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

The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 304 posts

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#281

Post by shagie »

winteriscoming wrote: post #267
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you intend to prevent that? Very very few posts are actually uneditable at all, and editing is open to all users (some need approval). If a post is locked and outdated it's likely that the question was locked because it was the kind of question that does not provide long-lasting answers (for example a software recommendation list).

Given that a voting system is in place, why not let the duplicate stay open and just mark it as a duplicate and link it to the other thread? People who don't like the new thread can down vote it and people who do want to contribute meaningful replies can still do and be upvoted if it adds value. I don't see how this might affect SEO in any bad way than the current scheme does.

Fragmentation of knowledge. The SO model tries to get the answers in one place so the people who search first find the answer in one place.

If duos were open, the you'd have to look in all the places first to find the best answer. And then you might as well skip that step and ask another question rather than search.

Try searching a forum or /r/javahelp or the like for an answer. See how many results you have to hit before you find an answer that works for you. Then reconsider the value of closing and pointing people at the duplicate question.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#282

Post by johnslegers »

FYI, I'm the author of that article. I initially published it in July 2015, when it got ±65,000 views in two days. I republished it @ Hackernoon this weekend at their request, which resulted in ±125,000 additional page views, bringing the total page views of the article since its publication in 2015 to ±245,000. The fact that this article went viral TWICE (while none of my other articles even got to 5000 views) illustrates how many people experience the same frustrations.

On SO, I currently have 11,914 rep 9 gold badges, 66 silver badges and 73 bronze badges. I've posted 492 answers and 6 questions (that haven't been deleted). I've been programming since 1999 and I've worked as an IT professional since 2006, and my experience ranges from PHP and JS to SAP and PL/SQL. I also released my own open source frontend framework and several other open source projects on Github. So I know how to program and understand many of SO's intricate workings!

Those rare times I'm stuck on a programming issue, I find it impossible to find any useful answer on SO. My questions either get no answers at all or downvoted and/or closed (for arbitrary reasons) by people who clearly lack the experience to even remotely understand what I'm talking about.

During my time on SO, I've been bullied by 20+k users several times and even got a temporary ban by one of them moderators for no other reason but pointing out that another user was acting like "a little Hitler"... in a private conversation with moderation.

Yes, other communities have similar problems, but never have I been a member of a community where bullying and trolling was so common among the most privileged segments of its membership.

Considering the popularity of my article, I'm considering writing a follow-up and go in greater detail on my experiences with SO and how SO could be improved. However, I'm quite busy these days, so it may take a while before it actually gets published... if it ever gets published.

Nevertheless, these are my 5 cents I'd like to add to this interaction...

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#283

Post by shagie »

reitanqild wrote: post #272
Veedrac wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "a little bit harder" mean? Any reputation requirement is out of the window because it would alienate far too many people from ever contributing. A screening process wouldn't work well because SO already puts too much burden on moderators (which is largely why people end up making rushed moderation decisions).

> What does "a little bit harder" mean? I'll try to answer below. But I don't think SO can have their cake and eat it to: IMO SO can either set the threshold for asking to non-zero or they could stop complaining about the current torrent of help vampires and low-effort questions. > Any reputation requirement is out of the window because it would alienate far too many people from ever contributing. And here is were ou…

One must differentiate the SO core user group and SO the company that develops, hosts, and sells advertising.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#284

Post by johnslegers »

soyiuz wrote: post #185

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.

philosophy.SE is much smaller than SO and the problem is actually far worse over there.

Due to the inherent subjectivity of even what qualifies as philosophical, the mostly Judeo-Christian moderation over there bullies everyone into oblivion for no other reason but disagreement with their ignorant worldview.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#285

Post by johnslegers »

firefoxd wrote: post #19

No,SO is not declining. All the common questions have already been answered. The main problem is people don't research their problem for more then a minute before asking a question.

Try asking questions involving obscure or complex programming problems for which no previous questions exist.

Try getting ANY answer at all.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#286

Post by johnslegers »

inanutshellus wrote: post #250

I found myself a little incensed at this article, rather than by it. Yup, there are limits on new users' privileges. Yes, there are users that play The Reputation Game. Yes, there are many questions that don't get answered to one's satisfaction. Yes, there are trolls. Yes, there are disillusioned users. Yes, yes, yes. Even so, I also find all of this to be Perfect-As-Enemy-of-Good whinging. Instead it could've been a…

Yes, my article needs a follow-up that goes in greater detail on the causes of the issues and suggests some actual improvements.

Point taken. I'll look into that as soon as I find the time for it!

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#287

Post by debacle »

johnslegers wrote: post #282

FYI, I'm the author of that article. I initially published it in July 2015, when it got ±65,000 views in two days. I republished it @ Hackernoon this weekend at their request, which resulted in ±125,000 additional page views, bringing the total page views of the article since its publication in 2015 to ±245,000. The fact that this article went viral TWICE (while none of my other articles even got to 5000 views) illus…

> Those rare times I'm stuck on a programming issue, I find it impossible to find any useful answer on SO.

That's because when you get stuck, it's on non-trivial, sometimes edge case-y things. When most others get stuck, it's because they are doing something obviously wrong or have a common issue.

I have the same problem. I've asked <5 SO questions, but many of them have been last resort, "Lets see if the Internet knows" type of scenarios. Generally those aren't nearly as rewarding or easy to answer.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#288

Post by gotofritz »

reitanqild wrote: post #278
gotofritz wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because I have never actually seen happen, hence I went with what I was familiar with.

Can you see our point now? Because this is exactly the kind of rubber-stamping that we are talking about: to busy defending the system to actually read what the user tries to ask about/point out.

I'm not "too busy defending the system", all I offer is my experience, where false duplicates has never been an issue. Maybe in the particular technologies you use there are some below par mods.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#289

Post by rhapsodic »

I won't dispute any of the criticisms of Stack Overflow, but in its defense I'll say that life as a developer in the Stack Overflow era is much easier than it was in the pre-SO era. You could find solutions to your problems online back then, but it took a lot more work. Now, I enter a question or some keywords into Google, click the top SO result, and more often than not, find a well-written and complete answer to my question. I hope that doesn't go away.
Post reply on HN