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StackOverflow unwinding?

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Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#151

Post by gm »

codinghorror wrote: post #142
buro9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With communities in general (not explicitly referencing SO here), I've always felt that moderators are their own worst enemies. They dictate the terms of use through enforcement. It's not fun to use something until you find that you aren't allowed to. The best tools do not limit their usage patterns, and communities adapt and evolve to make these tools solve their problems. These aren't always the same problems that…

If nobody is complaining about your moderators, they aren't doing their jobs. Moderators are there to protect the community from itself, as described in http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popul... It's a tough job. But if you disagree with the way the moderation works, bring it up on meta, and/or run for the position of moderator in the next election. How many other sites offer either of those opt…

The one thing that drove me away from participating in SO are the moderators. I swear, every time I get a google hit for a highly-relevant, informed discussion on a non-trivial programming topic, it's a question that has been closed by moderators for some stupid excuse.

You talk about there being other forums, like programming. or whatever else... Well, moderators should move the question instead of closing it. Why not do a mass query for these high-upvote yet moderator-closed questions on SO and move them to whatever other forum? Why gag the community for the sake of moderator ego?

Anyway. I gave up on the idea of proving I am a good programmer by participating and pumping up my SO score. Participation in SO is painful, moderators destroy good will. It seems they have an antenna that detects good discussion about programming and they step into it and destroy it.

So my response is: I don't care anymore. I certainly won't bring it up on meta, enough ignoring the userbase was done on there before when SE flip-flopped from for-profit, give us your money to "we'll dictate what q/a sites can be created" for me to go back and expect any consideration.

So no. For me SO is a great place to find answers by informed people on several topics, but it's not a place to invest yourself.

Anyway, just one less user for SO.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#152

Post by kamaal »

powerslave12r wrote: post #24
debacle wrote: post #16

The problem with SO is that easy questions get answered quickly and hard questions don't get answered at all, in most cases. I'm a semi-competent programmer with a few thousand SO reputation (or whatever it's called). Every question I have ever asked there has gone unanswered or has been answered insufficiently. The moderators are also awful. They manage the community in a very autistic fashion - quality questions wi…

It's funny that a huge chunk of the questions that I find extremely interesting and worth reading have been 'closed for .'

I note most of those questions are basically some awesome trivia some guy discovered on the way while solving tough problems.

Or recommendations to books/reading/tools etc.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#153

Post by sohels »

spolsky wrote: post #61

None of the actual metrics of the site bear this out. I don't know what "myspacing" is, and "floundering" is pretty subjective, but in terms of actual measurable things, we have more questions asked, more questions answered, more people active on the site, more sites with more activity and most metrics are up about 100% in the last year. Some of the things that we track pretty closely (like number of users who ask or…

SO should get a noble prize for changing so many developers' lives in so many ways.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#154

Post by Karunamon »

ken wrote: post #114
Karunamon wrote: post #14

The thing that drove me away from the entire Stack* series of sites was the heavy-handed "doesn't fit the format" (read: mod doesn't like it) question closings for no good reason. I've honestly lost count of the number of times that valid questions with well spoken, informative answers were shut down due to this nonsense. (The other was how much of a pain they make it to get started if you're new - one can look at th…

The other extreme seems to be a situation like reddit's r/programming, which says (on every page) "If there is no code in your link, it probably doesn't belong here", yet usually half the posts violate it, i.e., you have guidelines but they're pretty universally ignored. Which is better? I don't know. I personally haven't used either one in a while, because they don't seem to work well if you're not using a mainstrea…

>Which is better?

False dichotomy. How about having moderation that operates off of a flexible (and public, and non subjective) set of rules?

