Hi Bozho, thanks so much for your help over the years. SO might be in decline, but it's one of those few products that makes you realise that better product design can change things for the better.
I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
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Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#72Stack overflow, like a lot of the forums out there, suffers from the same pathology: it is very easy to stumble upon an answer which answers the question, and is correct in a very wide context, but is actually bad advice (low quality correct answer, which without experience is bad practice). And now comes the catch-22: if I do not have enough experience to recognize the correct-correct answer, the answer presented wi…
"learn how to create an OS package to ... " is also the wrong answer, firstly because it will take a tremendously long time, and secondly because there should already be an OS/distro mechanism for handling resolv.conf.
So what if it will take a tremendously long time? Computers are hard and complex systems; that's their most basic property.
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
One issue I run into is finding a Stack Overflow question that exactly matches the issue I've run into, find that it's been closed for being a duplicate, click the link to the question it's supposed to be a duplicate of, and find that the other question is completely unrelated. Not only can I not find the answer from SO at this point, but if I find the answer on my own I can't even help others. Another issue I've run…
The ones that really get my gripe are the ones that are flagged for being off topic.. Off what topic? This is a place where technical questions are asked and answered and this is a technical question that needs answering - Why is it closed?
I have flagged many questions for being off topic. You could say I'm part of the "problem" but from my standpoint, someone will ask a question that can be answered so many ways that the scope is too broad. Many times the person asking doesn't know enough to understand just how broad the question they've asked is. That's why I also leave a comment telling them _why_ I just voted to close.
This is, unfortunately, an unsolvable problem. They're asking the question precisely because they don't understand what they're asking enough to get a meaningful answer.
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#74I've recently began using SO more actively (providing answers).
Most of the questions I've found and tried to answer were duplicates, but since I didn't have enough reputation to mark it as duplicate. (or enough rep to comment on a post to ask for more information on a poorly asked question)
It's fairly depressing to attempt to try to be active on a site like SO when it's setup for failure in the beginning. It's irritating when users with 10k+ reputation can more easily gain reputation by commenting, editing, and "moderating" new questions.
The other issue I have is that for new questions it's more about being first to answer a question rather than what is actually correct.
I also dislike providing answers to new questions, and the OP is a brand new user asking a question and never marks an answer as correct...
I wish it was easier and less frustrating to be active, but I suppose I'll keep trying.
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#75Stackoverflow works great for me, and I don't know why more people don't appear to use it like I do. 1) When you've got a problem, Google it. 98% of the time the answer will be in top 5 links to stackoverflow or documentation. You upvote the answer and question. 2) 1.5% of the time, stackoverflow will have a related question, but either it doesn't have an answer, or the answer has issues. You figure it out yourself,…
Top 2% here - I have used Stackoverflow this way for years. It has saved me hundreds of hours of searching over the years and still does. One thing I'd add is I try to leave a thank you comment in addition to an upvote when I find an answer to a hard question. Getting comments years later thanking you for a quick answer you jotted down at some point is so satisfying.
Ironically, leaving a "thank you" will typically get deletions/nags from the self-appointed comment police.
As much as I like (and heavily use) SO, it has a real problem with making people feel like shit when asking, answering and commenting.
There are people who are exemplary in their politeness and helpfulness like the top-contributor, John Skeet. There are also quite "mean" people like Hans Passant (also super-high score). I wish more people would use the really fantastic users like Skeet as an example of how to behave.
"Game-ification" strategies in social networks like SO tends to attract uncharitable, persnickety rule-zealots and this seems to have been re-enforced over the years.
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#76I’m the author of the article "The Decline of Stack Overflow". I initially published it in July 2015, when it got ±65,000 views in two days. I republished it @ Hackernoon this weekend at their request, which resulted in ±125,000 additional page views, bringing the total page views of the article since its publication in 2015 to ±245,000. The fact that this article went viral TWICE (while none of my other articles eve…
> The fact that this article went viral TWICE (while none of my other articles even got to 5000 views) illustrates how many people experience the same frustrations.
I disagree. Many people simply view an article to understand the author's opinion (my case). IMO the "new user" experience on StackOverflow really depends on the topic addressed.
Maybe that's just programmer personality speaking, I wish someone would do a study on the traits of programmers depending on their language / line of work...
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#77I don't quite agree as someone with few points on StackOverflow the mods can be quite hostile and inflexible when it comes to the rules. For instance I found a browser bug in the code submitted on a stack overflow answer [1] and I edited it and it got rejected because it wasn't in the spirit of what the original author intended or something like that. I also had no way of replying to the rejection motivating what my…
> At that point I wasn't even able to comment on the reply
That's the root cause of the problem. Once that's fixed, I think commenting is better than editing the answer.
As a mod I often can't know - having no time to verify - whether an edit such as yours actually fixes some bug or not. It has nothing to do with being hostile.
I agree that you should be able to simply leave a comment (new users used to have the right to comment once, if that's no longer the case, I find it quite stupid) that points something out, while keeping it clear who states what.
Then if your fix is helpful, the comment gets upvoted, and everybody's happy.
The author of the answer will typically acknowledge it by editing their answer, or risk getting downvotes otherwise (since now it's apparent that the answer isn't fully correct).
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#78Stackoverflow works great for me, and I don't know why more people don't appear to use it like I do. 1) When you've got a problem, Google it. 98% of the time the answer will be in top 5 links to stackoverflow or documentation. You upvote the answer and question. 2) 1.5% of the time, stackoverflow will have a related question, but either it doesn't have an answer, or the answer has issues. You figure it out yourself,…
I've earned "Necromancer" about a dozen times and I don't think it's a coincidence that they're some of the answers I'm most pleased with. I don't even bother answering old questions unless I think there's a clear gap in the existing answers that I can help fill.
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#79Stackoverflow works great for me, and I don't know why more people don't appear to use it like I do. 1) When you've got a problem, Google it. 98% of the time the answer will be in top 5 links to stackoverflow or documentation. You upvote the answer and question. 2) 1.5% of the time, stackoverflow will have a related question, but either it doesn't have an answer, or the answer has issues. You figure it out yourself,…
I taught myself to code using SO in just the last two years. I reference it almost daily. I've shipped production software in this time span using the information. I can't believe such a high quality source of information exists on the internet, it is a phenomenal public resource. Difficult to contribute to? Sure. Prickly moderators, who close questions I've found very useful? Definitely. Is it dying? I have no idea,…
I wonder if these days SO could move to a revenue model of just asking software companies for money. The entire community certainly owes them a debt for how much they've streamlined working with unfamiliar tools.
"We make all of your programmers 50% more efficient, kick us a little cash to keep us running smoothly."
Re: I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining
#80Stack overflow, like a lot of the forums out there, suffers from the same pathology: it is very easy to stumble upon an answer which answers the question, and is correct in a very wide context, but is actually bad advice (low quality correct answer, which without experience is bad practice). And now comes the catch-22: if I do not have enough experience to recognize the correct-correct answer, the answer presented wi…
Plus, for specialized topics, a good portion (10-15%?) of the top-voted answers are just wrong or misleading. About once every few weeks in reviewing one of my team's code, I see something strange. I ask them about it, and they say they did it that way because of SO. Then, I have to explain why it's not a good idea to do in our code. Then, I have to spend a couple hours showing them why, because clearly 'everything o…
Stack overflow can save a lot of time, but only if perused by someone with experience who is just looking for their next clue, and will know how to turn a low quality but correct answer into a clean solution. In such a case, stack overflow can be very useful, but then the same goes for any random Linux forum.