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Tired of Stack Overflow

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Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#391

Post by benologist »

jasode wrote: post #380
benologist wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/ has over a million subscribers and nobody gets upset if a neurosurgeon explains why washing your hands is important. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ has over a million subscribers and they get repetitive questions all the time without making anybody feel bad about it. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/ has almost a million subscribers and have no problem answerin…

Regarding your 4 examples: /r/NoStupidQuestions/, /r/AskHistorians/, /r/legaladvice/, /r/personalfinance/ I see why those 4 subreddits influence your thinking in how StackOverflow should work so it seems like it could adopt the same (social) mechanisms and it would only improve the site and not degrade it. However, notice that there is no reddit.com/r/ProgrammersAskAnyQuestion/ comparable subreddit that has more traf…

If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Or improve the UI. The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed alternative to some basic filtering.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#392

Post by simonblack »

Why do SO proponents feel it's smart to answer questions with 'this question is closed because dupe' or some other useless bullshit answer.

It's no harder to say 'this question is closed. You will find that the best answer can be found at '

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#393

Post by michaelmrose »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #384
michaelmrose wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that their obligation derives from how you imagine their downvote will effect your life instead of the rules of the site? Neither stack overflow nor your fellow users are obliged to you beyond the standards set by the site and general human decency. It takes 1 second to downvote a low value comment. It might take 5-20 minutes of conversing with a stranger who is likely to respond rudely to criticism.…

> It takes 1 second to downvote a low value comment. Agreed, except I think that is the problem. It takes ZERO seconds to not give points at all to a low-quality comment. And the site should take care readers see the comments with more points before those with fewer points. > Don't like it use a different website. I think you are saying nobody can or should criticize Stack Overflow and its cadre of super-super-users…

I think allowing users to subtract points leads to a larger delta between good and bad content leading to a better differentiation and ranking of content insofar as voters are good judges. I think this is mathematically unassailable.

All that's left to discuss is strategies for maximizing the quality of votes and voters. Ex minimizing the impact of low quality voters by requiring rep to vote.

I think highly paid professionals whose wages mostly put them in the top 10% of the world have an easier time changing tech support forums, perhaps by opening a new tab, than the refugees fleeing murder and mayhem with nothing but the clothes on their backs have of picking a different country to land in.

Perhaps pick a less disgusting comparison.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#394

Post by olingern »

neves wrote: post #383

Children, SO is a blessing for humanity. Their creators should be canonized. You don't remember the pre SO times. You couldn't find anything to fix your problems and must read the source code or pay zillions for some sh*tty support. In the pre-internet times, you just would hit a wall and have to quit. I really love Jeff and Joel.

I remember digging through .NET forums to find answers for working with ASP record sets. 100% not fun.

Nothing is perfect and SO has its warts — but it’s far better than anything we’ve ever had.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#395

Post by jasode »

benologist wrote: post #391
jasode wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your 4 examples: /r/NoStupidQuestions/, /r/AskHistorians/, /r/legaladvice/, /r/personalfinance/ I see why those 4 subreddits influence your thinking in how StackOverflow should work so it seems like it could adopt the same (social) mechanisms and it would only improve the site and not degrade it. However, notice that there is no reddit.com/r/ProgrammersAskAnyQuestion/ comparable subreddit that has more traf…

If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Or improve the UI. The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed alternative to some basic filtering.

>If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out?

Are you talking about the JSON api? (https://api.stackexchange.com/docs)

If so, there's no obvious API call where one can put a "not boring" filter as a parameter. Do you have source code examples of what you're suggesting?

>The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed

Right but there are 2 groups ... not just 1 group representing the question askers. There's also the other group of desirable experts providing answers.

If you tune the site's rules to avoid ruining the experience of the question askers', you've now ruined the experience for the answerers. (Again, refer to the cited threads of answerers' complaining about their experience being ruined because of bad quality questions.)

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#396

Post by proverbialbunny »

neves wrote: post #383

Children, SO is a blessing for humanity. Their creators should be canonized. You don't remember the pre SO times. You couldn't find anything to fix your problems and must read the source code or pay zillions for some sh*tty support. In the pre-internet times, you just would hit a wall and have to quit. I really love Jeff and Joel.

I enjoyed the pre-internet times when it came to programming far more than I do today. This is because of flow states.

I have a hard time getting into a flow state when I'm looking something up, but when I know the language inside and out it's easy for me to get into a flow state.

So much so, when I learn a language I try to know it well enough to never have to google for help. Of course, I still google around at times, but I find the less I have to the happier my day is.

SO is a blessing, but it's also a curse. Younger devs have no idea what they're missing out on.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#397

Post by galaxyLogic »

michaelmrose wrote: post #393
galaxyLogic wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes 1 second to downvote a low value comment. Agreed, except I think that is the problem. It takes ZERO seconds to not give points at all to a low-quality comment. And the site should take care readers see the comments with more points before those with fewer points. > Don't like it use a different website. I think you are saying nobody can or should criticize Stack Overflow and its cadre of super-super-users…

I think allowing users to subtract points leads to a larger delta between good and bad content leading to a better differentiation and ranking of content insofar as voters are good judges. I think this is mathematically unassailable. All that's left to discuss is strategies for maximizing the quality of votes and voters. Ex minimizing the impact of low quality voters by requiring rep to vote. I think highly paid prof…

> top 10% of the world have an easier time changing tech support forums

Surely. I was just saying it is a "little bit like" that. The principle seems to be the same: You can't criticize because ... you chose to use Stack Overflow for help. Go elsewhere if you don't like it.

Surely that is what people who don't like it do. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't express their opinions about it.

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#398

Post by benologist »

jasode wrote: post #395
benologist wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Or improve the UI. The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed alternative to some basic filtering.

>If the problem is just repetitive, boring questions how about the power users just use the API to filter them out? Are you talking about the JSON api? ( https://api.stackexchange.com/docs ) If so, there's no obvious API call where one can put a "not boring" filter as a parameter. Do you have source code examples of what you're suggesting? >The power to ruin someone else's experience is a heavy-handed Right but there…

I don't have a code example but I think even if the API is inadequate it doesn't really matter - filtering content can be solved in many ways. The browser extension "Reddit Enhancement Suite" I think literally just parses the page you're on to remove undesired content. Reddit's /r/worldnews has content filtering I think might be done with CSS. SO could obviously make a minimal effort to empower such functionality too or build it into their UI. There's search services like the one HN uses that make the content a flexible API.

https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite

Re: Tired of Stack Overflow

#399

Post by indecisive_user »

wruza wrote: post #345
setr wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people answering questions, they’d see the same question 10,000 times, and likely miss the questions that are actually worth answering. And in a Q&A site, the answerers are far more important than the questioners — if the questions will be answered, the questioners will flock there out of need, regardless of want. Answerers are however not so constrained. People complain about SO because, I think, it does the cor…

>For people answering questions, they’d see the same question 10,000 times, and likely miss the questions that are actually worth answering. Me included. I was a regular answerer for interesting tags in which I have at least sort of moderate knowledge, but after just a few months I lost interest in it, since it is just a never-ending stream of the same basic low quality beggings. It is like '00s inbox with one precio…

> out of many pages of answers only few see one upvote a year^. I helped mostly specific people, not the common knowledge.

I regularly come across helpful answers on SO with 0 or 1 upvotes, so I wouldn't judge your contributions' impact solely on that. You've likely helped many people with your answers, even if there's no proof of it.

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