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My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

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Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#31
My favourite is the upvoted "You should have Googled this" comment with an accompanying, and equally upvoted, "Google sent me here."

SO seems to have not awakened to the fact that it is the defacto programming information site for all languages and developer capabilities and no longer the purview of elite.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you didn't just ask why it's off topic. You threw around insults and used very vulgar language. http://stackoverflow.com/posts/27510345/revisions

Actually I did ask, strange you didn't notice that since it's right there in the link you posted. And yeah, you are right, I used the word 'cunt' after they started behaving like that, I'm sorry if that scared you; I did it because I was really pissed off by all their bs. Have you ever felt annoyed some time in your life? Apparently not, lucky you.

Good Lord. The sense of entitlement it takes to use language like that and _then_ post it here and expect people will be supportive of your argument. This is a side topic but one I see often. I think it's very important that Europeans/UK/Aussie's realize the "c word" is one of the few swear words that doesn't travel well in the US. It's never used here and is extremely vulgar. So I would not use it on the web unless you are sure that your audience is primarily European and specifically the UK. (Grew up in Australia through University. Lived in Europe. Have lived now in the US a long time)

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#33
post #21

It has largely become more or less a standard expectation that every single question I come across on Stack Overflow through search engine results will be locked. This expectation is rarely contradicted, and then only usually within very small sub-niche topics (the Racket SO community is quite pleasant, frex). It has rather ensured that I never made any effort to contribute to that community. I do still use SO answer…

A note on locking: Locking prevents edits and comments on an individual post. The reason for locking a post is nearly always spam edits/comments. Locks are finite in time. Questions that rank highly for popular search queries receive a lot of traffic, and locking is often necessary to prevent vandalism.

On question closure, this is rarely done by moderators (users with a diamond ♦ after their name), but by 5 votes from regular users. Only moderators can lock posts.

Disclosure: I am a Stack Exchange moderator

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#34
post #28

I've always been uneasy about the fact that Stack Overflow users can edit each other's posts more or less arbitrarily. User A can edit user B's post to say something embarrassing, and most readers will attribute it to User B. I've had this happen with my posts. It's never been egregious, like a user inserting something inflammatory into my otherwise mundane programming question. Most often, the offending edits give t…

Does StackOverflow notify when your answer is edited?

It does. You will receive a notification in your inbox saying which post was edited so you can review it.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#35
post #21

It has largely become more or less a standard expectation that every single question I come across on Stack Overflow through search engine results will be locked. This expectation is rarely contradicted, and then only usually within very small sub-niche topics (the Racket SO community is quite pleasant, frex). It has rather ensured that I never made any effort to contribute to that community. I do still use SO answer…

Who cares about downvoted answers, really? I see it only as a warning. ("This may be incomplete or misleading")

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#36
post #27

First off, a caveat: I'm about to complain about a lot of people I respect and rather like. I'll probably take a lot of heat for it, but it needs to be said. I feel like a lot of the closing of niche questions these days comes from the chat communities. (By "chat", I mean: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ ) There's a huge rash of "cv-pls" in the chat rooms. I don't have a problem with it in general, but the culture aro…

That's really depressing. Makes me question my participation in the site a little bit (never joined the chat or wanted to).

Do you have any actual examples?

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#37
#1 on my StackOverflow wishlist is a way to make collaboration easier on answers.

I see many questions and answers where the top answer mostly works, yet buried below there's a much better answer. I see this happening in areas where technology is in flux, such as languages with evolving syntax, or when toolchains are moving to new tools.

Collaboration can improve this by enabling subsequent people to add additional information. Some examples: "This older answer is for version 1, and this newer answer is for version 2", or "This older answer is specifically for bash, and this newer answer is specifically for zsh".

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#38
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you didn't just ask why it's off topic. You threw around insults and used very vulgar language. http://stackoverflow.com/posts/27510345/revisions

Actually I did ask, strange you didn't notice that since it's right there in the link you posted. And yeah, you are right, I used the word 'cunt' after they started behaving like that, I'm sorry if that scared you; I did it because I was really pissed off by all their bs. Have you ever felt annoyed some time in your life? Apparently not, lucky you.

I’m happy to say that I downvoted you specifically for that! It’s what I always do whenever there’s a rude remark, regardless of question content. Glad to see you’re getting so many votes now, though.

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#39
post #9

To me, I see this strange contradiction in how stackoverflow is evolving. Joel Spolsky (one of the founders) gave a very interesting presentation[1] in 2009. The key takeaway I've always remembered from his comments was the idea of "anthropology". The science of trying to really understand human behavior and make the website amplify good communities. What I see 6 years later is a lot of " why is this question closed…

[deleted]

Re: My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow

#40
Sure stack overflow isn't perfect, but shit... Do you know how much productivity would be lost on a global scale if the site suddenly disappeared? I still use it in some capacity almost every day. Sure some of the rules might be nit picky and can be obnoxious sometimes, but nothing is perfect.
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