I used to be a heavy stackoverflow user in the early days, and I have enough karma to put me in the moderator tier now. However, I don't use the site much anymore, except for getting questions answered.
In a way I suppose that's a testament to the fact that the site still works, and works well. They solved most of the problem they set out to solve originally, which is a major achievement. Nevertheless, I still have a nagging feeling that some further iterative improvements could turn stackoverflow into something that would be even more useful, and would be more inviting for people to continue to participate in actively even without having expert knowledge in some tiny sub-category or a desire to constantly tidy everything up day-in day-out.
Edit: to clarify I mean that it's hard to visit stackoverflow on a regular basis instead of just using it as an answer generating machine. Which I think is something not unique to myself and probably hurts the overall quality of the site considerably, notwithstanding the many experts who use the site heavily. Specifically I find it hard to peruse interesting topics to comment on, since the site is now very aggressively tightly focused. Even worse I find it difficult to use the site as a learning tool. Often times when I want to learn something new I'll get it in my head to go to stackoverflow first, but that's never worked very well for me. It's just too difficult to sort or filter all the data into something that is actually useful.
Overall I think the biggest problem is that the people behind the site(s) have decided they've done their jobs, that what they've presented is good enough and at most needs only minor tweaking. I think that's a huge mistake personally and I think the result is going to be that the stackexchange sites end up as a footnote in history after having been rapidly eclipsed by "the next big thing" in a similar vein.
I can understand why it appears this way from outside, but we've never been moving faster than we are now.
I have been on board for about six months, and in that time we have rolled out lots of usability and layout improvements: streamlined sign-up process, a new anonymous homepage, a consolidated and curated help center, completely rewritten search, new badges page, upcoming new privileges page...
In the next couple of months, we will be finishing sitewide SSL, redesigns of our more high-traffic pages, and a complete re-factor around closing to make that process more clear.
Stay tuned, because I'm excited about where we're headed.
Most of that is by design. It was designed as a questions-answer site, to collect every question of every programming language and provide the correct answer. It was not designed as a forum, where you go to talk with friends. The problem is what to do when all the questions had been answered?
A fantastic site that has helped me immensely. It's a little hard to gain reputation so much now, due to the amount of people who jump in as soon as a question is asked. But the vast database of answers to common problems it has created have added immense value. I much prefer using SO rather than dedicated forums which are often badly designed and slow e.g. Oracle, IBM.
Some of the other sites that SO spawned are useful too e.g. I like reading the English language stack exchange. There is definitely room for both Quora and the Stack Exchange sites on the Internet (Quora more subjective and discussion based, whereas Stack Exchange sites I use for more definitive / right or wrong answers).
I second that. SO is a fantastic resource. Just when I feel I'm starting to become an expert, I look something up on SO and discover how much I still have to learn. Keeps ya' humble!
Been a member for over 3 years I still think it's the one and only. Like the usenet groups for programming used to be, but better organized.
While the moderation of quesitions works very well, which is what probably makes it as good, there's two things that bothers me: the vast amount of questions that shouldn't be there but don't reach the close vote threshold. Not a problem per se, but annoying when searching sometimes, and more annoying when you're like "hey lets review some and see there's 55k of such questions" :] Second, sometimes it doesn't feel fair. I've ansered questions with one-liners that are a no-brainer and gained massive amounts of rep for it, while I've also answered questions spending more than an hour and trying to pass on some deeper knowledge about a large topic and got only an accepted answer, not even knowing if it really helped the author.
SO is great for what it is, direct answers from questions. It is hard to think back to the days of pre-SO when most answers had to come from books (!)
It is not designed, and will never be a place to foster discussions, or encourage exploration. I'm NOT complaining about SO, this is just how it is designed.
This kind of content, for example, is not something SO would create:
Since we don't have a SO for discussions we still rely on information from individual research and/or the modern-day newsgroup (reddit, forums). I wish there was a place to fully explore nebulous unanswerable questions like "Which web UI framework is fastest to develop in?" or "What is the best way to start a 2d platform game today (in 2013)?"
This isn't an easy problem to solve, the questions above aren't really there to get an answer but to start a discussion. For both questions I want to know what is popular (TODAY, not in 2006), active, has been tested, and personal experience. I want to see a collection of people submitting their own takes until a top-five is produced where further study can be made.