/r/programming sucks because of the lack of moderation. Stack* sucks because of heavy handed moderation.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#155

Post by cruise02 »

wpietri wrote: post #123
chavesn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible explanation: People here, generally speaking, like a community that is about the people . Aside from meta.stackoverflow, Stack Overflow's model makes that difficult. That's ok, because Stack Overflow is not a social network - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/128552/143601

Well, they don't want Stack Overflow to be a social network. But like Soylent Green, it's made out of people. In SO's case, inconveniently alive people. Humans are inherently social, and the amount of effort SO staff and moderators have to go to trying to stamp that out is a sign that SO really is a social network. I always think it's a bad sign when product designers think they know much better than their users what…

I'm one of the moderators on Stack Overflow. It's not my goal to stamp out any sign that SO is a social network, but I do want to prevent it from turning into Yahoo! Answers. Some level of moderation is necessary to maintain quality. Just because some users want to use Stack Overflow to ask off-topic questions doesn't mean we should let them.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#156

Post by fusiongyro »

stacycurl wrote: post #110
fusiongyro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had this happen to me a lot, but I also have noticed that sometimes I see an interesting question that deserves a long answer and I want to answer it, but I have this nagging suspicion someone else is already working on an answer and by the time I write mine theirs will already have received some kind of critical mass of upvotes and my work will not get any upvotes at all.

I don't follow, are you answering to gain upvotes or to, erm, answer the question ?

I hadn't given this much thought prior to your and Joel's remarks. But I think it's a fair question and it deserves reflection.

I do wonder to what extent it's possible to participate meaningfully on Stack Overflow with those goals completely separated.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#158

Post by sireat »

spolsky wrote: post #61

None of the actual metrics of the site bear this out. I don't know what "myspacing" is, and "floundering" is pretty subjective, but in terms of actual measurable things, we have more questions asked, more questions answered, more people active on the site, more sites with more activity and most metrics are up about 100% in the last year. Some of the things that we track pretty closely (like number of users who ask or…

My current pet peeve is with Google routinely returning first ten positions for SO answers, of which two or three are spot on, but rest of the list could have been better served by independent blogs which appear on page 3 or 5.

Granted this is Google's algorithm's fault not SOs problem. There is no reason to give a single site the first n listings no matter how authoritative it has become (and SO is very authoritative now).

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#159

Post by buro9 »

chc wrote: post #120
buro9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With communities in general (not explicitly referencing SO here), I've always felt that moderators are their own worst enemies. They dictate the terms of use through enforcement. It's not fun to use something until you find that you aren't allowed to. The best tools do not limit their usage patterns, and communities adapt and evolve to make these tools solve their problems. These aren't always the same problems that…

This is the "Stack Overflow sucks because it doesn't have enough lolcats" argument. You might like lolcats, and good for you if so, but not every site is about lolcats and you should not try to force every site to become a meme-fueled jokestravaganza. There's nothing wrong with having focus. Moderators do often prevent communities from growing as much as they otherwise would, but so will any filter that keeps quality…

That really isn't the argument I was trying to make.

More, that communities evolve and the demographics change. And as the demographics change, the needs and demands grow more diverse. Sure the fundamental core need that unified people remains, but new needs emerge.

The problem with empowering the core to be moderators is that they enforce their idea of the what the community should be based on their use at the time. This means that they're excluding new uses, and more specifically that new demographics would use the tools provided in unexpected ways... thus revealing the new needs. But if moderators prevent the use of tools in unexpected ways... then you not only don't discover the new needs of the community, but you send a message to that new demographic of users that they aren't wholly welcome (on the users terms).

And to in part respond to spolsky, I've immense respect for you and SO and what it's achieved (thank you for saving me from expertsexchange). So I know you've probably already got ideas and views on how to react to the evolution of the community.

I would say one thing... I recall someone posting on HN a while ago a picture of an org structure... it might even be related to where you are. And in this org structure the pyramid was inverted, managers were merely admin to engineers.

This is what I believe moderators should be. That moderators should be led, rather than lead.

Re: StackOverflow unwinding?

#160

Post by 1123581321 »

projct wrote: post #133
1123581321 wrote: post #4

I was disappointed by the answers to my last few questions so I'm back to asking on IRC. The answers come more quickly and the format makes clarification and follow up easier and faster. It's also easier for me to look at someone's gist/paste on IRC and give a quick answer.

IRC is great, but SE-based sites are meant to also help the nth person to ask the question you're seeking, too...

I know, and I do feel I am robbing the community in general, but I also don't think I would get my questions answered well at SO.

It would be great if someone came up with a way to bring IRC answers into a SO-like site for clean-up.

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