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Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

blog.stackoverflow.com

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Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#111

Post by fapjacks »

namuol wrote: post #78
JimDabell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one question I saw on Stack Overflow a while back that irritated me. If you copied and pasted the literal question directly into Google, the top hit was directly to the canonical documentation, where you could just scroll down to the clearly marked heading, and copy and paste the sample code and have it work straight away. When I pointed this out, I was berated for not understanding that Stack Overflow is try…

> I'm seeing more and more people who won't bother to lift a finger unless somebody does half their work for them. Most work has already been done. Sounds like a good quality to have.

Until you need to innovate. It sounds like a skill for worker bees.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#112

Post by fapjacks »

Theodores wrote: post #66
orf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said about the general idea behind Stackoverflow, except it's wrong. Sure, it's "free labour for internet points" but so is posting a project to Github and wanting stars. You're forgetting that it genuinely helps other people in your industry. Stackoverflow is an amazing resource for programmers, pretty much every question I type into google relating to a library or some software comes up with 3 or…

That last point is an excellent idea, I could live with that, knowing the project maintainers get ad revenue each time I look up my own examples and examples by others. This is great.

I'm guessing that will never happen in any meaningful way, if only because that's not as profitable as keeping everything they get.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#113

Post by bouh »

I really hope that all open source documentation quality will increased by adopting such kind of tools. The fact that SO is used an informal documentation was a strong signal that there were much improvement to be done. I am just sad because I wanted to work on project like that :'(. Great job SO !

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#114

Post by mattip »

metakermit wrote: post #5

Cool new project – I think it might become very helpful one day. Documentation for a lot of open source projects is pretty bad and having to figure out a new contributing workflow every time just to hop in and help a bit is quite problematic. Hopefully, the unified interface SO users are used to will give docs writing a big boost. That said, I still hope they output some sort of GitHub repo of all the accepted change…

The CC license used for stack overflow content is horrible. I have asked multiple lawyers what it means for cut-and-pasted code, and have yet to recieve a clear a definitive answer

- is it viral when compiled into a binary, or when used in scripts?

- how to attribute?

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#115

Post by [deleted] »

metakermit wrote: post #5

Cool new project – I think it might become very helpful one day. Documentation for a lot of open source projects is pretty bad and having to figure out a new contributing workflow every time just to hop in and help a bit is quite problematic. Hopefully, the unified interface SO users are used to will give docs writing a big boost. That said, I still hope they output some sort of GitHub repo of all the accepted change…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#116

Post by [deleted] »

metakermit wrote: post #5

Cool new project – I think it might become very helpful one day. Documentation for a lot of open source projects is pretty bad and having to figure out a new contributing workflow every time just to hop in and help a bit is quite problematic. Hopefully, the unified interface SO users are used to will give docs writing a big boost. That said, I still hope they output some sort of GitHub repo of all the accepted change…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#117

Post by acjohnson55 »

recursive wrote: post #60
lstamour wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just idling in the Documentation chat channel and based on what I was seeing there, it appears links to sources are discouraged on StackOverflow documentation. Presumably, they're aiming to eventually host new content that's better than what's already out there. I think it's a bit silly -- at least make a Sources section where folks can click to view links to existing docs!

Everyone knows that cool urls don't change, but the problem with links is that not all urls are cool urls. Links rot over time.

Fortunately, as I said earlier, anyone can edit. We should definitely make links, they greatly increase the utility of a post. If they rot, it just takes one person to make the fix.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#119

Post by pinky07 »

tongcx wrote: post #118

It would be nice if there is SO for business. Lots of companies have terrible internal documentation, Q/A tools.

Odoo Q&A is an open source clone of stackoverflow: https://www.odoo.com/page/community-builder

It has three mode: forum, Q&A (clone of SO), share links (like HN)

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#120

Post by fapjacks »

edgyswingset wrote: post #53
troymc wrote: post #42

This is awful, another trick site that fools people into doing work that they could be getting paid to do, all for the joy of getting some "karma." Well kids, karma ain't gonna pay the rent. If you want to get experience volunteering to write documentation for software, then find the existing official documentation and add to that (or start it, preferably in a repository close to the actual code). Any profits that ge…

You're free to not use the site, I guess.

Right. Until your documentation gets co-opted by this external, third-party, for-profit company. The Q&A site is fantastic. But this new documentation thing is going to be a nightmare.
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