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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#181

Post by mattmanser »

marcosdumay wrote: post #110
mattmanser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can edit the top answer or post a new answer, I have got 50 odd votes from adding asp.net's encryption/decryption methods that were added in 3.5 to old .net encryption questions. I've done it on a few other answers too, if the top answer seems clunky or inelegant, I tend to dig a bit deeper to see if there's a better way. Also, scrolling down a bit in the answers you usually find new ways of doing something as an…

You can. Most people can't. As the site gets aggressive against newcomers and old timers decide they have better things to do, there will be less and less people available edit them. And don't think those editions are as high quality as the ones that come by the official channel, where literally anybody in the world with the needed knowledge can reply, and there is a robust process for vetting. Besides, despite any t…

I'm an incredibly lazy programmer, I remember nothing, it's simply not worth it imho. I hate man pages and specs and generally reading boring tech docs. I hate memorising stuff.

I Google incredibly basic stuff like how to read files, how to read a web page (something that changes every 5 months in .Net), hell, even basic jQuery functionality.

The difference is that I have the knowledge deep down, I just use SO and Google as a prompt. I know the correct answer as soon as I see it. I get exposed to a lot of basic answers on SO, and generally they're right.

SO is generally good and is not suffering the problem you or the OP claim.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#182

Post by achikin »

I've answered 21 questions, got upvotes on 15 answers, 3 answers accepted by owners, asked 2 questions by myself and both were upvoted. I have no idea what these people in the article are talking about. SO is super friendly and super helpful.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#183

Post by jakobegger »

SiVal wrote: post #161
grecy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scan…

A thousand times yes. Stack Overflow has such a high page rank, that closed questions are often at the top of Google Search results. Keeping closed questions available for Google to find is a massive waste of time. On the Google result page it looks like this is exactly the right question -- but just like Experts Exchange, the page doesn't tell you the solution.

If Stack Overflow really wanted to make life easier for people, they would delete closed questions, or move them to a directory that is excluded from search engines. Closed questions are basically bait-and-switch for searchers; they show the question, but don't have an answer.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#184

Post by shagie »

Consider this on the "I keep finding closed and interesting questions on SO" - the "what is the best linter for PHP" or "What is your favorite cartoon" or "where is the best place to meet female programmers (for romance)" (ref http://i.stack.imgur.com/x9ik2.jpg ) - why not ask those questions _here_?

If the answer to that is "because that isn't a good place to ask those questions" or "because HN isn't set up for answering those types of questions" then consider the possible response of "maybe SO isn't set up for answering those types of questions well either?"

When there is more noise than signal in a question and answer page, it is useless. Go dig around https://community.oracle.com/community/java and consider why you don't put site:community.oracle.com in your search (or for that matter, see how well one can find the answer to an error message in /r/javahelp). When there are dozens of answers that consist of "try libXyz" it isn't useful - you're going to have to dig through each of those to see if it works or not for you... and you might as well have done a google search instead.

When the questions are "how do you make a triangle with '*'" a dozen times over in September, those questions need to be closed so they don't waste the time of people who are trying to find good questions to answer.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#185

Post by soyiuz »

I think a part of SO's problem is its size. There are many other smaller communities in the Stack Exchange network that seem to be more friendly. The size of SO prevents it from becoming a community as such, which manifests in the lack of shared norms and ethics which can then be meaningfully enacted in practice.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#186

Post by x1798DE »

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 don't totally understand why people worry so much about your question being marked as a duplicate. Questions marked as duplicates are not deleted and still show up in search results - the reason why duplicates are still kept around after being marked is because they sorta want duplicate questions on the site, because every person is going to state their query in slightly different language, and you want people searching using different terms to end up in the same place.

Most of the time if your question is mostly a duplicate but the other question (or its answer) is missing some critical factor, then you can appeal and say, "I don't think this is a duplicate of because " (or modify your question with the stipulation that the answer solve the critical factor) and the duplicate marking will be removed.

The other thing is, even when questions get marked as duplicates or closed, half the time I still see them accumulating their own answers, so really, what's the big issue?

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#187

Post by tomrod »

I agree to a lot of this, despite the criticisms being seen as cliche.

I've found the reddit programming communities to be more helpful as a user, even though finding similar enough content is difficult. Further, I've noticed reddit and blogs edging in on SO's Google results. I wonder if this will be the trend.

SO has been great for so long because the content was trustworthy. The trolls are removing that edge.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#189

Post by kwhitefoot »

cezarywojcik wrote: post #93

On the opposite end of the "new user" perspective that is trying to ask a good question, as someone who is seeking to sometimes answer questions, it is pretty hard to actually find a good question. The vast majority of the questions I run into _are_, in fact, duplicates, poorly worded/incomprehensible, far too broad, etc. (one example that has stuck with me is "how do I install HTML/JavaScript on my computer?"). Thou…

> SO isn't a resource to hand-hold you when you're learning something new. It's a resource for asking specific questions when you can't find the solution anywhere else (and you've actually tried).

Why not? A lot of people need help, why not just politely point them in the right direction. Or if you feel that that is beneath you just ignore them.

If someone asks a question like "Which is the best tool for solving problem x" they question is closed with a note saying that is has been closed because it will only attract opinion based answers. Well that is exactly what the question was asking for, an opinion from someone who might know better than the person asking the question.

I would much rather have the supercilious answers removed. I have in mind the ones that instead of answering the question simply tell you that you shouldn't approach the problem that way at all even when the person asking has made it clear that they have no choice in that (corporate choice of platform, IDE, DB, etc., for instance).

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#190

Post by nol13 »

user5994461 wrote: post #167
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 prevent…

Replying to this, because on SO I don't have enough reputation to reply and say how annoying it is, or describe how the duplicate is different and/or unhelpful.

I get that it's probably the only way to prevent spam comments on a large scale etc, but when see I need to ask 5 questions just to comment on the ones I care about, I don't even bother.

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