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The Stack Overflow Age

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#101

Post by shagie »

baud147258 wrote: post #89
maxxxxx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SO not for discussion is there a forum where you can discuss broad software architecture? Something with a spirit like HN where not everything is on topic but usually discussions are respectful and interesting.

I think that one of the other site of the stackexchage network, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ , does that

That site is still not for discussions. It is however a site for Q&A on the software development process and architecture which tends to softer questions.

Still, discussions are for chat.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#102

Post by [deleted] »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #96
vehementi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been an exact summary of my experience with SO. Extremely useful when searching for things. Difficult to get started contributing to.

The thresholds for unlocking privileges are there to filter out offensive trolls and other drains on the community. This can be a bit annoying since it applies separately to every subdomain and I can't be bothered to build up rep in every place that I might want to make an occasional comment.

[deleted]

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#103

Post by mark-r »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #96
vehementi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been an exact summary of my experience with SO. Extremely useful when searching for things. Difficult to get started contributing to.

The thresholds for unlocking privileges are there to filter out offensive trolls and other drains on the community. This can be a bit annoying since it applies separately to every subdomain and I can't be bothered to build up rep in every place that I might want to make an occasional comment.

The +100 that you get for signing up on a new subdomain is supposed to get you over that hump. But I don't remember how much rep you need to get the signup bonus.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#104

Post by fhood »

kristianc wrote: post #100
fhood wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also there seems to be no problem with users who submit opinions instead of answers. Q: How do I do X extremely specific thing that I need because I have an unusual case that needs this specific thing. A (top voted): Why would you want to do X? You shouldn't do that. I clearly know more about your problem than you do because I assume everyone on here is a college student and not a developer working with a large mostl…

This seems to be a common thing across all online support communities, even ones where the software company has outsourced support to their community. I'd love to see a solution to it, as it makes discussions incredibly frustrating to read.

I have a solution. If a user repeatedly does that without also providing a solution to the original question then ban them.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#105

Post by krapp »

Someone1234 wrote: post #39
zwieback wrote: post #34

It's interesting to see all the negative comments about the SO culture here. I just hadn't really noticed it but maybe it is a problem for beginners. I generally find what I'm looking for and when I post a question I try to research first to avoid spam. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I cannot help but read "beginners" in a derogatory tone. Or at the very least a way to hand-wave away the unhealthy atmosphere that has formed at SO. It is definitely a problem for people with low SO Reputation since others can come along and edit their posts completely changing the context and meaning, and seem more brave to bully low rep users (e.g. delete/dup their posts). I have fairly high SO Rep from way-back-w…

The problem is, helping beginners can be dangerous to an online community. New users are the main vector for spreading the Eternal September effect, while they're necessary to the life of a community, they also inevitably hasten its intellectual and cultural demise. At some point, if a community wants to maintain a high standard of quality, it has to start being hostile to newcomers. Sometimes you have to tell them to GTFO and RTFM.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#106

Post by chaoticmass »

payne92 wrote: post #19

SO is definitely a force, but I feel its usefulness has faded from inattention to the user experience and use cases. For example: #1. There's a huge "homework problem" (narrow, specific questions that aren't broadly useful). Consider flagging homework as homework (and excluding it from searches), trying to divert questioners to other resources before their question is posted ("this looks like homework..."), and more…

Did you ever find a solution for USPS labels?

I used to use Endicia.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#107

Post by shagie »

fhood wrote: post #104
kristianc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a common thing across all online support communities, even ones where the software company has outsourced support to their community. I'd love to see a solution to it, as it makes discussions incredibly frustrating to read.

I have a solution. If a user repeatedly does that without also providing a solution to the original question then ban them.

In the world of “stack overflow is unfriendly to new users”, banning a person providing an answer that other people have found helpful seems to be a suggestion that would take SO in the direction of yahoo answers.

Stack Overflow’s approach appears to be all answers are acceptable. This isn’t just for the person who asked the question but everyone else too.

