[dherls]

Some of the alternatives that the author suggests (Slack, Discord, Matrix rooms) are so much worse to search for answers in. Stack overflow has many disadvantages, but it is extremely good at being a publicly searchable repository of answers to common questions

[scuff3d]

Yeah this is the biggest problem with Discord (and similar platforms) as an alternative. Discoverablity sucks. Even if you are aware and have access, finding useful information is a bitch.

[Suppafly]

>it is extremely good at being a publicly searchable repository of answers to common questions

Closed duplicate of <something that is totally different>

[tommica]

Yeah, even with that it is still better

[qaisjp]

The "closed duplicate" thing is blown away out of proportion than it actually is. I'm convinced people are just pooping on Stack Overflow, not because it's bad, but because they just like complaining about things.

[mhh__]

I believe pretty strongly that almost every company should have some kind of internal SE

[davnicwil]

I agree, so much so that about 10 years ago I built a product that did this!

I launched to lukewarm reception, actually applied to YC with it and didn't get much of a look, nor an interview :-) and after a bit of (though certainly far too little) further hustle gave up on it due to circumstances leading me on another path.

Anyway, I was a tiny bit vindicated when about a year later I noticed Stack exchange themselves did a similar product, but as far as I know, it never really hit. They would advertise it in the side banner for quite a few years but it eventually seemed to go away.

It's weird that it didn't work, it always did seem like an incredibly good idea to me - just so good, it's obvious. If such a thing existed, it'd add so much to any company onboarding experience at a minimum, and would also have obvious ongoing value.

And it just seemed like a great strategy to get useful and up to date documentation: to gamify it. There's just an inherent incentive to become the 'Jon Skeet' of your organisation as it were, rather than making documentation this largely anonymous, thankless afterthought it often becomes in practice despite best intentions.

[hombre_fatal]

The problem that comes to mind is that every question and answer that’s posted is something you have to maintain as part of your docs as they rot over time.

I’d be curious to hear what the common solutions to that are.

Maybe it can be used as a limbo to gather FAQs that get crystallized into the real docs and then deleted.

[begueradj]

Good documentation, communication channels and a healthy work environment where colleagues can communicate and help each other are much beneficial than an internal SE.

[shawn_w]

SE sells just such a thing. I think it's where a lot of their income comes from.

[danielheath]

The only suitable bit of tech that comes to my mind is Lemmy (the reddit-style activitypub thing).

[fijiaarone]

And we wouldn’t have a use case for Ai without StackOverflow & Google’s broken search.