47

fao_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is pretty much the definition of "too broad". The rules should be bend when it is appropriate. I'd argue that this is one of those cases.

This is the crux of the problem. You have a mod culture of mechanistic law enforcement and an apparent passion for punishing technical rule breaking. The true rule should be: Is this question useful to people? Will other experts be able to provide useful back? The rule most in need of context-sensitive, question-specific interpretation is the closing of opinion based questions. The number of useful, highly-upvoted qu…

> The true rule should be: Is this question useful to people? Will other experts be able to provide useful back?

Exactly, and it's my understanding that this is very explicitly not the rule - moderators do not care if something is useful, they care only if it "fits the guidelines" - actually guidelines is not the right word, laws would be more accurate.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#106

Post by anonymousab » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

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…

Those are by far my favorite and most useful questions on SO.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#107

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #65

troymc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks. Either you're being sarcastic, or you have no familiarity with the history of science. The rest of your answer shows another aspect of what's wrong with Stack Overflow: zealous mods who get an idea of the perfect question into their heads, and then who go out to purge anything that doesn't conform, regardless o…

We're not talking about scientific discovery, we're talking about programmers typing questions into google. If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe but I don't know what for - let's see what Google comes up with' you are clearly up to no good. This question is useful as a place for blogposts to link to, not as a primary answer to a question you might Google. So it's 'wrong' for stackoverflow in that sense. B…

> If you start from 'I want to use sun.misc.Unsafe but I don't know what for - let's see what Google comes up with' you are clearly up to no good.

I completely disagree. If you are a new programmer who knows nothing about a certain topic/keyword/etc, googling "what would I use for" is not only not being "up to no good", it's just plain common sense and curiosity. How else might one learn about entirely new things?

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#108

Post by brudgers » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been reopened!

Anecdote is not data. StackOverflow is pretty well designed in regard to the sort of problem the author of the linked article encountered.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#109

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #93

cardiffspaceman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they decided to sprout the "sub-stack-overflows" they decided that each sub would have a topic. There is a sub for interetation of Jewish religious law, and you wouldn't post a programming question there. But if you mostly READ stackoverflow questions (on the subject of coding) and you have a question about using PGP commandline options, you're not supposed to post it on stackoverflow just because it's the one y…

Except these stupidly small pockets of further subculture division generate less and less useful answers.

Especially if you get shunted around different sites.

A question about a *nix software on an Apple device? That could be superuser, or unix, or askdifferent, or maybe the ubuntu one whatever that's called.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#110

Post by jtwebman » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

Seems like it would be much better to move the content to a blog post then. The thing with sites like StackOverflow, Facebook, and Youtube is they can change and you have little to no control over it. If you write a blog post on it and then maybe just briefly answer the question on StackOverflow with a link to your blog then you get to control the content.