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The Stack Overflow Age

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#111

Post by nt8eo923nt45 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #66
aepiepaey wrote: post #53

Stack Overflow is useful at times, and frustrating at others. If you have basically no idea what you're doing, or just want an example for something, it can be great. On the other hand, if you try to find an answer about something you're really knowledgeable about, the result is often unsatisfactory: Like trying to find the reference documentation to answer some specific question, and the documentation is buried unde…

Yes, once you start asking _really_ difficult questions that require in-depth knowledge of a niche topic to answer SO becomes less useful, since the pool of people who know enough to actually answer your question is too small. In cases like that I usually just end up answering my own question later, after I've figured it out by other means.

You can often find the people more knowledgable on a particular subject in one of the other stack exchange sites. (For example, a problem with OpenGL or Unity might be better asked on gamedev.stackexchange.com, or computergraphics.stackexchange.com.)

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#112

Post by kristianc »

shagie wrote: post #107
fhood wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No. SO absolutely can be opinionated about what constitutes a good and a bad answer. SO's job is to get to the right and most helpful answer fast. You can't always rely on the community to root out bad actors.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#113

Post by nt8eo923nt45 »

simias wrote: post #33
ProAm wrote: post #9

It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.

From a "lurker" perspective who often stumbles on SO after a web search it's really a great resource. On the other hand I never actually contributed anything to the website... because it won't let me. One day I stumbled upon a question regarding some problem I had, the accepted answer had a C code snippet that contained an error. I thought I'd be a good netizen and decided to create an account to submit a correction.…

If I recall, there are actually a number of things you can do to get rep besides questions and answers. You can edit a post (with more than 6 characters), you can do a review, you can flag a post for moderator attention, and I think even your first up-vote gives you a point or two. (Some of those might award badges instead - it's been a long time and the rules sometimes change.)

I feel like SO can't win no matter what it does. It has some limits, like requiring at least 6 characters before an edit is deemed useful to stop it from becoming a breeding ground for "grammar nazis" and other similar types. If they didn't do that, people would complain it's overrun with grammar nazis who don't focus on the actual code being posted. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#114

Post by shagie »

nt8eo923nt45 wrote: post #113
simias wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a "lurker" perspective who often stumbles on SO after a web search it's really a great resource. On the other hand I never actually contributed anything to the website... because it won't let me. One day I stumbled upon a question regarding some problem I had, the accepted answer had a C code snippet that contained an error. I thought I'd be a good netizen and decided to create an account to submit a correction.…

If I recall, there are actually a number of things you can do to get rep besides questions and answers. You can edit a post (with more than 6 characters), you can do a review, you can flag a post for moderator attention, and I think even your first up-vote gives you a point or two. (Some of those might award badges instead - it's been a long time and the rules sometimes change.) I feel like SO can't win no matter wha…

Neither review, flag, nor vote give reputation.

The only ways to get reputation is to create content that gets up votes or do edits that improve the post.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#115

Post by nerdponx »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #62
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…

[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…

The entire Stackexchange network, in my opinion, suffers badly from fragmentation into hyper-specific Q&A sites. Why software recommendations do not fall under the Superuser purview is beyond me.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#116

Post by nt8eo923nt45 »

megaman22 wrote: post #71
nmstoker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perception of a culture problem on SO seems quite strong with a few people here. I'm sure bad things happen but it always seemed a) fairly rare and b) a price worth paying.... Without it, it would be like the Qlikview forums in no time! ;-)

I always wonder if people that complain about SO being nasty missed out on the shitshow that was programming forums before the current era. I recall some monumental flamewars back in the day on various sites I used to frequent.

Oh yeah, definitely. Especially on Usenet. You'd get flamed for asking a "stupid" question. You'd get flamed for using a "stupid" technology. You'd get flamed for doing things the way you did them, even if they worked just fine. I recall it mostly being constant flaming and hazing.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#117

Post by shagie »

nerdponx wrote: post #115
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…

The entire Stackexchange network, in my opinion, suffers badly from fragmentation into hyper-specific Q&A sites. Why software recommendations do not fall under the Superuser purview is beyond me.

Super user has difficulty with recommendations too. The effort upon the community to curate the content on a large site takes a very dedicated team. Past efforts to have such failed and the curation of the question dropped off along with its quality.

Moving software recommendations to its own site allowed a community to form there that was engaged with that curation.

That said, I believe the SO engine fails spectacularly with recommendations. I find https://slant.co to be a better resource that has its engine dedicated to recommendations (rather than Q&A).

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#118

Post by fhood »

nt8eo923nt45 wrote: post #110
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…

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 ask…

I have no problem with alternate solutions, but for gods sake, at least answer the original question as well.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#119

Post by shagie »

kristianc wrote: post #112
shagie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No. SO absolutely can be opinionated about what constitutes a good and a bad answer. SO's job is to get to the right and most helpful answer fast. You can't always rely on the community to root out bad actors.

The mechanism that SO uses for sorting answers is community votes. That poor or incorrect answers get up votes is a problem. SO only has its community to do that sorting. The corporate and diamond mods have specifically stepped away from doing this except in the most egregious and disruptive cases.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#120

Post by SahAssar »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #79

I think Stack Overflow is great and it's helped me a lot in the past, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be in the future. I've been learning Elm the past few weeks and have noticed a lack of good SO questions and answers on it. It's a smaller community, but I also think many people go to the Elm Slack channel to ask their questions, which they get in realtime. Not sure if that's just an Elm thing. A language specific…

That's the problem with platforms like slack, the question is decoupled from the answer and it usually isn't archived in a searchable way. The next person googling that question will have to ask it again instead of just looking up the answer.
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