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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#121

Post by marcosdumay »

EpicEng wrote: post #70
dandare wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Sure, I have no idea what you have to deal with on a daily basis and in the end the content is mostly helpful so you are probably doing it right. But in more than few occasions I have been treated like a dirty beggar/shoplifter/moron/(you name it) for actually asking a question (or answering one)! Yes I need you and yes I owe you a lot - but I don't like yo…

And I'm sure you'll have the same experience elsewhere. Once a site like SO gets large enough to be really useful to a lot of people you're going to also have to deal with an influx of the type of users you don't like. I don't know how you solve that problem.

> I don't know how you solve that problem.

Not replacing it with a single site, with a single community and centralized moderation can help a lot.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#122

Post by notyourwork »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #4

I've found that if you go to Stackoverflow for a fast-moving topic like Javascript, the first answer isn't correct in modern terms. The next set of answers, without check marks, are likely more correct. So you have to read the entire page to get a glimpse of the truth. This can be bad if you're just looking for an immediate solution, however for learning its fantastic because it shows you a recorded history of how th…

Its crazy that SO isn't able to spoon fed devs answers to their specific need based on solutions to other people's specific needs. If people would put it in these terms they would realize they should have to read a bit and have to earn their solution to their problem. Frankly, even if the most upvoted answer looks correct I still take the time to read all other answers, comments and perhaps a few other similarly related questions. Perhaps I am unique in this but I also find myself rarely relying on SO first and usually as a last ditch resort for odd scenarios.

SO has consolidated a massive amount of information and is a great resource. People expect too much of words though and should have to do some work themselves.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#123

Post by notyourwork »

hjnilsson wrote: post #79
dismantlethesun wrote: post #4

I've found that if you go to Stackoverflow for a fast-moving topic like Javascript, the first answer isn't correct in modern terms. The next set of answers, without check marks, are likely more correct. So you have to read the entire page to get a glimpse of the truth. This can be bad if you're just looking for an immediate solution, however for learning its fantastic because it shows you a recorded history of how th…

I think the crusade against duplicates worsens this problem. If duplicates were more accepted, it would both make it more welcoming for newcomers to ask questions, and encourage people to update the answers to old questions (by answering the new questions).

I'm not sure what the right answer is but I agree duplicate answers allow me to garner different perspectives or approaches to the same problem. This can be very helpful as you might be missing a simple parameter that makes the checked answer not correct in your situation.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#124

Post by shkkmo »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #115
shkkmo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not impressed by this response to some very valid criticisms. > No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Of course no matter what you do, people will complain. This doesn't this this a valid reason to dismiss criticism out of hand without engaging with the complaints. The correct response is to look for ways to address the very real problems that are being brought up in a way that increases the…

I am not dismissing anything, and I am, instead quite worried. I am sorry that you had the wrong impression. What I meant to say is that handling such a large site is like playing whack-a-mole. Seeing problems popping up is not a symptom of decline. Is a symptom of size.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

The site itself may not be in decline, but I am worried it may head the same direction as Wikipedia (successful, but losing active contributors.)

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#125

Post by notyourwork »

makecheck wrote: post #59

While StackOverflow is still an outstanding resource, they never really solved the “why bother?” problem for the really difficult subjects. Your choices are: answer a trivial JavaScript question and get a million points, or spend an hour painstakingly explaining a hard problem for maybe one point (where, half the time, the original submitter doesn’t even bother to “accept” your answer so you lose even that small poin…

> Your choices are: answer a trivial JavaScript question and get a million points, or spend an hour painstakingly explaining a hard problem for maybe one point (where, half the time, the original submitter doesn’t even bother to “accept” your answer so you lose even that small point boost).

I don't agree with this, there are long winded answers with a massive amount of points and/or bounty awarded to them. The problem you describe exists in any market, majority of an audience will always go for a low hanging fruit. That's why the few who answer those complicated questions are usually subject matter experts and sit in the >1% of SO.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#126

Post by DanBC »

throw2016 wrote: post #100

There is an air of arrogance in SO that is unpleasant. Help is supposed to be about being open, friendly and relaxed, not arcane rules, criterias and deciding you know best. If experts are uptight and arrogant the desire to learn quickly vanishes. Being friendly does not preclude being firm. I have noticed many questions being closed in an arbritrary manner and worse in a mean spirited way. The first may be ok but th…

> why does SO allow it?

If you know the right incantation you can bring it up on meta and maybe they'll filter it out.

Or maybe people will downvote you and yell at you.

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172758/what-have-you...

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#127

Post by ak217 »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #34

Disclaimer: I work in the Q&A team at Stack Overflow. What people don't understand is that SO serves literally all developers. No matter what choices we make there will be upset people. Do we reduce moderation? Help vampires take over. Do we keep moderation as is? People complain we are too strict (or not enough). Do we allow only English? We are elitist. Do we allow SO in other languages? We are fragmenting the comm…

The truth is that you've managed to piss off and alienate a lot of people in pursuit of... something, and when a new community platform gains critical mass, we will take the content and jump ship happily.

To change this, you could try publicly acknowledging the issues, encouraging people (especially moderators) to be less pedantic and nicer, and rolling back some of the most egregious abuse by the little Q&A tyrants.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#128

Post by sonabinu »

helthanatos wrote: post #87
marcelluspye wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>SO isn't dying any time soon, and the content is still good. While I'd say this is currently true, answers on SO tend to stick around for a long time, and the 'marked as duplicate'-heavy behavior means that even if the best practice to solving a given problem changes, the top SO google result won't. While this isn't a _huge_ problem right now, with the way the site is set up I only see it getting worse, to the point…

Marked as duplicate and closed for being too broad are annoying. Often, the "duplicate" is actually a different question with a different answer and many of the too broad ones are not too broad, can be answered easily, and can make it easier than reading 10 other threads and pulling the needed information from each.

I now try to see if Stack Overflow has an answer and if I am not able to really understand what is going on, I don't bother to post a question because I hate how the 'keepers' pounce on you. Instead I find an SME by networking within my org and get it answered

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#129

Post by superJimmy64 »

There are obvious exceptions however I have come to understand the greatness that is SO. All that is needed is a well-thought question with a little bit of work to show on the side.

I have a theory about why many complain about SO (please don't comment about this line, there are obviously exceptions):

There has been a ridiculous sense of entitlement with the growth and recent appeal of tech jobs in the past 5 years.

All this crap about "trolling" getting out of hand, not enough diversity (THE FIELD WAS PRIMARILY FILLED WITH NERDS OFTEN LACKING ANY SOCIAL SKILLS, no one else wanted to look or hang out with "that guy who is good with computers") etc.

It's a field that was mainly driven out of the desire and enjoyment that would be had messing around on CPU's. Therefore most of the good ones (among the diluted masses of "experts" nowadays) spent a great deal of time on these things. I'm not surprised that somebody would get pissed off if another came around and started asking for the answers to things without any real effort or drive being shown.

SO will forever be a poor resource for the huge incoming population of coders.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#130

Post by [deleted] »

sonabinu wrote: post #128
helthanatos wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marked as duplicate and closed for being too broad are annoying. Often, the "duplicate" is actually a different question with a different answer and many of the too broad ones are not too broad, can be answered easily, and can make it easier than reading 10 other threads and pulling the needed information from each.

I now try to see if Stack Overflow has an answer and if I am not able to really understand what is going on, I don't bother to post a question because I hate how the 'keepers' pounce on you. Instead I find an SME by networking within my org and get it answered

[deleted]
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