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Stack Overflow Fatigue

robertelwell.blogspot.com

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Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#21

Post by philh »

farmerbuzz wrote: post #12
melling wrote: post #2

I quit StackOverFlow once they devalued asking questions. No one on the site seemed to understand that incentivizing people to ask great questions was the most important thing. The site could have been a great starting point for learning esoteric topics like Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Grails, Scala, Lift, Go, Emacs Lisp, etc. Basically, in general, you need one good question with 2 or 3 good answers [yes, some types are…

Are you using the site for reputation or to spread knowledge? If its the former then you're welcome to leave, if its the latter then why do you care about reputation?

He cares about incentivizing people to ask great questions, and some people see reputation as an incentive. Therefore he cares about reputation.

edit: to clarify, I mean he cares about how reputation is handled, not necessarily about his own reputation.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#22

Post by mmacaulay »

netmau5 wrote: post #13

I've used SO from time to time but have only participated when I came across a question I thought I could add value to with my perspective. I've never really kept up with the point system. The author says "There's a plateau you hit there where you either have to devote way too much time to help other people do their work, or you just fall out of it." Do your points devalue over time somehow? Is there inflation in the…

Is there inflation in the user permissions you get with rep?

Yes. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#23

Post by joe_the_user »

farmerbuzz wrote: post #12
melling wrote: post #2

I quit StackOverFlow once they devalued asking questions. No one on the site seemed to understand that incentivizing people to ask great questions was the most important thing. The site could have been a great starting point for learning esoteric topics like Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Grails, Scala, Lift, Go, Emacs Lisp, etc. Basically, in general, you need one good question with 2 or 3 good answers [yes, some types are…

Are you using the site for reputation or to spread knowledge? If its the former then you're welcome to leave, if its the latter then why do you care about reputation?

When I found it, StackOverflow seemed like a good "portfolio" site. The goal wouldn't be to answer the most possible question but answer and ask questions which would give a potential employer some idea concerning my skill, knowledge and preferences. But having at least 1k+ Karma seemed like a reasonable part. I was annoyed with question-Karma reduction since it seemed to cut into that goal, even if my Karma never actually went back below 1k.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#24

Post by tednaleid »

My experience doesn't agree with the OP (though as others have noted, the plural of anecdote isn't data).

From the start in 2008 through now, my reputation curve has been a pretty straight line:

http://stackoverflow.com/users/8912?tab=reputationhistory#ta...

I think it depends on the type of community that you participate in. If you work only in relatively unchanging technologies that everyone else works in (like .NET or Java), the OP is probably right. All of the nooks and crannies are exposed and answered. But if you participate in one of the smaller communities (Groovy, Scala, Clojure, Haskell, Io, etc).

I think the number of "niche communities" in the long tail are much larger and more vibrant than the OP supposes. Chances are that it's just the OPs pet technologies that don't get a lot of traffic.

I follow RSS feeds on a number of tags that I find interesting and answer a few questions every week.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#25

Post by codingthewheel »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #11

I'd like to be answering questions there to provide a service, but I'd also like to receive recognition for it. But it seems like that's no longer possible, at least not at a level of tradeoff that's acceptable to me. For one thing, I always try to provide a tested answer, but doing so means that someone frequently jumps in front of me, scoring the reputation. In many of these cases I can see that the answer provided…

I agree, because this kind of thing is very common. I'd have taken it a step further: if you provide an answer to a question, you shouldn't be allowed to downvote other answers to the same question. And if you downvote an answer to a question, you're not allowed to post an answer to that question. So get rid of conflicts of interest, and always allow people to upvote other answers, whether they've provided an answer or not.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#26

Post by markmywords »

hazmattron wrote: post #10

I find that Google is a great way to access the information on Stack Overflow, even as a participating member of the community. When I'm looking for an answer to a question, often a Google search will return the Stack Overflow post most relevant - helpful when there are many similar posts on a given topic.

Yes, it leads to better results than using the Stack Overflow search.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#27

Post by melling »

philh wrote: post #21
farmerbuzz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the site for reputation or to spread knowledge? If its the former then you're welcome to leave, if its the latter then why do you care about reputation?

He cares about incentivizing people to ask great questions, and some people see reputation as an incentive. Therefore he cares about reputation. edit: to clarify, I mean he cares about how reputation is handled, not necessarily about his own reputation.

If I cared most about reputation, I wouldn't have been asking questions in the Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp groups, for example. As you can see, you don't necessarily get a lot of points for asking or answering questions in an esoteric section.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264267/generating-a-quiz...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz...

I had around 90 questions when I quit. The way the game was set up, you always got a lot more points for answering questions, then getting them upvoted. In general, you are going to get more votes in the most popular topics.

Reputation is also a currency. You can spend it to get better answers to your questions, 50 points minimum. My reputation was probably between 2300-2500 before the devaluation. I guess I would have lost half? Not sure. At any rate, where StackOverFlow could have been really interesting is moving beyond the simple questions and solving specific, but a more complicated, questions. If you don't take the time to be specific, someone will just give you a link to another site. That gets upvoted a few times and your question is done.

Hopefully, someone will come up with a better model. I'd do it without rep, but I like the economy aspect. I think it draws in people. People will game it, so design the model to get the desired results: Great questions and great answers.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#28

Post by melling »

eli wrote: post #18
farmerbuzz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the site for reputation or to spread knowledge? If its the former then you're welcome to leave, if its the latter then why do you care about reputation?

The fact that points on SO actually unlock admin and moderation features on the site gives them real value. I don't care at all about my Reddit karma, but if it meant I could eventually retitle misleading posts I would.

Reputation is also a currency. You can use it to get [better] answers to questions. 50 points is the minimum so it can go fast.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#29

Post by russell »

I worked for a for-pay Q&A site a little while back. They had all the incentives of SO and more. For example if you answered half-a-dozen questions a month, you got free access. The reward system. The asker declared how much the question was worth and awarded the points to one or more answerers. Awards could be adjusted by moderators so a better answer could be awarded the points.

There were a large number of categories, added to all the time. An answerer could register as an expert in one or more categories and could become an expert, guru, grand-master, etc. in one or more categories with the badges showing up everywhere.

There was an elaborate email system that kept every one engaged.If you were an expert, you got an email when a question was in one of your areas of expertise. An asker go an email whenever there was an answer of comment to one of your questions.

It appealed to the corporate IT world, but the combination of incentives, communications, and content curation seemed to work quiite well.

Re: Stack Overflow Fatigue

#30

Post by zalew »

Games of code golf, "what's your favorite programming comic strip" threads, and "What language should I start learning now" threads made it way too easy to attain points without actually demonstrating real knowledge or expertise.

Actually, such threads are marked as 'community wiki' and there the reputation points aren't counted. The rest of the article is true, I also got tired of SO and mostly only google it.

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