StackOverflow Considered Harmful? • Hacker News Board

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#61

Post by codinghorror » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 3:14 AM UTC

foobarbecue wrote: post #31

What a strange rant. First of all, this guy continued answering and asking questions since he published this article, so I guess he changed his mind about deleting his account. http://stackoverflow.com/users/2189331/jdevlin Secondly the italic bits about how he should be allowed to delete questions because he created the content make no sense. All SO questions and answers are collaboratively created so he can't claim…

The issue is Creative Commons content, if you are legitimately pruning old low value content of yours that is totaly fine. But rage quits where people just want to take their content and go home, withdrawing it from the commons out of anger, is not OK.

You can always get to older content even deleted content through the regular Creative Commons data dumps that the whole Stack network publishes torrents of. You can also, if you sign an NDA, get a more complete data set for research purposes.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#62

Post by codinghorror » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 3:16 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #4

This sounds like a similar problem to Wikipedia: great resource, bad community. I've never been active in the SO community, and am no longer active in the WP community, so my experience with both is as a read-only resource. Both are excellent in that regard.

All communities trend to strictness over time, otherwise they do not survive.

But anyone can bring this up on meta, if they have data, if they have examples, and lobby for change.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#63

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 3:16 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #4

This sounds like a similar problem to Wikipedia: great resource, bad community. I've never been active in the SO community, and am no longer active in the WP community, so my experience with both is as a read-only resource. Both are excellent in that regard.

[deleted]

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#64

Post by etjossem » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 3:38 AM UTC

geekrax wrote: post #14

sliverstorm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how will you get clicks if you don't resort to ever-more-Buzzfeed-esque titles?

Yeah, right? He should've just said "13 reasons why I will never use StackOverflow again."

You'll never believe number 10!

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#65

Post by vonklaus » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 3:39 AM UTC

Shog9 wrote: post #25

FWIW, I personally scheduled his account for deletion weeks ago; not sure why it wasn't removed, other than that the system thought he canceled the deletion (which we allow, because deletion is permanent). We're working with him now to figure out what happened.

Out of curiosity, not hostility, why can a user not delete their own account? Why is there no obvious account option that says 'permanently delete account' which would remove a user from the site? All the content would still be there, the user would simply lose the ability to create more content and make edits?

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#66

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:12 AM UTC

bojo wrote: post #11

blt wrote: post #8

I like Stack Overflow. I agree with many of its criticisms, but I still think it's a huge gain for the programming community overall. I think the worst aspect is the endless "your premise is flawed, you should do instead" answers. I often formulate toy examples, or ask questions out of curiosity rather than practical need. Somehow, users always latch on to the irrelevant part of my question instead of answering the p…

My buddy and I call that "I asked how to use a ladder, you told me to take the elevator" syndrome. I'm picking apples!

I will usually under or over answer for those kinds of reasons... If the specific case is pretty narrow, I'll write either a thorough answer to a more broad scope, or a specific answer with some additional info on alternatives.

Sometimes I will write a very broad answer, especially when it's apparent the person doesn't seem to have looked into finding anything, and just asked a question on SO, which happens a lot.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#67

Post by jusio » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:21 AM UTC

This article should be titled "StackOverflow Rep-Whoring Considered Harmful?"

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#68

Post by DennisP » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

imron wrote: post #34

DennisP wrote: post #2

Considering that whenever I google a programming question, the most useful answer is generally on StackOverflow and at the top of the search results, I have a hard time considering it harmful in any way. It might not be perfect, but I don't know anything better.

The author of the article isn't saying it's harmful for people searching for questions that already have good answers. He's saying that people who contribute heavily to the site with answers, knowledge and moderation are probably better off spending that time doing something more productive. And with the gamification system keeping them at it, it harms them when they could be doing something more productive than chas…

Probably. And I probably should have done something more productive than building up 25K reddit points, but I don't blame reddit for that. If I'd spent the time on stackoverflow instead, it might have been more helpful to people.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#69

Post by bramgg » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 5:00 AM UTC

Shog9 wrote: post #25

FWIW, I personally scheduled his account for deletion weeks ago; not sure why it wasn't removed, other than that the system thought he canceled the deletion (which we allow, because deletion is permanent). We're working with him now to figure out what happened.

I love when action is taken after people write successful blog posts.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#70

Post by mdekkers » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 5:05 AM UTC

_m7bj wrote: post #39

Here's the thing about stack overflow: How many people have worked at a location that has blocked stack overflow? Because I have worked with an organization of about 2500 people, not all of which were IT. One day, management went on a mad whitelisting crusade and blocked about 98% of the internet, including the stack exchange network. IT ground totally to a halt, across all our branches. No programming, no sys-admini…

The amount of all-round bad advice on SO is staggering. It also encourages "copy-paste" coding and systems engineering, without the engineer really understanding the issue.