Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#71

Post by rudedogg » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

Stack Overflow's point system is really annoying. I've been programming for around 10 years, but because I don't participate much I can't even comment on an answer.

A month or so ago I was stuck on a problem and thought I'd go through a tag for something I'm familiar with, and submit some answers to try and get enough points to be able to fully use the site.

One answer had a new programmer following a tutorial and using an old method signature. I commented that the tutorial he was following is out of date, and listed the correct method to use.

The person downvoted my answer, and then pasted (basically) the same code as the answer to his own question and accepted it. I know I just had bad luck in this case, but it's pretty frustrating.

Not allowing a user with low points to do some functions makes sense, but let them submit content and allow other users to determine if it's useful. I could have (and wanted to) comment on dozens of answers, which would of helped out a lot of people and saved them time/frustration.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#72

Post by krick » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

I really don't want people to start using something like this instead of improving the official documentation. I hate the fact it probably cannot be helped.

To "do the same thing for docs that we did for Q&A"? Yeah, except there just was no sane platform for Q&A before. And for docs there is, you know… the docs!

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#73

Post by bjg » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

pietroalbini wrote: post #67

drusepth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this seems more like a problem with search algorithms than Stack Overflow. If the canonical documentation is more helpful to more people, it should rank higher. If Stack Overflow Documentation is more helpful, _it_ should rank higher. It doesn't hurt to try to create a resource that might end up being more useful to more people. But until it really is, it needs to be ranked as so.

My point is, why would you duplicate documentation both on the canonical source and in Stack Overflow? For example, Flask [1] has a great and complete documentation, but still someone is starting to duplicate it on SO Docs. Why are we wasting time duplicating things instead of improving what's already there? [1] http://flask.pocoo.org

Money

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#74

Post by theli0nheart » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #60

lstamour wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just idling in the Documentation chat channel and based on what I was seeing there, it appears links to sources are discouraged on StackOverflow documentation. Presumably, they're aiming to eventually host new content that's better than what's already out there. I think it's a bit silly -- at least make a Sources section where folks can click to view links to existing docs!

Everyone knows that cool urls don't change, but the problem with links is that not all urls are cool urls. Links rot over time.

So the answer is to not use links at all?

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#75

Post by chx » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:24 PM UTC

pietroalbini wrote: post #24

What I'm most worried about is the duplication between the canonical documentation of a project and the StackOverflow one. As the author of an open-source project, I try my best to write a great documentation, and I would be a bit annoyed if people started to add examples to StackOverflow just to gain reputation there instead of contributing to the "official" one. Also, SO is ranked way higher than the smaller-projec…

PHP, for example, has very good documentation with notes already (yes, more curation on notes would be even better) and this will cause a lot of duplication and confusion.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#76

Post by Tloewald » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

pietroalbini wrote: post #24

What I'm most worried about is the duplication between the canonical documentation of a project and the StackOverflow one. As the author of an open-source project, I try my best to write a great documentation, and I would be a bit annoyed if people started to add examples to StackOverflow just to gain reputation there instead of contributing to the "official" one. Also, SO is ranked way higher than the smaller-projec…

Perhaps the solution is for StackOverflow to provide a "here's the official docs" bot that looks for questions that are answered by official docs and links to them (and perhaps provide a system for maintainers to give it hints).

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#77

Post by voxic11 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

theli0nheart wrote: post #74

recursive wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows that cool urls don't change, but the problem with links is that not all urls are cool urls. Links rot over time.

So the answer is to not use links at all?

Sometimes it's better to pass by value, sometimes it's better to pass by reference.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#78

Post by namuol » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #26

pietroalbini wrote: post #24

What I'm most worried about is the duplication between the canonical documentation of a project and the StackOverflow one. As the author of an open-source project, I try my best to write a great documentation, and I would be a bit annoyed if people started to add examples to StackOverflow just to gain reputation there instead of contributing to the "official" one. Also, SO is ranked way higher than the smaller-projec…

There's one question I saw on Stack Overflow a while back that irritated me. If you copied and pasted the literal question directly into Google, the top hit was directly to the canonical documentation, where you could just scroll down to the clearly marked heading, and copy and paste the sample code and have it work straight away. When I pointed this out, I was berated for not understanding that Stack Overflow is try…

> I'm seeing more and more people who won't bother to lift a finger unless somebody does half their work for them.

Most work has already been done. Sounds like a good quality to have.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#79

Post by orblivion » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

troymc wrote: post #42

This is awful, another trick site that fools people into doing work that they could be getting paid to do, all for the joy of getting some "karma." Well kids, karma ain't gonna pay the rent. If you want to get experience volunteering to write documentation for software, then find the existing official documentation and add to that (or start it, preferably in a repository close to the actual code). Any profits that ge…

Creative Commons SA. They're not selling content, they're selling a platform for sharing content.

Re: Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation Beta

#80

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:36 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #60

lstamour wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just idling in the Documentation chat channel and based on what I was seeing there, it appears links to sources are discouraged on StackOverflow documentation. Presumably, they're aiming to eventually host new content that's better than what's already out there. I think it's a bit silly -- at least make a Sources section where folks can click to view links to existing docs!

Everyone knows that cool urls don't change, but the problem with links is that not all urls are cool urls. Links rot over time.

Zero percent chance of valid source is worse than some percent chance.