If a person is not providing good answers and people are down voting those poor answers, there is an automatic answer ban in place... but that requires people to down vote poor answers.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#108

Post by shagie »

payne92 wrote: post #95
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[2] isn't an example of "subjective editorial decisions"; your question was off-topic because 'recommendation' questions are prohibited. For that tho, there's a Stack Exchange sister site: - [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange]( https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ ) I don't like that 'decision', i.e. to not allow recommendations, but I understand the reasoning behind it, that recommendation questions are bas…

I get what you're saying about their 'decision' to prohibit 'recommendation' questions, but my point is that it doesn't make any sense. It's a distinction without a difference, as many, many questions on the site are 'recommendations' or 'how do I': https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1942298/wrapping-a-c-lib... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/127803/how-to-parse-an-i... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/100628…

Do you have any examples of such questions asked in the past... let’s say four years?

The problem with recommendation questions is that they are very time consuming to keep curated and useful. You’ll inevitably have 50 answers of which 20 are duplicates and difficult to delete because of up votes on them.

The community moderation for “just close them quickly” is much less than the community moderation necessary to curate them.

Anyways, https://www.slant.co is set up to do recommendations better than stack overflow could conceivably do. Not all questions are best asked on stack overflow.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#109

Post by shagie »

klenwell wrote: post #80
Someone1234 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot help but read "beginners" in a derogatory tone. Or at the very least a way to hand-wave away the unhealthy atmosphere that has formed at SO. It is definitely a problem for people with low SO Reputation since others can come along and edit their posts completely changing the context and meaning, and seem more brave to bully low rep users (e.g. delete/dup their posts). I have fairly high SO Rep from way-back-w…

For my last two jobs, I've created a new SO account for that job. I'm a pretty experienced user with decent reputation on my main account. I think I'm a pretty good question writer. I do my research beforehand, pay attention to niceties like formatting and grammar, and try to provide the right amount of context. My first couple questions almost immediately get downvoted without explanation. Comparable questions from…

> If I sign in on my main account and reverse the mystery downvotes, I'm usually good from that point on.

That’s the type of thing that will get that account deleted for vote fraud and sock puppetry. At that point, all of the votes it cast will be invalidated and all of the people you’ve tried to help by casting upvotes on their questions in the effort to be nice will lose those votes and that rep.

That will leave a sour taste for many developers and will probably turn many of them away.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#110

Post by nt8eo923nt45 »

fhood wrote: post #86
ken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood it, either. By that reasoning, almost any technical question is an "opinion" question asking for a "recommendation". For example, pretty much any question about C string handling has many possible answers, e.g., [1] admits that comparing two strings is "rather broad" and the various answers there recommend looping over each index and comparing chars with ==, sscanf, strncmp, regexes, and PEGs. Opin…

Also there seems to be no problem with users who submit opinions instead of answers. Q: How do I do X extremely specific thing that I need because I have an unusual case that needs this specific thing. A (top voted): Why would you want to do X? You shouldn't do that. I clearly know more about your problem than you do because I assume everyone on here is a college student and not a developer working with a large mostl…

I find this disingenuous. It is a very common scenario that a new user knows of some way to solve some part of their question (or just thinks they do), and assumes the best/easiest/fastest/safest/whatever answer involves using that technique. This is exactly the scenario that Alex Papadimoulis referred to in his blog post[1] that I have to believe was the inspiration for his site The Daily WTF[2]:

> "A client has asked me to build and install a custom shelving system. I'm at the point where I need to nail it, but I'm not sure what to use to pound the nails in. Should I use an old shoe or a glass bottle?" >...[potential answers] >b) There is something fundamentally wrong with the way you are building; you need to use real tools.

The answerer is often telling the person, what you are trying to do sounds like a really bad/inefficient/ineffective/whatever solution. The common way to solve this is Y because of reasons A, B, and C. Are you doing something where those reasons are not a concern?

[1] https://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/408925 [2] http://thedailywtf.com

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