Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 304 posts

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#3

Post by Latty »

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before.

Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on that (a lot of the more hostile rule enforcement tropes are banned and filtered against), and it's a hard problem.

SO isn't dying any time soon, and the content is still good. If you want to kill it, please go ahead and solve the issue of explaining to users how to contribute quality content and getting them to take that in instantly.

I used to contribute a lot, which tapered off as I had other things filling my time. Towards the end though, the help vampires were getting to me, and I understand why people are harsh towards new users in some situations, it's an easy trap to fall into. Trying to fix that problem by stopping the curation of the content is insane, however. That's a fast route to going from some people being turned away to having no decent content.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#4

Post by dismantlethesun »

I've found that if you go to Stackoverflow for a fast-moving topic like Javascript, the first answer isn't correct in modern terms. The next set of answers, without check marks, are likely more correct.

So you have to read the entire page to get a glimpse of the truth.

This can be bad if you're just looking for an immediate solution, however for learning its fantastic because it shows you a recorded history of how things evolved over time in a framework.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#5

Post by wslh »

okket wrote: post #2

(2015) Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837442 (1 year ago, 39 comments)

More decline in 2016. Questions are not being answered in general or there are professionals responders who don't really understand what you are talking about.

In the other hand there are exciting discussions in the other *.stackexchange.com sites (e.g. reverseengineering, ethereum).

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#6

Post by samfisher83 »

Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

So many of the useful answers are closed. A lot of the stuff from google etc. are from 2009-2011. It seems like now most of people are a bunch of assholes trying to be elitists.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#8

Post by marcelluspye »

Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

>SO isn't dying any time soon, and the content is still good.

While I'd say this is currently true, answers on SO tend to stick around for a long time, and the 'marked as duplicate'-heavy behavior means that even if the best practice to solving a given problem changes, the top SO google result won't. While this isn't a _huge_ problem right now, with the way the site is set up I only see it getting worse, to the point that some years down the line I imagine many SO answers will either cease to be relevant or push people down the wrong path when solving a problem.

Re: The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

#9

Post by reitanqild »

Latty wrote: post #3

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on tha…

> People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile.

I can often stick with second best in class as long as it doesn't have a habit of biting you for no apparent reason all the time.

> People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before.

People keep saying that and I keep wondering if we either never visited the same forums or if I'm somewhat blind to all the vile bullying that must have been going on.

Edit: broaden answer with first quote and answer.

Post reply on HN