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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#161

Post by SiVal »

grecy wrote: post #42
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

I agree. For the first time in a while, I've picked up a language I have not used for almost 15 years. Google is helping immensely, and I've been shocked at how often (>95%) of the time the first result is SO, and that answer is perfect. So much so I've stopped searching google, I've just got a lot of SO tabs open. It might not be perfect, though I'd say it's the best by a massive margin.

Sorry, but I disagree. While, yes, I've found that Google searches often led me to answers on SO, I've also lost count of the number of times Google has decided that a question on a StackOverflow page was the MOST RELEVANT to the question I was asking, but SO mods had put a big, fat stamp at the top from moderators announcing that THEY weren't going to permit anyone to answer it.

I don't know how many times I've scanned down a SO page hoping, hoping, hoping that someone managed to smuggle in the answer to my question before the red guards noticed and put a stop to it.

Google simply wants to find the best answer it can to my question, while StackOverflow would rather try to find reasons to prevent it being answered.

I don't want a forum where answering my question is a last resort, and their highest priority is finding a justification for not only not answering, but actually preventing anyone else who was willing to answer from answering.

What we need is a developer forum that is totally open to questions, but with the amazing addition of Google-like search to do ranked prioritization of all answers instead of old-fashioned red guards to prevent answers they didn't like from ever existing, whether you needed those answers or not. You could ask anything you wanted, as long as you were polite, and the worst that could happen would be that your question would be re-tagged (ex: that's actually a DELPHI question, not PASCAL language, because it's not about the language.)

People would then be free to answer or not, as they wished, with votes for answer quality and links to other answers that add to the quality measures. They could express opinions (horrors! opinions from people with experience that you lack! who would EVER want that) or quote the docs, or insert a link to another answer that (in their opinion only) probably answers your question, too, but they do so without preventing anyone else from going ahead and offering their own answer.

Google manages to sort through an entire web full of comments that are "possible duplicates" or "primarily opinion based" and it's amazingly useful. A mini version of that is what we need for software Q%A.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#162

Post by hellofunk »

A bizarre problem I have had on SO is that, after years of gaining reputation into the 5 digits, now if I ask a question on a topic that is new to me, I often get the response that I should know better if I have a high reputation. It's weird. If I have my colleague ask the same question, a guy with much less reputation, the answers are helpful. It's as if the quality of the question is judged by how much the asker must already know. Which is ridiculous if you explore a lot of different technologies.

Then there are genuine trolls who, despite massive reputation, seem to have the sole goal of proving everyone wrong. It's also weird.

This image has never rung more true to me then when interacting with so many "power" users: http://i.imgur.com/Oy6mA.jpg?fb

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#163

Post by rmtew »

nojvek wrote: post #136

I've some very bad experiences with stack overflow. They are very hostile towards new users and the 50 point system that doesn't allow commenting is very absurd. If I ask a question, I should be able to comment for a clarification right? I wonder if they ever A/B test their point system. I only use stack overflow when Google points me to it. I think SO can do a much better job at making users actually ask/answer ques…

Worse than that, I used to be very knowledgeable about a topic and having not played the game and not scored any points, it was too frustrating to answer questions there.

The unfortunate thing is that people often see it as the github of project support, and choose to go there to ask questions rather than a project's mailing list.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#164

Post by V-2 »

> Someone at Hacker News expressed a common experience for many programmers (experienced or not) when trying to participate on Stack Overflow.

Okay...

> 4 — Respond to comment about a missing semicolon that got deleted when I was cutting/pasting/formatting my code. (Despite the error msg making it clear that the missing semicolon isn’t the issue)

Who cares. I would just ignore this.

> Duplicate answer person complains that their entry was posted first. I advise them that the timestamp indicates the other poster was first and they reply that it is a time zone bug.

Yes, very "common experience" ;) Anyway, who cares? I wouldn't waste my time on such an idiotic argument at all

> 10 — Check back one more time and see that someone has downvoted my question

> 11 — Email the mods to get the downvote removed

Oh for the love of God, who cares??? So it got downvoted, big deal, why do you need to bother the mods about it... (Did you wonder how they can get cranky sometimes?)

Some people really should chill out, or consider themselves lucky for having way too much free time on their hands

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#165

Post by wool_gather »

nojvek wrote: post #136

I've some very bad experiences with stack overflow. They are very hostile towards new users and the 50 point system that doesn't allow commenting is very absurd. If I ask a question, I should be able to comment for a clarification right? I wonder if they ever A/B test their point system. I only use stack overflow when Google points me to it. I think SO can do a much better job at making users actually ask/answer ques…

You can comment on your own posts and on answers to your own questions regardless of your points.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#166

Post by lnanek2 »

exstudent2 wrote: post #66
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

The curation is far and away the worst part of SO. So many interesting threads killed for being off topic. I've never seen moderation add a thing to that site. Its success is in its structure and voting. They've done everything in their power to kill that from a moderation angle.

Agreed. Often the questions they kill are the only ones that could possibly be useful to me. I don't need someone to regurgitate the manual/docs for me. I need answers to things like "what is the best ad library to use on Android?" that would have saved me a lot of trial and error and testing to come up with a good result. But "opinion" questions like that are not allowed.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#167

Post by user5994461 »

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…

> Disclaimer: I work in the Q&A team at Stack Overflow.

In that case, I have a serious question for you: What's your plan for refreshing the site on the long term?

Lemme explain. The "community" is actively closing new questions as "duplicate" if anything similar is already present.

At the same time, the old answer (that all duplicates are redirecting to) is often locked down for various reasons. The blocking prevents to update or add new answers.

Currently, many major questions are redirecting to one of the first answers from 3-6 years ago, when the site was relatively new. The provided answers are rotting over time.

How do you intend to prevent that?

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#168

Post by wool_gather »

a3n wrote: post #58

I've idly wondered how I could restrict queries to questions that have been closed as too or not enough , as those are often the most interesting and educational items, even if they don't answer my specific question.

http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/218999/hig...

Also, I'm pretty sure Google picks up the text in the close banner, so you could do a search that includes a term for the reason you're interested in.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#169

Post by ourmandave »

A lot of SO people down vote a new users question with the intention of removing the down vote once it's improved.

But the person getting down voted to hell doesn't know that!

They just see a community telling them to go to hell.

Think they'll stick around to read the friendly guide lines?

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#170

Post by kaffeemitsahne »

gotofritz wrote: post #154
ak217 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know what you are on about. I am not pissed off with SO, nor do I know anyone who is, and I certainly have no intention to go somewhere else, especially since there is no saying the same problems will not occur there

Some people in this thread are saying SO's issues are inevitable in a community of that scale, but is it really true? Is it inevitable that two different questions with different answers will be marked duplicates of each other, for example?
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