Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tired of Stack Overflow

arp242.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 517 posts

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#191

Post by galaxyLogic »

jasode wrote: post #140
el_cujo wrote: post #16

I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…

>If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasonable response. Just remember that if you don't give users a built-in and formal downvote button, they will rebel against that UI and invent an informal downvote mechanism to express their disapproval. E.g. a bunch of stackoverflow users would type "-1 downvote" in the c…

It would be much better if users added their down-votes in the comments because then they would feel some need to explain why they down-vote something. In fact I think IT SHOULD BE REQUIRED to give a reason for your down-vote (if down-votes are allowed in general)

An SO down-vote is not simply an "opinion", it affects your karma-score, perhaps even your chances of getting hired.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#193

Post by AlanSE »

baud147258 wrote: post #88
phonebanshee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marked as answered is a fundamentally horrible idea and that feature should be removed. The problem is that the person asking the question isn't capable of determining a correct answer. Far, far to often they pick something that appears to solve their problem but actually is a terrible idea.

Well, the accepted answer means that the solution proposed worked for the asker, then there are the votes and comments to evaluate whether or not this is a good answer.

> the accepted answer means that the solution proposed worked for the asker

That's a fundamental tension in the purpose of the site. If the particular problem of the asker is the end goal, then duplicates would not be closed. All other site criteria institute a strong demand for general interest of questions.

Part of its success may be deftly balancing those two conflicting interests. On one hand is the role of helping people, and the other hand is a non-repeating and immediately useful knowledge base. Both of these demands bring human attention, and satisfying either requires real work by a human. The challenge is to keep the relevant human around just long enough to do enough work so that you have plausibly usable content.

Accepted answers are a site design tailored for one use, but it is fantasy to pretend that it harmoniously exists along side the other use. They are not separated. Design elements oriented toward one way of use degrades the other use.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#194

Post by galaxyLogic »

vasili111 wrote: post #45
el_cujo wrote: post #16

I really think it's better to just have an up vote arrow and no down vote option, for questions at least. The only reason on a site like that to really vote something down should be if something is off topic or against the rules, in which case you have a report button. If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasona…

Here is my proposal for removing downvotes but people do not like it: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252338/downvote-sys...

Why don't people like it? Because SO is full of people who just love to down-vote. Your proposal would take power away from them

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#195

Post by [deleted] »

sergiotapia wrote: post #61

The way forward isn't a global website like SO, it's niche forums from people you get to know in a weekly basis. For elixir we have a public forum specific to Elixir. For crystal, there's a crystal forum as well. For react, I'm still looking for one that's good.

[deleted]

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#196

Post by smacktoward »

outadoc wrote: post #157
jasode wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a question just straight up doesn't interest you or you don't want to answer it, then ignoring it rather than voting it down seems like the reasonable response. Just remember that if you don't give users a built-in and formal downvote button, they will rebel against that UI and invent an informal downvote mechanism to express their disapproval. E.g. a bunch of stackoverflow users would type "-1 downvote" in the c…

Simple alternative: show a downvote button, but make it so that the score must be >= 0.

Even simpler solution: present a downvote button, make it show a "downvoted" label on the item to the user who pressed it, don't have it change the actual score at all.

In other words, give them a placebo button: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#197

Post by NateEag »

jnovek wrote: post #71
prepend wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I’ve been a reader for 10 years or however long, but their rules were too difficult for me to follow in order to vote. I had to visit every day and do menial, non-useful things just to be able to vote or answer. This didn’t work for me because SO wasn’t something I typically visited every day. So I just couldn’t get into the habit of being enough of a user to browse and vote so it was a vicious cycle of ap…

I definitely learned a lot of my attitudes about software engineering from "Joel on Software". It's weird to think that those works are "ancient" now. I don't really have an answer to the problem, SO has some very smart people working for them who, I'm sure, think about this issue. For some reason technical discussions held by competent people on the internet seem to trend towards dumpster fire. I've also noticed thi…

I expect to burn a few karma points on this, and be ignored, but all evidence I have says that this is human nature at work, and that at scale it cannot be prevented.

I've seen moderators of small communities hold off the effect by setting a good example, using a deft touch, and not letting the community get too big.

My suspicion is that once the number of commenters gets much past Dunbar's number [1], the universal fall into "default jerk" happens. Once that's taken place, you're stuck in an Eternal September.

Communities in the real world don't scale well. I'm not sure why programmers expect them to on the Internet, with its well-known capacity for dehumanization.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#198

Post by [deleted] »

adventured wrote: post #179
outadoc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple alternative: show a downvote button, but make it so that the score must be >= 0.

I use this approach on a service of mine that is built around a community. It works, I recommend it. When you hit 0 and someone tries to downvote further, it informs you that that action is impossible (no user supplied content can be voted into negative territory). I regard negative point voting to be an unnecessary form of community punishment. If something is spam, abusive, or otherwise breaks the rules, then it ne…

[deleted]

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#199

Post by galaxyLogic »

jnovek wrote: post #71
prepend wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I’ve been a reader for 10 years or however long, but their rules were too difficult for me to follow in order to vote. I had to visit every day and do menial, non-useful things just to be able to vote or answer. This didn’t work for me because SO wasn’t something I typically visited every day. So I just couldn’t get into the habit of being enough of a user to browse and vote so it was a vicious cycle of ap…

I definitely learned a lot of my attitudes about software engineering from "Joel on Software". It's weird to think that those works are "ancient" now. I don't really have an answer to the problem, SO has some very smart people working for them who, I'm sure, think about this issue. For some reason technical discussions held by competent people on the internet seem to trend towards dumpster fire. I've also noticed thi…

> SO has some very smart people working for them

I think they don't have enough (or any?) moderators working for them. They rely too much on making profits with the free help of trolls.

I understand it would be hard for them to change the power of the troll-users by now. Perhaps we simply need a new Stack Overflow, some competition.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#200

Post by ptx »

grogenaut wrote: post #39
jnovek wrote: post #21

This culture is why I've never contributed to Stack Overflow. I'm a reasonably senior engineer, I've been lucky to experience an extraordinary breadth of technology in my career, and I love helping people learn to program... but I just don't have the time or emotional energy for SO's top posters to pick apart the minutia of every word I say in an answer. The ROI for me is nil.

Agreed. Similar experience. Asked a question about architecture and dependency injection in .net. it was immediately removed as irrelavant because .net is better than Java. Posted a week later with a friend's account and it stayed but my friend panicked at loss of points and inability to do their job without them and removed it themselves (tho gave me answers firtst).

I thought dependency injection in Java was mainly a way to emulate modules (as in Python or JS), so how is .NET different here since it doesn't have modules either?
Post reply on HN