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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#681

Post by nargella »

haakon wrote: post #330
pan69 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved listening to the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff and Joel. It was kinda crazy that they were doing a podcast like that while they (Jeff mostly) were building it and coming up with the name, etc. Still have all the mp3's somewhere. Edit: I'm in the top 2%. Most of my rep. comes from interest earned on questions/answers I posted very early on.

After all these years, I still remember exact locations I walked while listening to that. Funny thing, memory.

Method of Loci

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#682

Post by shagie »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #315
zaptrem wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to build out the platform, difficult to build out the knowledge base (especially since so many areas have already been covered on SO)

Could they potentially integrate the existing StackExchange content, given that it’s creative commons licensed?

For people who read SO (rather than ask and answer), SO is useful in the places where the documentation is lacking.

The way to integration that content into an existing project would be to document it better - possibly with a FAQ for development questions. That doesn't really need CC licensing (its helpful, but not essential) in that people who want to contribute documentation can already do so.

Just pull up a SO tag for the library, find the top voted question, and figure out where it goes in the docs.

Q&A shouldn't be used as an alternative to documentation.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#683

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

dorgo wrote: post #576
nanis wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmmm ... Waited almost the gestation period of a human baby before I joined, mostly to raise the quality and quantity of Perl answers. Haven't been very active recently. As user 100,754, I am ranked in the top 0.12%, current #830 based on 2,139 answers and 33 questions https://stackoverflow.com/users/100754 Some of my useful answers get no upvotes: https://stackoverflow.com/a/18162345/100754 And some just keep accum…

>So, the site has 14+ million users with no real activity and the percentile ranking is based on users with 200+ points. Maybe there more people like me who create an account just to do one thing. And the next time they create a new account?

Eventually you choose "Sign-in with Google"

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#684

Post by owl57 »

caf wrote: post #581
bhandziuk wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like their approximate people reached metric. I've answered at lot of VBA questions which get a lot of views but not necessarily from developers who might have an account. I suspect they are mostly anonymous users and thus the answers get a lot of views but relatively few votes.

I've looked at the 'people reached' metric and wondered: does this mean that, objectively speaking, the greatest impact I'll have on the world will turn out to have been a few stackoverflow answers?

Also, if these answers contained any code, it might end up the most used code you've ever written.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#685

Post by mark-r »

iSnow wrote: post #194
jrockway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I think what happened is that the early users answered all the most frequently occurring questions, and the questions honestly haven't changed much. I think my most popular answer is like how to diff with git. People are using git even more than they were when SO started, so it gets upvoted regularly.

There really should be some karma decay system to prevent early users hogging 5-figure reputation. I didn't do much there in the last 5y but I am still way up in reputation.

I don't see how you can call it "hogging". Having a high reputation doesn't prevent anyone else from getting a high reputation too.

For me the reputation points are a proxy for how helpful I've been to other people overall. I like being helpful. Suddenly seeing that score go down for absolutely no reason would be very disincentivizing for me.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#686

Post by panopticon »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #649
phist_mcgee wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever want to see thee Ars community dogpile on a certain topic, read any article on cryptocurrencies. You will get the following comments at the top of the heap: Crypto means I can't buy a graphics card Crypto is a ponzi scheme and should be banned It is immoral to own Bitcoin, and governments should punish people who do Would you like to buy my new XCoin ha ha ha. Elon Musk is amazing, but this crypto thing m…

I think the downvotes on my comment show I have hit a nerve. I did not disagree with any of the points I listed, I am simply pointing out a fact. Downvoting this comment does disprove not my point. The downvotes without engaging with my post are what is wrong with commodified community participation (comment/post points); exactly what harms Stack Overflow in the long run.

You posted a tangential rant disparaging the comment section of another website. The voting system is the most appropriate response to flamebait.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#687

Post by menzoic »

khuey wrote: post #599
ThomasRedstone wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't how a Ponzi scheme works, a Ponzi scheme directly uses fees taken from new members to pay out older ones, lying and saying it's from actual business activity. Crypto doesn't behave any differently than the stock market (except the fundamentals are a little shakier, okay, a lot shakier).

Cryptocurrency doesn't have dividends or share buybacks which are what make stocks have inherent value.

Buybacks are very popular in crypto. Its call token burning. Binance does it all the time with BNB.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#688

Post by mark-r »

jagger27 wrote: post #245
iSnow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really should be some karma decay system to prevent early users hogging 5-figure reputation. I didn't do much there in the last 5y but I am still way up in reputation.

I think this idea combined with the “is this answer still relevant” flag that was recently added would work well. I see no reason to devalue old but still good answers.

Sometimes you're forced to work with older technology, and it's nice that you can still find answers to questions that many would consider obsolete. I'd hate to see a clean-up effort that makes that information go away forever.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#690

Post by [deleted] »

J5892 wrote: post #545
1270018080 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire field of front-end engineering needs to take a step back and think about the user instead of overengineering every problem and constantly changing things just to justify their job existing.

As a front-end engineer I don't feel any pressure to justify my job. The issue of "constantly changing things" tends to be completely out of our hands, so work is pretty abundant. That said, I agree with you in principal. In this field I feel like I'm constantly fighting to keep the code simple and lean, while others think it's okay to import an entire bloated library just to make a button shine a certain way.

[deleted]
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