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StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

codingthewheel.com

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Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#71

Post by Shog9 »

bramgg wrote: post #69
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.

Protip: if you really want prompt action taken, just write what you need in the email and leave it at that. The folks doing support for stuff like this handle hundreds of emails a day, and every time we need to wait for a reply from someone before proceeding that's gonna slow everything down.

Blog posts are always fun, and certainly brighten up what is otherwise a dreadfully boring task, but... not really the best way to get action if that's all you're after.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#72

Post by bhayden »

codinghorror wrote: post #61
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 al…

>withdrawing it from the commons out of anger, is not OK.

This is pretty obviously not what happened here, though.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#73

Post by Shog9 »

vonklaus wrote: post #65
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?

Short answer: most users can do exactly that.

There's an automated process that confirms the request via email and starts a timer that, if not cancelled, removes the account. For accounts with a non-trivial number of posts we hold them for manual confirmation just to prevent unfortunate accidents (there's no undo - more on that next) but all it involves is an affirmative response from an email associated with the account.

The longer answer is... This is one of those very early design decisions that, in hindsight, was probably sub-optimal. Ideally, account deletion would amount to nothing more than flipping a bit on a database record, at least in the short term - if someone regretted their decision a day later, no harm done; just flip it back. But things are not ideal, and deleting an account actually purges rather a lot of information that can't easily be restored - so given that a non-trivial number of users do change their minds (especially those with a long history of activity that will be lost), it's worth everyone's time to make double-sure before hitting the big red button.

We've slowly been improving the process over the past few years, but it's still no where near ideal from anyone's perspective. I could go into more detail, but... Can sum it up with, "We're now only wasting ridiculous amounts of time on this instead of utterly insane amounts of time".

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#74

Post by tsomctl »

mdekkers wrote: post #70
_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.

Except for those of us that learn by example. I taught myself sql the past month through stack exchange and PostgreSQL's manual. Typically, I'd find a stack overflow question that points me to the appropriate section of the manual to read.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#75

Post by chrismcb »

mdekkers wrote: post #70
_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.

There are a lot of bad answers. But it doesn't in courage copy-paste anymore than any other site with samples, including the reference manual. It isn't SO's fault if people don't try to understand the answers. But between the multiple comments and multiple answers it does a better job of indicating to the user that they still need to understand the solution.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#77

Post by nvivo »

Old_Thrashbarg wrote: post #19
nvivo wrote: post #7

I had this problem with forums before. As I requested my content to be removed from a site, my account was suspended and they actually reposted some stuff I had deleted, and blocked my account. I lost the right to my content, even though my name was still there. It was just a small dev forum, so it wasn't a big deal. But it's funny because when you join those sites, they make it clear that any content you may find in…

Content on Stack Exchange is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Therefore Stack Exchange (as well as any other site on the internet) has the right to repost your material if they attribute it and share it properly.

I didn't know that. Anyway, this may be the case of Stack Exchange, but the website I had problems with stated the things I said in their agreement.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#78

Post by Sir_Substance »

Shog9 wrote: post #48
_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…

Interestingly, this "textbook for modern programmers" usage was one of the explicit goals for the site: > Programmers seem to have stopped reading books. The market for books on programming topics is miniscule compared to the number of working programmers. -- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/04/16.html

That's neat, I didn't know that. Mission accomplished then!

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#79

Post by davidgerard »

sciurus wrote: post #50
bojo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That's why in your question, you need to state that you're picking apples! http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#goal

Makes no difference in my experience. Geeksplaining is an unstoppable force of obnoxiousness.

Re: StackOverflow Considered Harmful?

#80

Post by davidgerard »

codinghorror wrote: post #61
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 al…

It's pretty clear you need a way for people to remove their names, then.
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