The flaw of StackOverflow, to me, is that activity is discouraged.
What I mean by that is, rehashing previous discussions is verboten, shooting the shit rarely happens, and nebulous questions are never explored (even though some of the better questions linked to on SO are often closed topics!).
As a result, StackOverflow is an authoritative source on a great many things. But the atmosphere of "ask any question" is absent. You're supposed to know what to look for instead of honestly throwing your query into the void trusting that someone will catch you.
In other words, your question has to be novel in a specific sense. Which is great!
But it doesn't mean it's an encouraging environment.
Edit: I mean, witness this comment, posted at the same time as me:
Stack Overflow belongs to a very small elite group of sites (Wikipedia obviously being another) who's existance is what creates the quality of Google search results. Nough said :)
Would it be a threat to Google if all useful information was well-curated, semantic, etc? If developing a search engine became nontrivial, would the hypothetical loss of Google's search product cause them serious problems?
I would like to see this happen. Not to harm Google, but rather to make search a problem that doesn't require billions to tackle.
Very true. I used to be very happy when StackOverflow appeared on the list of query results. Then I just started adding StackOverflow to my searches to make sure it was added. :-)
StackOverflow is being killed by its overzealous moderation, as was Wikipedia a year or so ago before they backed off a bit. Let's sample a random question from the `php` tag: [1]. The question is not particularly well-asked, but I think it's fairly obvious that the answer is a union of the three tables. And yet, because he phrased his question as a requirement (it's the last sentence) and not an absolute question, it's been closed – even though I understand the question and possess the ability to give an answer (and maybe even edit the original question to improve its readability), I've been rendered unable to do so.
I think the big problem I have with quickly-closed questions is that they get just as thoroughly indexed on Google as answered questions. This becomes a particular problem with niche topics; last summer, I was tasked with some Salesforce development and the number of unanswered, closed APEX questions I found was astonishing.
Stack Overflow is not a bargain-basement alternative to Elance, Odesk, or rent-a-coder.com, whereby people can get code snippets vomited at them for free. As was made evident in the comments, the OP of the question needed to show what he tried.
Also, closed questions can be edited. That's the main point of closing a question: to send a signal to the OP that the question needs to be edited and improved.
Closing that question was appropriate. Moderation is good, it keeps the signal to noise ratio in check. It is not being killed, it's being helped; the site would be far less useful without the moderation as would Wikipedia.
That's a plz-send-teh-codez question. OP demonstrated no effort at all in solving his problem and couldn't be bothered learning how to format his question.
If the OP had provided a snippet of SQL or suggested a theory on how this might be solved, even if it was completely wrong, then the question would have remained open, gotten a few answers and perhaps even upvoted.
SO is sort of like Wikipedia in that they're tremendously useful sites that are widely misunderstood. So many of the complaints about them seem to be based on misunderstanding their purpose. People see SO for the first time and jump to the conclusion that SO is sort of like Reddit, and that Wikipedia is someplace where anybody can write anything about anything. When the moderation works against them, they blame "asshole mods" instead of their own ignorance of the purpose of the sites themselves.
(not that there aren't asshole mods, but that's beside the point)
Anyway, hooray for SO (and hooray for Wikipedia), pretty much the rest of the web is composed of anything-goes sites and I love that they actively try to craft a particular experience.
Yeah, the moderation gets on my nerves. They might just lock the question before you have time to explain yourself better. And by then, they've already edited your question to what they falsely believed it was asking, even if there was nothing ambiguous about it. I've quietly decided to never use the site again because of things like that.
Raising my glass to stackoverflow! It had done more to improve my productivity than anything else. Jeff Atwood and the whole community have changed the world for the better. Why is it that stackoverflow is so much more useful than expertsexchange or quora?
Experts Exchange has betrayed their users / community numerous times over the years in experimenting with how to make money. So far I would say that Stack Overflow has done a great job of not compromising their mission in the name of revenue. That's a very difficult balancing act.
The big reason is the purpose was to create the best Q&A site for programmers (Quora is better than most Stack Exchange sites, just not Stack Overflow) and there was a relentless focus from the very beginning on making that happen. Compare to Expert's Exchange where the whole thing is designed like a liquidation sale flyer. It feels like a cheap commercialization of knowledge that is freely shared and thus feels exploitative, like it runs directly against the hacker ethos that enabled it to collect that information. Stack Overflow is very clearly designed by programmers to help programmers, and it was seeded with a great community to start it off on the right foot.
