Stack Overflow Fatigue
robertelwell.blogspot.com
Stack Overflow Fatigue
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Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#2I quit StackOverFlow once they devalued asking questions. No one on the site seemed to understand that incentivizing people to ask great questions was the most important thing. The site could have been a great starting point for learning esoteric topics like Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Grails, Scala, Lift, Go, Emacs Lisp, etc.
Basically, in general, you need one good question with 2 or 3 good answers [yes, some types are better with 100 answers].
"How do I reverse a string in Java?" "How do I reverse a string in Haskell?" "How do I ... in Haskell?"
The questions could have been linked to build a Rosetta Stone, as well as a complete beginner's guide to topic X. Actually, it could have been a guide from beginner to guru.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#3I quit StackOverFlow once they devalued asking questions. No one on the site seemed to understand that incentivizing people to ask great questions was the most important thing. The site could have been a great starting point for learning esoteric topics like Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Grails, Scala, Lift, Go, Emacs Lisp, etc. Basically, in general, you need one good question with 2 or 3 good answers [yes, some types are…
[deleted]
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#4Right on the money.
I was there in the (relatively) early days where it was exciting to ask and answer questions and contribute to the site, while scoring points(!)
Nowadays I often encounter SO links while googling things, and it has certainly become a great resource in that sense. But I rarely have a need to ask questions there anymore as everything is covered, and trying to answer questions isn't worth the effort for similar reasons.
As new technologies emerge, I can see there being waves of increased activity as those topics are explored, and if you're one of those people on the forefront of said technology I could see it bringing back some of the original charm.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#5I have become a little discouraged at how stale some of the posts have become. I have run into Google searches that give me results where the accepted answer is now wrong. Sometimes the posts have devolved into multiple new answers that are correct but have very few upvotes. In some cases the newer answers are rants on how the original answer is wrong.
I do think there is still room for SO to grow with newer technology that comes out. SO became a great resource for iPhone development and I think that can still happen.
What would probably help is a purge of some sort. I'm not sure how they would go about it but I don't think just re-tagging will work I think they need to flush some of the stuff out.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#6No matter what they had done the luster would have worn off. The badge system just makes the whoring and the impossibility of ever attaining certain badges more obvious.
Every online community must go through a maturation process where excitement wanes and moderation waxes. At some point the curation of content becomes of primary importance.
Arguably they could have built a longer lasting community with Wikipedia style participation, but it certainly wouldn't have grown as fast, and maybe never would have gotten traction at all, so it's hard to make a retroactive critique.
In any case though, Stack Overflow still has a fundamentally a great user experience. It's not a growth business, but there will always be new tech, and I don't see the community drying up.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#7No matter what they had done the luster would have worn off. The badge system just makes the whoring and the impossibility of ever attaining certain badges more obvious. Every online community must go through a maturation process where excitement wanes and moderation waxes. At some point the curation of content becomes of primary importance. Arguably they could have built a longer lasting community with Wikipedia sty…
No matter what they had done the luster would have worn off.
I'm not sure this is necessarily the case, because, as you write:
At some point the curation of content becomes of primary importance.
Which is why they need to find a way to build an incentive system that properly rewards "Wikipedia-style participation".
That's a tough nut to crack, but I certainly hope that they've got some folks working on it, now that they've got the VC money in place.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#8I have become a little discouraged at how stale some of the posts have become. I have run into Google searches that give me results where the accepted answer is now wrong. Sometimes the posts have devolved into multiple new answers that are correct but have very few upvotes. In some cases the newer answers are rants on how the original answer is wrong. I do think there is still room for SO to grow with newer technolo…
I don't think a purge would get to the root of the problem, which is an incentive system that rewards adding early answers, rather than editing existing answers.
One of Joel's stated goals in the early days was that the answers would converge, Wikipedia-like, toward some Platonic ideal-- but the system in place doesn't encourage that.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#9I have become a little discouraged at how stale some of the posts have become. I have run into Google searches that give me results where the accepted answer is now wrong. Sometimes the posts have devolved into multiple new answers that are correct but have very few upvotes. In some cases the newer answers are rants on how the original answer is wrong. I do think there is still room for SO to grow with newer technolo…
Yep, it's a huge problem: the pervasive rating system constantly needs fresh eyes on things to keep it accurate, so old questions don't get updated votes. To compound that, if you're a newcomer arriving via Google, you can't down vote.
So you, the freshest pair of eyes on the page, can see an out-of-date error, but can't correct it or comment on it. All you can do is leave another answer, which is doomed to sit at 0 votes.
Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue
#10I find that Google is a great way to access the information on Stack Overflow, even as a participating member of the community. When I'm looking for an answer to a question, often a Google search will return the Stack Overflow post most relevant - helpful when there are many similar posts on a given topic.