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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

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Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#291

Post by shagie »

clairity wrote: post #60
dustingetz wrote: post #11

Point based moderation generates toxicity, hacker news gets toxic too. Stack Overflow went all in on moderation before they understood the social consequences of it. There's an opportunity here for a social network with a moderation system that cares about how it makes people feel and how feelings impact user generated content.

this is a really important point. how do you curate for good content while not demoralizing contributors? and it's a more generalized social challenge. in coaching for example, you need to improve a player's abilities and instincts, which essentially implies that what they're currently doing is not so great. the easiest people to coach understand that they are not already perfect. those who are hardest to coach are t…

With a dozen exceptions for the diamond (elected) mods, all the moderators are from the community and got to that point with contributions. Nearly all of the are still contributing and moderate as part of the process of trying to find things to answer.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#293

Post by smsm42 »

Mithaldu wrote: post #243
smsm42 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site isn't aggressive against newcomers, it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers. Which is usually, it is true, done by newcomers because they don't know how to make a good form ones. This is a social problem which is very hard to solve - how to make people produce high quality content without discouraging them too much when they produce low quality. Some people would be annoyed and leave. But I think…

> it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers You're absolutely wrong in that case. Particularly answers being "good" or "correct" is not part of the mission statement; and the rules reject fixes of questions by default for not being "in the spirit of the poster". All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else.

That wasn't my experience. In fact, this:

> All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else.

Is demonstrably false. If that were the only aim, questions would never be closed and there would be no need for a moderation system. They fact that they do have moderation system and do police questions and answers is the proof that quality is part of the equation.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#294

Post by Mithaldu »

smsm42 wrote: post #293
Mithaldu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers You're absolutely wrong in that case. Particularly answers being "good" or "correct" is not part of the mission statement; and the rules reject fixes of questions by default for not being "in the spirit of the poster". All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else.

That wasn't my experience. In fact, this: > All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else. Is demonstrably false. If that were the only aim, questions would never be closed and there would be no need for a moderation system. They fact that they do have moderation system and do police questions and answers is the proof that quality is part of the equation.

That just weeds out the questions that would make SO look obviously bad.

It does nothing to affect the quality of answers that look ok, but are actually problematic. And in those cases "spirit of poster" always trumps correctness.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#295

Post by inanutshellus »

johnslegers wrote: post #286
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!

I look forward to the follow-up post!

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#296

Post by Latty »

smsm42 wrote: post #209
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem for me is which SO site to search. If I've a problem with a bit of bash script to control KDE on Ubuntu then is that Superuser, Unix, SO, AskUbuntu, or ... I don't understand why the site is split up in that manner. So whilst I'll often choose an SO site I can't use their search. Try "KDE notifications from bash scripts" for example. Google will show that there are answers on SO and Unix.stackexch…

Yes, fragmentation is a real problem. Can be probably solved by integrating the search indexes to some measure without integrating the sites themselves. It's not easy, but it can be done IMHO.

There is already an integrated search. Google. Seriously, SO would be foolish to try and do what Google already does better.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#297

Post by Latty »

CaptSpify wrote: post #138
joekrie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it to be a great resource if someone has already answered your question, especially if I find it via Google. As for asking questions, it's a bit off-putting to be immediately downvoted without explanation, and to not get a single answer. Point is, it's good resource to free-ride but not actively participate.

I've always thought this described it best: SO is a great place to find answers to your questions, but SO is a terrible place to ask questions.

It's more that it turns out that asking questions is hard.

Anyone who has had to work with others in tech knows the kind of crap you get. They don't give you the stack trace, they say 'I get an error' without giving the error message, they just say 'it doesn't work', it's not clear what they want, they post a screenshot of half a stack trace, etc...

Again, it's a constant trade off where you are balancing the asker's needs with the thousand people who find this via Google, and the people answering the question.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#298

Post by Latty »

exstudent2 wrote: post #66
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

The curation is far and away the worst part of SO. So many interesting threads killed for being off topic. I've never seen moderation add a thing to that site. Its success is in its structure and voting. They've done everything in their power to kill that from a moderation angle.

No, it's success is the curation. You just don't understand the site. There is a reason SO persists and is so popular, while so many clones that do exactly the same structure and voting fail miserably.

The 'interesting threads' are exactly the problem. Those are discussions and they don't suit the format. If you want to talk about something, find a forum. SO does not have threads, it has questions and answers, and that is why it's useful.

Turns out people hate wading through pages of outdated discussion. People are forgetting what it was like before SO. Stop expecting SO to be all things to all people - if you want a discussion, go register at a programming forum. SO does what it is trying to do well.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#299

Post by Latty »

reitanqild wrote: post #9
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

> People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. I can often stick with second best in class as long as it doesn't have a habit of biting you for no apparent reason all the time. > People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. People keep saying that and I keep wo…

Bullying? I'm not sure if you are trying to say SO has bullying (it doesn't - yes, newcomers have their questions rejected a lot - turns out asking good questions is hard. Saying this is bullying is like saying that it's bullying not to publish every author's book), or that you really thing bullying was the problem I was referring to in the past.

It wasn't, the issue was the content was useless. To find anything you had to wade through pages of off-topic stuff, and try to get a sense of the value of the given answers. It was terrible. That and the paywalling and other stuff that used to go on.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#300

Post by Latty »

rodgerd wrote: post #111
Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

> People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. For anything involving Linux, the Arch wiki is light-years ahead. It's not even a close competition.

I mean, I'd argue they are doing very different things. The Arch wiki is a collection of full topics that give you an overview of the thing as a whole. SO is a collection of q&a. I find that I need the former much more than I need the latter when it comes to managing my system, and that's probably just the nature of the task at hand. Generally I want to perform a complete task, and having a guide through that means I'm unlikely to encounter a specific problem of the type that SO is good at answering.

Also, the way in which Arch is as a system makes it less likely you have that kind of problem. Because you install and configure everything yourself, there is less 'magic' that is likely to go wrong in a way you don't know how to begin fixing it.

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