"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site"
This is sad.
We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.
Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.
I agree with many of your points. Some of the StackExchange sites have degenerated into being virtually unusable unless you align yourself with the small group of people who viciously down-vote and close otherwise useful and relevant questions. The idea is/was great, but in some corners it seems to be starting to derail.
Yes I often find myself wishing that, at the user level at least, USENET was still all pervasive. However, that is probably remembering the past a little more fondly that I should. Joel even talks a little about the comparison here [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-...].
I agree with you. However, this is not like something that has "failed" in the sense that this sort of mindset was always prevalent from the Beta of SO. This is just Jeff Atwood's philosophy plain and simple. I don't think it is, as you say, put in place to increase revenue, I think it was sort of "control freak" mindset that Jeff Atwood displayed (love it or hate it). I don't know how much Joel agreed with him on this sort of stuff in the beginning but the inane amount of micromanagement, brow beating questioners, etc was always there. You can go back to the old podcasts and blog posts for that. In the beginning, for a long time, there was push back, I felt like even in the SO blog comments there would be 25% disagreement with this idea, but I think the collective has "gotten out of control" (if you think it is bad thing). I remember long discussions on the podcast about whether some such question was relevant enough to stay on the site.
I always thought Programmers SE was just evidence of this silliness; I saw and still see no reason for it to exist outside of SO. But that's the way it goes.
Nuuton will allow you to have the ability to discuss such subjects directly without such policies. You may even discuss the actual stackoverflow site if so desired (or the book homepages).
Many of the best questions on Stack Overflow end up "closed as not constructive." I get that it keeps the site on-topic, but it's a shame when a really productive and amazing discussion gets shut down arbitrarily.
The problem is that the Q&A format is a very bad to ask for list of things. A "wiki" would be a much better format to have list of things that everyone can contribute to. Q&A is also a very bad format for discussion. Traditional forum, Reddit or Quora are much better choice for discussion. It's a simple mater of using the best tools for the best job.
It's been said every time this argument is brought up: StackOverflow is a Q&A website. It's not meant for discussions, and while some interesting questions get closed, it's not arbitrary at all.
I've got 7K+ rep there (hardly a high-score) but I don't really like the site anymore due to arbitrary behavior of mods.
It wasn't even a "discussion" (specifically forbidden because independent thoughts and points or view are something frowned upon on SO, which is bent on crushing individuality)... Just a friggin' good list.
The really pathetic behavior of SO mods starts when they see people criticizing SO (and leaving or rage-quitting SO) and then try to say: "Do not speak about it here (e.g. on HN), bring this to meta".
Yeah. Sure. Meta is even worse than SO ; )
As a result of this crazy mod behavior people, like me, are quitting and stop helping others on that medium.
It's not that big of an issue that said because something, one day, will rise just as fast as SO did and shall have fixed the arbitrariness of SO mods behavior / rules.
A pet-peeve of mine is that they clearly said on SO (on Meta) that it was OK to rewrite a question entirely so that the question fits a totally bogus response (totally bogus response of course made by a user with lots of rep).
When I saw that non-sense I realized it was time for me to quit.
[+] [-] eduardordm|13 years ago|reply
This is sad.
We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.
Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Toenex|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|13 years ago|reply
I always thought Programmers SE was just evidence of this silliness; I saw and still see no reason for it to exist outside of SO. But that's the way it goes.
[+] [-] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tspike|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HoLyVieR|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fayden|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinced|13 years ago|reply
It wasn't even a "discussion" (specifically forbidden because independent thoughts and points or view are something frowned upon on SO, which is bent on crushing individuality)... Just a friggin' good list.
The really pathetic behavior of SO mods starts when they see people criticizing SO (and leaving or rage-quitting SO) and then try to say: "Do not speak about it here (e.g. on HN), bring this to meta".
Yeah. Sure. Meta is even worse than SO ; )
As a result of this crazy mod behavior people, like me, are quitting and stop helping others on that medium.
It's not that big of an issue that said because something, one day, will rise just as fast as SO did and shall have fixed the arbitrariness of SO mods behavior / rules.
A pet-peeve of mine is that they clearly said on SO (on Meta) that it was OK to rewrite a question entirely so that the question fits a totally bogus response (totally bogus response of course made by a user with lots of rep).
When I saw that non-sense I realized it was time for me to quit.
[+] [-] George_ns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xijuan|13 years ago|reply