Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#241

Post by thedufer » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #211

thedufer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of taking the one in a thousand chance that its the wrong thing to do (which, from what I've seen, is generous) they should let edits languish for days or weeks until someone sufficiently knowledgable shows up? That just doesn't sound like a worthwhile tradeoff.

If something should not be edited through another account, then the software should just not allow it. If it allows it, and delegates the check to moderators, then these moderators should either reject it if they are sure the change is wrong. In all other cases they should allow it. It's really that simple.

You have no idea what the spectrum of edits is on SO. Why do you think your heuristic is obviously better, despite making no argument for it?

The heuristic they use is something along the lines of "only accept edits that are grammar fixes, equivalent thereof, or rewordings". Content changes without the authors consent are considered poor form.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#242

Post by alecdbrooks » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

V-2 wrote: post #239

alecdbrooks wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Indeed I went from the top 4% of contributors at my time of departure to the top 3%" >OMG, I didn't realize this issue was so serious. It's actually a fairly big jump. If you look at a distribution of Stack Exchange users[0], it follows a power law distribution, where many users have few points and a handful have a lot[1]. Once you reach the 96th percentile, it takes a fairly large jump in reputation to get to 97.…

This "alternate possibility" is one that came to my mind when I thought about this. Of course one could try to verify it. And anyway - now, I understand that this is beside the point you are making now; just returning to the context set by the article - let me stress that I still fail to see how this is a problem. It would be very simple to "fix" the scoring in this regard, all it takes is to disable voting in questi…

I agree, I don't think SO would benefit from disabling voting on old questions. Don't you want to encourage people to write answers that are useful long after the fact?

The only benefit would be preventing the kind of bullying the OP. It would curtail systematic downvoting of past answers out of spite. But it's an extreme response to what I understand to be a rare problem.

Re: Why I no longer contribute to Stack Overflow

#243

Post by d0mine » Sun, Jan 05, 2014, 1:36 AM UTC

robryan wrote: post #201

orclev wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some data points. Took a poll around our office (it was kind of thin because of the holiday) and of the 4 devs that responded and said they use SO, all 4 said they don't actually care about or pay attention to the points, they just use it as a source of information.

The vast majority of people using stack overflow are simply consuming questions/ answers they have arrived at via a Google search. These people won't care about points but it doesn't tell us anything about the motivations of those that are regularly answering questions.

Here's a data point from another end of the spectrum: I've provided more than 1000 answers. I love it.

If there were no StackOverflow I would use other means more: Usenet/mailing lists, irc.

I don't find it offensive that someone tries to reduce my motivation to accumulating points. It is just another example of "someone wrong on the internet".