In my experience, Stack Overflow is still one of the only places that I can ask questions and expect to receive useful information within the same day. I admit I don't answer questions as much as I used to, but there still seems to be plenty of people around to help. Also, as a general corpus of knowledge it really can't be beat - I often find useful answers to questions that were asked years ago.
I know it's currently in vogue to hate on it, but for me it continues to be a great source of information.
Article contains ad hominem and personal opinions. Author is/was personally offended by certain events and his blog provides a source of relief for his distress.
I would comment on every specific paragraph, but the "arguments" are simply absurd.
Have to agree with the post ... there are occasions when you read the question and understand it is a newbie who has no clue what technical term to use when s/he does his search and hence could not get a simple answer. Instead of guiding, it gets voted down real bad and sometimes the person is not able to ask more questions
This is kind of symptomatic of online communities in general as they grow, no? Similar concerns exist around community behavior here on HN. Over the past year we've seen declining overall behavior as flocks of new people participate, new moderation systems introduced in an attempt to stem the tide of low-quality comments and karma-whoring actions, and varying levels of transparency into these systems.
The HN moderators (and SO's) seem to do a pretty good job, all things considered, but this is no simple problem to solve.
IMHO, the deep integration of crypto-currencies into these communities and karma systems is key to better self-moderation. Let the almighty dollar speak!
Stack Overflow is an amazingly useful programming resource - but - like most things has problems.
From my viewpoint, the main problem is the drive for "karma". You may visit an interesting question and you will often find that partial solutions (or solutions to a re-phrasing of the question [thats as kindly as I can put it])have a high score while the true and, more importantly complete, answer (probably written a few days after the original question was posed) has zero points.
There are also those who answer a factual question with an opinion - I am sure that Dante would have added another level in hell for just that sin should he have lived in the modern age.
Points are not everything but there is a tendency for the scoring system to mislead the seeker after a solution unless they are aware that all factual answers have value.
The problem is that SO puts so much weight on points...I had to spend about two months just answering questions in order to have the rights to get any help, before I found out that I just need to say something popular without any real content to get all the points I need.
yup. I also stopped participating there in 2012 or so. It's really quite a shame. I still find my way there from Google pretty frequently, but I don't bother asking or answering questions anymore
Sorry but isn't that like shooting yourself in the foot?
Its a democratic process, if you are in it you have a chance to change it. Review questions and be more lenient than others will make the average change.
Asking and answering can certainly be a pain, but its still better than the myriad of Internet forums.
Something I start to notice that more and more questions are being closed as duplicate pointing to another question which only sounds similar but when you look deeper it is different.
I remember being ridiculed for having more questions than answers. It's skewed to the idea that answering and contributing your thought is of more important than the question generating such thought.
Regardless, Stackoverflow has fell off it's high place.
I remember being ridiculed for having more questions than answers
Do you know that StackOverflow does not tolerate abuse and there is a flag option to automatically review any comment or post. In the rare case that doesn't work out you can directly contact moderators or developers who will actually respond. No community is perfect and you should really consider that options if you were offended. I have yet to see any ridicule that wasn't removed in 15 minutes or less.
[+] [-] bunkat|12 years ago|reply
I know it's currently in vogue to hate on it, but for me it continues to be a great source of information.
[+] [-] rhth54656|12 years ago|reply
Article contains ad hominem and personal opinions. Author is/was personally offended by certain events and his blog provides a source of relief for his distress.
I would comment on every specific paragraph, but the "arguments" are simply absurd.
This kind of post truly deserves to not be read.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sonabinu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumens|12 years ago|reply
The HN moderators (and SO's) seem to do a pretty good job, all things considered, but this is no simple problem to solve.
IMHO, the deep integration of crypto-currencies into these communities and karma systems is key to better self-moderation. Let the almighty dollar speak!
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bdfh42|12 years ago|reply
From my viewpoint, the main problem is the drive for "karma". You may visit an interesting question and you will often find that partial solutions (or solutions to a re-phrasing of the question [thats as kindly as I can put it])have a high score while the true and, more importantly complete, answer (probably written a few days after the original question was posed) has zero points.
There are also those who answer a factual question with an opinion - I am sure that Dante would have added another level in hell for just that sin should he have lived in the modern age.
Points are not everything but there is a tendency for the scoring system to mislead the seeker after a solution unless they are aware that all factual answers have value.
[+] [-] popctrl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qntmfred|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextweek2|12 years ago|reply
Its a democratic process, if you are in it you have a chance to change it. Review questions and be more lenient than others will make the average change.
Asking and answering can certainly be a pain, but its still better than the myriad of Internet forums.
[+] [-] prohor|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egoebelbecker|12 years ago|reply
But these moderators have a job to do. If they allow too many "duplicates" SO might run out of drive space or something.
[+] [-] cookerware|12 years ago|reply
Regardless, Stackoverflow has fell off it's high place.
[+] [-] rhth54656|12 years ago|reply
Do you know that StackOverflow does not tolerate abuse and there is a flag option to automatically review any comment or post. In the rare case that doesn't work out you can directly contact moderators or developers who will actually respond. No community is perfect and you should really consider that options if you were offended. I have yet to see any ridicule that wasn't removed in 15 minutes or less.