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StackOverflow Is Having Issues

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Re: StackOverflow Is Having Issues

#41

Post by voxic11 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #39
therusskiy wrote: post #11

many people jokingly say that their work stops if StackOverflow is down. Surprisingly I barely use SO, I refer to docs and Github source code and issues much more often.

I bet you don't work mainly in C# or Javascript. (Or, well, Javascript SO has been downhill for a while, so maybe it's time to take it out of this list. I wouldn't know.) On some stacks, you depend on SO for everything. Others have much more complete and usable documentation somewhere else that answers any question that SO would accept, so people don't need it at all.

I work with C# and I almost never use stackoverflow anymore. Back in 2013 when I started working with it I remember I would use stackoverflow every day. But now I find way more answers in github issues. The answers on stackoverflow are usually really dated if they exist at all. Its almost like when microsoft made the move to dotnetcore and started hosting the project on github all the dotnet related activity on stackoverflow stopped.

Re: StackOverflow Is Having Issues

#42

Post by marcosdumay »

voxic11 wrote: post #41
marcosdumay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you don't work mainly in C# or Javascript. (Or, well, Javascript SO has been downhill for a while, so maybe it's time to take it out of this list. I wouldn't know.) On some stacks, you depend on SO for everything. Others have much more complete and usable documentation somewhere else that answers any question that SO would accept, so people don't need it at all.

I work with C# and I almost never use stackoverflow anymore. Back in 2013 when I started working with it I remember I would use stackoverflow every day. But now I find way more answers in github issues. The answers on stackoverflow are usually really dated if they exist at all. Its almost like when microsoft made the move to dotnetcore and started hosting the project on github all the dotnet related activity on stack…

Interesting. Granted, I never looked at the .net github itself.

Re: StackOverflow Is Having Issues

#43

Post by jeffreygwang »

shagie wrote: post #35
stephendause wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I don't know see an obvious causal link between that and the quality of the answers and questions.

The user experience of the people in the 1% (the 90-9-1 rule - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule ) is diminishing. Existing systems showing their age and failing to scale, processes and norms that work in tandem between technology and people are straining as times change. In these cases, the technology needs to keep pace with the systems (both computer systems and people systems) that it supports. Failure to do…

Incentives are super out of whack for sure -- website is saturated and answerers have no real incentive to wade through the mud.

It's for reasons like this that there are new startups cropping up in the field. One that's exciting to me is Quidio, a bounty-based Q&A marketplace that demolishes the 90-9-1 rule for better quality results.

Re: StackOverflow Is Having Issues

#44

Post by zihotki »

voxic11 wrote: post #41
marcosdumay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you don't work mainly in C# or Javascript. (Or, well, Javascript SO has been downhill for a while, so maybe it's time to take it out of this list. I wouldn't know.) On some stacks, you depend on SO for everything. Others have much more complete and usable documentation somewhere else that answers any question that SO would accept, so people don't need it at all.

I work with C# and I almost never use stackoverflow anymore. Back in 2013 when I started working with it I remember I would use stackoverflow every day. But now I find way more answers in github issues. The answers on stackoverflow are usually really dated if they exist at all. Its almost like when microsoft made the move to dotnetcore and started hosting the project on github all the dotnet related activity on stack…

It's not that it has stopped, but there is less and less open topics where there is no solution. And those topics are usually (in my experience) niche topics and will get better discussion in GitHub issues or in a similar system. Or related to a legacy stuff, then SO could help.

In addition to that, quality of experience, code, as well as quality of documentation increased comparing to before .net core. I find myself often going to the official docs for documentation now, or just look in the sources or even debug the internals using available debug symbols.

Re: StackOverflow Is Having Issues

#45

Post by [deleted] »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #34
alex_sf wrote: post #25

I know it's the tacky thing to say, but: I feel like StackOverflow has gotten worse over the past couple years. The questions and answers are both lower quality. It's possible that Google is leading me astray since that's typically how I'll find Q&As on there, but I don't see the same issue on the other sites in the Stack network.

I find that Github is becoming a better place for more focused questions, mostly in issues, sometimes in the new discussion feature.

[deleted]
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