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The Stack Overflow Age

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#21

Post by ythn »

baud147258 wrote: post #15
ProAm wrote: post #9

It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.

What's so bad about the culture? I've never had any problem there. Please note that I've answered a bunch of question, but only on a tag with not a lot of frequentation.

On some of the high traffic tags (Java, C++, Python) there are a few high rep users that will swoop in on any basic-level question within seconds and close as duplicate/off-topic/too-broad, etc. So on the one hand it is not very newbie or tutorial friendly, but on the other hand, it clears away those kinds of questions to make room for more difficult questions that may not have a good answer on SO yet.

Even still, most newbie questions do get some degree of help from empathetic users in the comments.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#22

Post by dionidium »

booleandilemma wrote: post #10
clavalle wrote: post #3

The Pedant Police make Stack Overflow very difficult to use.

I don’t think so. They try to keep it a question and answer site, not a question and opinion site.

This implies a clearer distinction between answer and opinion than exists in actual reality. There's a second assumption here, which is that there exists one ideal answer for each possible question, which is also wrong.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#23

Post by maxxxxx »

baud147258 wrote: post #18
maxxxxx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to ask questions two times in the last few months and the responses were pretty much "if you don't know what you are doing you should hire an expert" or "why would would anyone do such a thing?". I definitely didn't feel very welcome and will stop posting there. It seems most questions that get answers are very simple and straightforward ones. Difficult stuff doesn't get discussed.

Perhaps in the first case the question you asked was too broad compared to the standard expected for SO questions? Or too precise to be of use to anyone else?

The question was pretty broad but I think discussing it would have been very valuable for quite a few people. What bothered me were the snide responses. At minimum they should have stayed quiet or explained that SO doesn't deal with this kind of question.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#24

Post by rconti »

klmr wrote: post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

I don't know a lot of people who subscribe to stackoverflow either. Use it? yes. Subscribe? no.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#25

Post by simias »

reitanqild wrote: post #4
klmr wrote: post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

Worth noting: I always just scrolled to the very bottom of the page to see the answers on EE. This might not have worked in the start (I don't know) but as far as I can remember it worked. I think they did this intentionally because google would ban them otherwise.

IIRC they changed their approach several times and I think for a while you wouldn't have access to the answer at all until they changed it to what you describe (answer buried at the bottom of the page). I assume they settled on that format for the reason you mention, Google would have ended up removing them from their results if they kept cheating.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#26

Post by nmstoker »

reitanqild wrote: post #4
klmr wrote: post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

Worth noting: I always just scrolled to the very bottom of the page to see the answers on EE. This might not have worked in the start (I don't know) but as far as I can remember it worked. I think they did this intentionally because google would ban them otherwise.

Yes, scrolling down was what I recall too.

Once in a while it wouldn't work and I ditched EE pretty much as soon as SE got going

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#27

Post by nmstoker »

ProAm wrote: post #9

It's too bad the culture of SO turned out the way it did. I was eager and happy to use it early on but was quickly disillusioned and it's my last resort to turn to if I have questions these days.

The perception of a culture problem on SO seems quite strong with a few people here. I'm sure bad things happen but it always seemed a) fairly rare and b) a price worth paying.... Without it, it would be like the Qlikview forums in no time! ;-)

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#28

Post by zwieback »

Slansitartop wrote: post #11
klmr wrote: post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

>> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. > By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Or just used workarounds. I remember always going to the Google Cache versions, because that was what the GoogleBot saw, so it had the answers. I wouldn't be surprised if their SEO tric…

I remember that too, there was a brief time between the comp.lang.xyz usenet groups and SO where the google cache for EE was a great resource for me.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#29

Post by chipperyman573 »

rconti wrote: post #24
klmr wrote: post #2

> One of the biggest such forums was called Experts Exchange. By what metric? I don’t know anybody who was actually subscribed there (although they must have existed). Instead, people were using various other forums that were free. Some of these forums were absolutely huge, both in terms of number of users, and by the number of questions/discussions. Experts Exchange started dominating Google search results, true. Bu…

I don't know a lot of people who subscribe to stackoverflow either. Use it? yes. Subscribe? no.

In order to view an answer on Experts Exchange, you had to subscribe.

Re: The Stack Overflow Age

#30

Post by sgift »

clavalle wrote: post #3

The Pedant Police make Stack Overflow very difficult to use.

It's the old problem that the people who are best at answering questions are not best at moderating. Two completely distinct skill sets that SO conflates, so they don't have to bother with either moderating it themselves (which would probably be impossible) or find a better working mechanism. It's the same problem Wikipedia has, which makes them loose new editors all the time.
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