Maybe it's just me, or the type of questions I ask, but I've found SO to be a little elitist.
I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almost every time I've asked a question, the responses or lack thereof have been pretty brutal.
It's a little messy sometimes. Trivial beginner questions are usually answered within a minute and you get about three correct answers immediately.
But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. Can be very frustrating.
If you have mostly questions of the latter kind then there's a bit of luck involved whether the right person sees your question or whether it just goes unnoticed and dies.
It is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics.
In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information.
For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly.
When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products.
Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.
It's not just you and it gets worse on sites like SF where it's horribly elitist. On SO, it definitely depends on the category of your question. I've found that C# questions, which tend to be the most popular category, generally have the most thorough and complete answers, which I also don't find to be as elitist as some of the other categories.
It is somewhat like reading a magazine before you actually submit an article for publication. Many new users don't bother reading through some of the upvoted questions in the category they are seeking help on and hence never bother understanding what makes a good question. However, it is true that some of the users are brutal towards new users and downvote and move on without ever going back to see if the question was ever improved. It takes an even understanding on both sides to provide a meaningful -- and sometimes enlightening -- experience.
Stackoverflow has made my life a lot easier. They've saved me an immense amount of time over the years, and for that I have to say a big thank you. I remember what it was like hunting for answers before they existed. Almost reminds me of what it was like switching to Google from AltaVista.
The site has some flaws of course, as others have pointed out, but it's leaps and bounds above every other Q&A site in their segment.
I'm interested in fragmentation. Reddit has it, and Stack Overflow has it too. I have no idea how they'll fix it.
If you want to ask a question you need to ask the right SE site. Some are obvious, but others have overlapping sites and it's confusing for the target audience.
What's worse is that some of these sites have made agreements with each other to funnel the "wrong questions" to the right site - that's great, but a bit confusing; while others have just decided independently that some particular style of question is "off topic" and they'll shunt you off to another site, and that other site will close your question.
I love SE, but I understand the frustration that some people have with it.
They have the Main sites, and the Meta sites, and the chat stuff. I think they could also have a branch off "discussion site". Any questions deemed as wrong questions go to that discussion site. You re-brand it, so as not to dilute the strict question only format of the main sites.
And, for all the "META IS DEATH" (true) sentiment there's a heck of a lot of meta going on over there.
The worst part of such fragmentation is the "fiefdoms" that can often form.
We see this at Stack Overflow, we see it at reddit, and even at Wikipedia to some extent.
A relatively small number of users end up as moderators of one form or another, and can exert disproportionately more control over other, non-moderator users.
While this may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of maintaining a certain minimum standard of quality, it does take responsible moderators for this to happen.
More often than not, we see people with very little power or influence in the real world using their moderation abilities on some online forum to try to compensate. They use their power just for the sake of using it, and perhaps for the emotional high it may bring them, rather than out of a sense of bettering the community.
I think that this kind of behavior is far more harmful than the fragmentation itself.
You need to edit at least a certain number of characters (might be 6). So if you want to correct a = into a ==
you can't. Well, you can... you have to make a few other bogus changes. This bugs me.
Once you've earned the 2000 reputation to edit without peer-review, you can edit as little as you like. But until then, your edits are reviewed by other users before they're applied, and there has to be a certain threshold so these (volunteer!) reviewers don't just waste time by reviewing tons of mini-edits.
But agreed, some limitations are a bit stupid and annoying at times. E.g. you downvote an answer based on the belief that it is wrong, further discussion reveals that it is in fact correct, but since more than five minutes have passed you cannot remove the downvote or turn it into an upvote unless the question is edited again. Which leaves to bogus edits just for being able to change a vote again.
The limitation, though annoying, is there for a few reasons. One being that it discourages users from making quick edits just for the reputation or badge. I have seen many users get more wrapped up in getting a badge than actually using the site as a means to help their fellow users.
I was a heavy SO user during it's first year or so, until a user named RichB started harassing me (and others) on the site, to the point where he got put in the penalty box many, many times over the years. I guess I just realized it wasn't worth getting so upset at a very small subset of the users/trolls and investing my time & energy into the site and quit visiting regularly.
its great when learning a new api or whatever, but i've had 4 out of 5 questions (in 4 years i need to ask 5 questions) closed as off topic, i tagged them with the tags from their own site also. example: config file management question in linux, automation, automated-install closed as off topic.
