StackOverflow modding itself out of existence • Hacker News Board

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#111

Post by yen223 » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #14

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.

Perhaps for C# that is the case, but there are a lot of good questions for other desktop languages that are being deleted or removed because they're 'duplicate questions', even though the so-called 'duplicates' were asking completely different things.

It's pretty decent for Python.

I hate to be contrarian, but I have not experienced much of the negatives people are complaining about here. StackOverflow has been a fantastic resource in my programming career.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#112

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

MCRed wrote: post #6

Stack Overflow incentivizes bad behavior by its users. For instance, I've had questions marked as duplicates with links to entirely other questions... but the person who had the right answer for that other question, along with others on the point gravy train for it were the ones who voted to close my question. Appealing after adding additional info showing how the questions were different didn't improve anything as t…

> You cannot have a community generated content site with community moderation where bad behavior is incentivized and rewarded.

Jeff Atwood used to think very deeply about this type of thing, the nuances of human behavior. It seems to me he no longer has the time or interest, and no one has replaced him in that crucially important role.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#113

Post by detaro » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #87

detaro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it seems like there is a big split in what people expect AND get from SO. I'll try to remember next time I come across such a case to save the link to have examples ready when it comes up again, but I guess I just search more for non-specific questions? Or maybe remember them more, because they take more time and result in more material read than specific ones with one right solution that I quickly find and move…

This makes me wonder if it's just a disconnect in the product that SO is providing - SO is consistently a very useful, high-quality product for me (and I say that as someone who is certainly not googling basic JQuery questions), but I hear this critique often enough that I wonder if there is some major market segment that SO is just completely failing to serve. I don't think that SO is a bad tool, but it may well be…

I think they've made pretty clear that they want to be a place for "simple" fact-based Q&A things and not a discussion forum, not a community (in the sense that people know each other and interact on a personal bases) and that is the product they offer, and it is great.

The issue I see is that they have been so successful that now they are THE place where you'll find someone capable of helping you.

And then you have a question where you are sure that you could get great input from the expertise assembled on SO, but you aren't supposed to use it because the question has the wrong format. And there is no other (obvious) place to get the answer, because SO has all the mindshare, because they cover most questions.

A site that only caters to "questions not applicable to SO" would have a very weird scope, and a general site has to compete with SO for the SO-type questions, which is hard to do because SO does those very well.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#114

Post by superbatfish » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

StackOverflow took on a tough challenge in getting its members to self-curate the body of questions on the site. They were smart to recognize that "more isn't always better", and thus gave moderators an incentive to identify and close off-topic questions.

There's nothing wrong with that idea, they just have a bug in the implementation. Somehow they've incentivized the closing of good questions that are frequently on-topic.

Here's an example of a plainly on-topic-yet-closed question that annoyed me recently: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2847655/find-threads-runn...

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#115

Post by DCoder » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

superbatfish wrote: post #114

StackOverflow took on a tough challenge in getting its members to self-curate the body of questions on the site. They were smart to recognize that "more isn't always better", and thus gave moderators an incentive to identify and close off-topic questions. There's nothing wrong with that idea, they just have a bug in the implementation. Somehow they've incentivized the closing of good questions that are frequently on-…

It does happen, but you picked a bad example. Read the close reason: " Questions about general computing hardware and software are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used primarily for programming. "

StackOverflow is for programming questions. That question, as it was formulated, is not about programming. It belongs on either Unix&Linux or Super User instead.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#116

Post by DCoder » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

jtwebman wrote: post #110

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.

Link-only answers are discouraged on StackOverflow - the mods will ask you to copy the relevant information into the answer so that it can be useful even without following the external link. The justification about "the sites change" goes both ways.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#117

Post by cheald » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #113

cheald wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder if it's just a disconnect in the product that SO is providing - SO is consistently a very useful, high-quality product for me (and I say that as someone who is certainly not googling basic JQuery questions), but I hear this critique often enough that I wonder if there is some major market segment that SO is just completely failing to serve. I don't think that SO is a bad tool, but it may well be…

I think they've made pretty clear that they want to be a place for "simple" fact-based Q&A things and not a discussion forum, not a community (in the sense that people know each other and interact on a personal bases) and that is the product they offer, and it is great. The issue I see is that they have been so successful that now they are THE place where you'll find someone capable of helping you. And then you have…

FWIW, I can highly recommend project mailing lists and IRC channels as a great way to tap into discussion-based knowledge and expertise for various things. I find I generally tend to do most of my free-form discussion in those contexts, and augment with SO serving as an index of quick solutions to common problems.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#118

Post by fao_ » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #105

jonahx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with both this post and its parent.

I would disagree with it being called 'laws', because in the general sense laws can be disobeyed on occasion, and regularily are (extremely minor traffic laws, such as using the horn while stopped, anti-tailgating laws, etc. are routinely broken here in the UK -- I don't condone it, but it does happen quite a lot). In some cases police have the discretion to ignore offences of some extremely minor laws in favour of using that time instead to catch proper criminals. Hence to me at least, that does not convey the right mannerisms.

Perhaps 'sacrosanct law' would be a better alternative? :D

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#119

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

67726e wrote: post #15

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.

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…

SO should be modified to provide both a correct answer and a low latency answer, they aren't necessarily the same thing, nor should award points in a winner-take-all manner. The person who puts in a day should get rewarded, the person who edits for grammar and clarity should get rewarded. In effect, it is a group of people solving a problem where only one gets a payout. That is what is broken.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#120

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

dep_b wrote: post #9

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.

SO started out with a big C# community because the people that built it were C# developers. And perhaps the C# community didn't really have a very good place to go to before.

I think MS also paid people to actively answer questions there to increase C# penetration beyond internal corporate jobs. Great marketing strategy.