151–160 of 227 posts
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Now balance it against the more important questions that are unanswered or even unasked because SO becomes a place where there's no point to that. It's not as simple as that.
I'm not sure I follow you. How does erring on the side of leaving a question open leave more questions unanswered or unasked?
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> Yeah, exactly! People watch TV for entertainment. TV ads don't work. TV ads are often entertaining, and you don't have to go out of your way to view them (you usually don't have a choice). Ads on Facebook and other sites are often seen as intrusive and usually ignored. In the case of Stack Exchange's Careers page, you have to explicit go to it to view the listings. Very different things.
TV ads are fun to watch, huh? Maybe, depends on a lot of variables. On facebook ads - the best FB ads are native to facebook. Pictures or videos. You don't need to go to another site. They are interesting and draw the viewer's attention just like good TV (any) ads. You have the added benefit of instant social proof and maybe even clicks to your site, if you included a shortened link somewhere. Don't confuse FB ads wi…
I'm not. My company has gone through no less than 3 different marketing agencies that believed they could "do social right", and we've given it our own go internally as well. None succeed in doing anything but getting more likes on our FB page and draining our marketing budget. People simply did not click through to the website nor convert into purchases. After FB's algorithm change to synthetic feeds, well, it got even worse.
You might say "well, you've used the wrong social marketing company!"... and that's exactly what they all said when they pitched us.
Our story is not unique. Perhaps it depends on the types of products, etc, but there have been some very high profile mega-corps that very publicly yanked their FB ad support citing similar reasons.
Adwords and other direct banner adverts, on the other hand, do work, and they work very well. One possibility they work so well is the user is already looking for a product that is then pitched to them, ie. browsing a how-to forum and then gets presented with products that the how-to uses.
They are very different beasts.
I often ask a question on Google, get taken to a Stack Exchange site, and find that yes, they have my question, but some moderator closed it before it got answered. SE got my traffic, but I didn't get my answer. Isn't that broken?
This has not been my experience when searching for programming questions. The threads I see closed is when I search for "what is the best ...", and while I find them very useful to read, I understand why SE do not like them. Sometimes, I also see threads closed as homework questions, but those tend to have several duplicates which do have the answer in them, so it has so far not bothered me.
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This has not been my experience when searching for programming questions. The threads I see closed is when I search for "what is the best ...", and while I find them very useful to read, I understand why SE do not like them. Sometimes, I also see threads closed as homework questions, but those tend to have several duplicates which do have the answer in them, so it has so far not bothered me.
> and while I find them very useful to read, I understand why SE do not like them. This is exactly what I don't understand. If a question is borderline, but obviously useful, why not err on the side of allowing it to stand? >Sometimes, I also see threads closed as homework questions, but those tend to have several duplicates which do have the answer in them, so it has so far not bothered me. This doesn't happen anymo…
1: There is no definitive answer to it. At best there is best practice, and at worst there is flame wars. If Moderators tried to distinguish what topic could become flame wars, you tend to end up with very biased moderation.
2: Recommendations are much more time-sensitive than purely technical questions. The best framework in 2005 might be abandon in 2015, which can mislead readers. As a reader, I know this and always check the post date, but from a UI perspective, this key component is not obvious in SO.
3: Flame wars are destructive, and SE has historically tried to avoid them. Questions like "should I pick GPL or BSD?", "Emacs or VI?", and "Python or ruby?" tend to be cut down before they cause problem in the SE community. I wish sometimes that HN would follow suit and do the same.
What are they going to use that money for?
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Ultimately, the site depends utterly on the internet points people. Without them there is only noobs asking questions, and they leave without people answering. So, yes. Internet points.
That's a fair point. It's not my motivation for being active, but I assume it is for most, and it is an effective carrot. I would just like the balance to be tipped a little back in the direction of the consumers of the site. I'm not suggesting we leave obviously terrible questions open, it's the borderline posts that get me. Interesting questions which may not have a black and white answer, but would still encourage…
I suspect that SOs answer to your need is "Go use a different site". At some point, that becomes a reasonable answer.
I often ask a question on Google, get taken to a Stack Exchange site, and find that yes, they have my question, but some moderator closed it before it got answered. SE got my traffic, but I didn't get my answer. Isn't that broken?
There is an ongoing religious war among avid SO users (don't know about the rest of SE) about what kinds of questions should be allowed. Roughly, there are two camps. Those who say that any well-formed, non-dup question of interest should be let in and those who think it's a stop of last-resort after checking all conceivable documentation and scouring the internet. I believe the latter viewpoint is pretty run-of-the-…
Also in the rapidly changing JS world they don't reference the version consistently. Code that worked fine on version 1 doesn't work six months later on version 1.1, if I knew the version it would save a lot of time.
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I posted a decent programming job in a decent market on there about a year ago, but didn't get any qualified applicants.
Stack Exchange is to Jobs postings as Facebook is to Advertising. Both have massive potential audience, but both don't deliver engagement and effectively eat your budget. Facebook isn't largely effective (in part) because the audience isn't there to be advertised to, their busy socializing with friends/family. Stack Exchange isn't effective as a Job Bulletin because the audience isn't there to find a job (they probab…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an ongoing religious war among avid SO users (don't know about the rest of SE) about what kinds of questions should be allowed. Roughly, there are two camps. Those who say that any well-formed, non-dup question of interest should be let in and those who think it's a stop of last-resort after checking all conceivable documentation and scouring the internet. I believe the latter viewpoint is pretty run-of-the-…
" Those who say that any well-formed, non-dup question of interest should be let in and those who think it's a stop of last-resort after checking all conceivable documentation and scouring the internet. " This is wrong in multiple dimensions and [edit: the next sentence which i didn't quote is] flamebait. One camp believes in following these guidelines to a fault. The other camp thinks some of the rules are counterpr…
For example, where is the guideline that answers this without ambiguity?
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/261592/how-much-rese...
I often ask a question on Google, get taken to a Stack Exchange site, and find that yes, they have my question, but some moderator closed it before it got answered. SE got my traffic, but I didn't get my answer. Isn't that broken?
There is an ongoing religious war among avid SO users (don't know about the rest of SE) about what kinds of questions should be allowed. Roughly, there are two camps. Those who say that any well-formed, non-dup question of interest should be let in and those who think it's a stop of last-resort after checking all conceivable documentation and scouring the internet. I believe the latter viewpoint is pretty run-of-the-…