Is there any way to find actual interesting questions/answers on SO? It seems like the top questions by votes are always dominated by language spec arcana, which interests me not at all. But then I find links to great answers and questions from HN and elsewhere pretty regularly.
I've placed Stackoverflow in my "mostly useful" list of programming sites. Mainly because the over-zealous moderation, the gaming of karma, and lack of elaboration/quality on many of the answers.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|12 years ago|reply
In a way I suppose that's a testament to the fact that the site still works, and works well. They solved most of the problem they set out to solve originally, which is a major achievement. Nevertheless, I still have a nagging feeling that some further iterative improvements could turn stackoverflow into something that would be even more useful, and would be more inviting for people to continue to participate in actively even without having expert knowledge in some tiny sub-category or a desire to constantly tidy everything up day-in day-out.
Edit: to clarify I mean that it's hard to visit stackoverflow on a regular basis instead of just using it as an answer generating machine. Which I think is something not unique to myself and probably hurts the overall quality of the site considerably, notwithstanding the many experts who use the site heavily. Specifically I find it hard to peruse interesting topics to comment on, since the site is now very aggressively tightly focused. Even worse I find it difficult to use the site as a learning tool. Often times when I want to learn something new I'll get it in my head to go to stackoverflow first, but that's never worked very well for me. It's just too difficult to sort or filter all the data into something that is actually useful.
Overall I think the biggest problem is that the people behind the site(s) have decided they've done their jobs, that what they've presented is good enough and at most needs only minor tweaking. I think that's a huge mistake personally and I think the result is going to be that the stackexchange sites end up as a footnote in history after having been rapidly eclipsed by "the next big thing" in a similar vein.
[+] [-] jeremyt|12 years ago|reply
I can understand why it appears this way from outside, but we've never been moving faster than we are now.
I have been on board for about six months, and in that time we have rolled out lots of usability and layout improvements: streamlined sign-up process, a new anonymous homepage, a consolidated and curated help center, completely rewritten search, new badges page, upcoming new privileges page...
In the next couple of months, we will be finishing sitewide SSL, redesigns of our more high-traffic pages, and a complete re-factor around closing to make that process more clear.
Stay tuned, because I'm excited about where we're headed.
[+] [-] gus_massa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] planetjones|12 years ago|reply
Some of the other sites that SO spawned are useful too e.g. I like reading the English language stack exchange. There is definitely room for both Quora and the Stack Exchange sites on the Internet (Quora more subjective and discussion based, whereas Stack Exchange sites I use for more definitive / right or wrong answers).
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stinos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] columbo|12 years ago|reply
It is not designed, and will never be a place to foster discussions, or encourage exploration. I'm NOT complaining about SO, this is just how it is designed.
This kind of content, for example, is not something SO would create:
http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/05/17/frameworks-round-...
https://github.com/skx/static-site-generators
Since we don't have a SO for discussions we still rely on information from individual research and/or the modern-day newsgroup (reddit, forums). I wish there was a place to fully explore nebulous unanswerable questions like "Which web UI framework is fastest to develop in?" or "What is the best way to start a 2d platform game today (in 2013)?"
This isn't an easy problem to solve, the questions above aren't really there to get an answer but to start a discussion. For both questions I want to know what is popular (TODAY, not in 2006), active, has been tested, and personal experience. I want to see a collection of people submitting their own takes until a top-five is produced where further study can be made.
[+] [-] StuieK|12 years ago|reply
http://www.slant.co/topics/217/~best-css-preprocessor
http://www.slant.co/topics/95/~what-is-the-best-search-engin...
[+] [-] Helianthus|12 years ago|reply
What I mean by that is, rehashing previous discussions is verboten, shooting the shit rarely happens, and nebulous questions are never explored (even though some of the better questions linked to on SO are often closed topics!).
As a result, StackOverflow is an authoritative source on a great many things. But the atmosphere of "ask any question" is absent. You're supposed to know what to look for instead of honestly throwing your query into the void trusting that someone will catch you.
In other words, your question has to be novel in a specific sense. Which is great!
But it doesn't mean it's an encouraging environment.
Edit: I mean, witness this comment, posted at the same time as me:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5919768
I dunno, I have never felt motivated to "hang out" at SO.
