StackOverflow modding itself out of existence • Hacker News Board

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#31

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

nikic wrote: post #23

ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

Questions with many upvotes do require more deletion votes. E.g. this question needed 10 votes, rather than the usual 3.

It's not hard to find 10 zealots on SO. 100 would be better or set an exponential threshold related to the upvotes and views.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#32

Post by danesparza » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #31

nikic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questions with many upvotes do require more deletion votes. E.g. this question needed 10 votes, rather than the usual 3.

It's not hard to find 10 zealots on SO. 100 would be better or set an exponential threshold related to the upvotes and views.

I like the 'exponential threshold' idea ... if for nothing more than the new sport it would create. Geeks would have to convince a LOT of people in order to close certain questions.

It might even introduce new terminology: "The chances that this question will stay open forever are approaching infinity..."

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#33

Post by jameshart » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

The trouble is, the question is completely backwards. "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks.

For every answer to this question, SO would be better served with a question asking "How does [Java internal or widely used library class] accomplish [thing that seems impossible in Java]" for which the answer is "It uses sun.misc.Unsafe in [this way]".

Yes, the information on this page is useful, but it's not stack overflowish.

Still, seems crazy to close it if more sensible versions of the question don't exist.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#34

Post by nlawalker » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC

arfliw wrote: post #24

jeena wrote: post #13

That is one of the main reasons to own your own data and not to trust some company with it. Just post it on your own blog and link to it instead.

If you have a solution, this is the best way to do it. You won't get the reputation points for it but when somebody is Googling for that problem, they will be happy you stuck it on your blog. That is the goal, isn't it? To help people?

The frustrating thing about this is SO has the potential to be much more valuable than a blog post. An SO answer will get a lot more eyeballs than a personal blog, and has built-in and well-understood capabilities for community collaboration and updates.

Say you find a bug with Product X v1, create a workaround, and post it to your blog. In V2, the problem has been fixed, or exists in a slightly different incarnation with a slightly different workaround that someone figures out only after reading your content. Maybe they'll leave a comment on your blog about it, but you don't really have any incentive to update it. If your post was an SO question, they could post another answer or make an edit, and the page becomes the canonical source for information about the bug.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#35

Post by fnordfnordfnord » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

jakub_g wrote: post #25

I find myself from time to time having questions that I know would be immediately closed at SO by hyperactive mods, though probably many users, potential googlers etc. would like to find the answer to the same question. What is a good place to pose such questions? I don't believe Ask HN is one, since time-on-frontpage is very short, and if thread does not get upvotes quickly, it goes into oblivion, and also, while to…

If you aren't already in the SO club, and aren't willing to commit a lot of your time carefully getting there, then just treat the place as read-only.

Here are some other places. Each has their own problems. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine if they are better.

reddit, /g/, IRC, lobste.rs

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#36

Post by lnanek2 » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #5

detaro wrote: post #2

Outside of "how do I do X in JQuery again?", most times google directs me to StackOverflow it is to a question that got closed for some reason or other. I just can assume there are people for which it works better that way, but for me StackOverflow is useless in most cases where I'd hope it could help me. (EDIT: to add, the case mentioned by jrcii of "question is closed, but has a useful answer" also happens)

On the contrary, as a C# developer I find tons of useful information there especially in advanced issues. And the discussion is also useful because they present solutions from different angles. Perhaps SO is better suited for those on the Desktop frontier rather than mobile or web development.

The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions.

So if you are getting discussion, you are actually just experiencing the common case of getting your needs addressed before the terrible moderation kicks in and closes good content.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#37

Post by lnanek2 » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

nlawalker wrote: post #29

As I read this, I was thinking, "man, it would be great if StackOverflow could serve as sort of a wiki platform so information like this has a place to live even though it doesn't meet SO's 'question and answer' criteria." Of course, it does [1] (as an aside, read the comments on the answer there, most of them are people bitching that they can't earn rep on community wiki posts). The first link in the answer there po…

There used to be a programmers.stackexchange.com stack overflow site where the more general questions and discussions could go, but the moderation on that has been just as misguided lately, so I think the owners forgot the purpose of it.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#38

Post by troymc » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #33

ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

The trouble is, the question is completely backwards. "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks. For every answer to this question, SO would be better served with a question asking "How does [Java internal or widely used library class] accomplish [thing that seems impossible in Java]" for which the answer is "It uses sun.misc.Unsafe in [this way]". Yes, t…

> "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks.

Either you're being sarcastic, or you have no familiarity with the history of science.

The rest of your answer shows another aspect of what's wrong with Stack Overflow: zealous mods who get an idea of the perfect question into their heads, and then who go out to purge anything that doesn't conform, regardless of whether others find it (and its response) useful or interesting.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#39

Post by bravo_alpha » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

nlawalker wrote: post #34

arfliw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a solution, this is the best way to do it. You won't get the reputation points for it but when somebody is Googling for that problem, they will be happy you stuck it on your blog. That is the goal, isn't it? To help people?

The frustrating thing about this is SO has the potential to be much more valuable than a blog post. An SO answer will get a lot more eyeballs than a personal blog, and has built-in and well-understood capabilities for community collaboration and updates. Say you find a bug with Product X v1, create a workaround, and post it to your blog. In V2, the problem has been fixed, or exists in a slightly different incarnation…

I agree with you in theory, but it's also important to understand the SO perspective on this issue. It seems like they believe allowing the community to "drift" by not modding things defined originally as off-topic will be harmful to the community in the long haul.

How many times has HN discussed the digg/reddit/HN decline in quality as the population grows?

In their minds (and I have to give them the benefit of the doubt given their awesome accomplishment!), keeping strictly on topic is one way to prevent the point of the site from drifting.

It may be that the SO people "want" is a better one. But that's the decision that Atwood & co. have made. To wish for a SO that allowed off topic responses is to ask for a different product.

Re: StackOverflow modding itself out of existence

#40

Post by derpderpdrep » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #33

ceejayoz wrote: post #11

IMO, one thing that'd help would be requiring more close/delete votes for questions with lots of upvotes (and lots of heavily upvoted answers) like this one had. That said, the question - "Of course the Unsafe class is undocumented, but how can I use it in a real world scenario" - is pretty much the definition of "too broad". That said, I voted to undelete and reopen, which appears to have succeeded.

The trouble is, the question is completely backwards. "I have this solution, what problems can I solve with it?" is not something a human being generally asks. For every answer to this question, SO would be better served with a question asking "How does [Java internal or widely used library class] accomplish [thing that seems impossible in Java]" for which the answer is "It uses sun.misc.Unsafe in [this way]". Yes, t…

I really actually love finding questions like that on SO. Sometimes the only way you learn how to do something better is through spontaneous example, because it's just not intuitive or inline with the current flow of things.

Maybe they would be better categorized into some group that is more appropriate, but then you lose the possibility of someone within that knowledge domain being able to answer the question appropriately.

Those questions run right alongside reading documentation for fun.

I suppose an overhaul to the infrastructure of question answering could help solve this problem - like questions have a maturity cycle / process in which they are developed into a more refined / edited sorts of comprehensive documentation, or even a better 'smarter' way of linking clusters of question together, or a way of moderating the authoritative direction of a question (rather than delete or replace, show a progression of modifications so people can learn what are model questions and what are less useful kinds).

Getting people to stop asking kinds of questions will never work, because they ask those questions precisely because they have not been trained in any sorts of formal internet etiquette. If you want to prevent the community from collapsing in on itself, I think the best solution is to modify the flow and connectivity of questions, so that they are intelligently inter-related, rather than relying on a sort of competitive singular universal form.