[+] [-] ronilan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] possibilistic|12 years ago|reply
I would like to see this happen. Not to harm Google, but rather to make search a problem that doesn't require billions to tackle.
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrDOS|12 years ago|reply
I think the big problem I have with quickly-closed questions is that they get just as thoroughly indexed on Google as answered questions. This becomes a particular problem with niche topics; last summer, I was tasked with some Salesforce development and the number of unanswered, closed APEX questions I found was astonishing.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17237166/sql-query-query-...
[+] [-] jackmaney|12 years ago|reply
Also, closed questions can be edited. That's the main point of closing a question: to send a signal to the OP that the question needs to be edited and improved.
[+] [-] gnaritas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teh_klev|12 years ago|reply
If the OP had provided a snippet of SQL or suggested a theory on how this might be solved, even if it was completely wrong, then the question would have remained open, gotten a few answers and perhaps even upvoted.
[+] [-] mwfunk|12 years ago|reply
(not that there aren't asshole mods, but that's beside the point)
Anyway, hooray for SO (and hooray for Wikipedia), pretty much the rest of the web is composed of anything-goes sites and I love that they actively try to craft a particular experience.
[+] [-] geertj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sublimit|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quizotic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
Some people don't like that, and they kind of have a point, but Stack Overflow has a mission and they stick to it.
[+] [-] dasil003|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varunrau|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markdown|12 years ago|reply
I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almost every time I've asked a question, the responses or lack thereof have been pretty brutal.
[+] [-] ygra|12 years ago|reply
But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. Can be very frustrating.
If you have mostly questions of the latter kind then there's a bit of luck involved whether the right person sees your question or whether it just goes unnoticed and dies.
[+] [-] PommeDeTerre|12 years ago|reply
In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information.
For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly.
When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products.
Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.
[+] [-] gregd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisvineup|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UnfalseDesign|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
The site has some flaws of course, as others have pointed out, but it's leaps and bounds above every other Q&A site in their segment.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
I'm interested in fragmentation. Reddit has it, and Stack Overflow has it too. I have no idea how they'll fix it.
If you want to ask a question you need to ask the right SE site. Some are obvious, but others have overlapping sites and it's confusing for the target audience.
What's worse is that some of these sites have made agreements with each other to funnel the "wrong questions" to the right site - that's great, but a bit confusing; while others have just decided independently that some particular style of question is "off topic" and they'll shunt you off to another site, and that other site will close your question.
I love SE, but I understand the frustration that some people have with it.
They have the Main sites, and the Meta sites, and the chat stuff. I think they could also have a branch off "discussion site". Any questions deemed as wrong questions go to that discussion site. You re-brand it, so as not to dilute the strict question only format of the main sites.
And, for all the "META IS DEATH" (true) sentiment there's a heck of a lot of meta going on over there.
But I do like SE.
[+] [-] PommeDeTerre|12 years ago|reply
We see this at Stack Overflow, we see it at reddit, and even at Wikipedia to some extent.
A relatively small number of users end up as moderators of one form or another, and can exert disproportionately more control over other, non-moderator users.
While this may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of maintaining a certain minimum standard of quality, it does take responsible moderators for this to happen.
More often than not, we see people with very little power or influence in the real world using their moderation abilities on some online forum to try to compensate. They use their power just for the sake of using it, and perhaps for the emotional high it may bring them, rather than out of a sense of bettering the community.
I think that this kind of behavior is far more harmful than the fragmentation itself.
[+] [-] ape4|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balpha|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ygra|12 years ago|reply
But agreed, some limitations are a bit stupid and annoying at times. E.g. you downvote an answer based on the belief that it is wrong, further discussion reveals that it is in fact correct, but since more than five minutes have passed you cannot remove the downvote or turn it into an upvote unless the question is edited again. Which leaves to bogus edits just for being able to change a vote again.
[+] [-] UnfalseDesign|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gregd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rschmitty|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UnfalseDesign|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moneyrich2|12 years ago|reply
its great when learning a new api or whatever, but i've had 4 out of 5 questions (in 4 years i need to ask 5 questions) closed as off topic, i tagged them with the tags from their own site also. example: config file management question in linux, automation, automated-install closed as off topic.
it's just a big karma jerk-off
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darrellsilver|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xradionut|12 years ago|reply