
Ask HN: Is Stackoverflow running out of questions and answers? - untilHellbanned
I think I&#x27;m observing a trend whereby you can&#x27;t get basic questions answered anymore. At this point, most SO Q &amp;A are duplications on some level, so it seems many things go unanswered, are downvoted, or closed. Is this healthy for the SO network?
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jaydles
It sounds like what you're mainly describing is that it's hard to ask a
question _that isn 't already answered on the site._ (You can't close as a
dupe unless the duplicate has answers.) From a "helping the most people learn"
perspective, this sounds like a champagne problem: There's so many answers
that it's hard to find something to ask that's not already covered.

From a community perspective, we _do_ want all devs to be able to get involved
in the site, so it's not ideal if the solution set is actually so
comprehensive that it raises the bar for getting involved.

But I'm not too worried. SO still gets over ten thousand questions _per day,_
which gives devs who want to contribute to the programming community a ton of
opportunities to share answers and help. Plus, and new languages like swift
leave a lot of blue ocean for asking new questions.

Don't get me wrong, our two biggest product priorities are focused on how we
can make it easier for new users to get involved, and how we can ensure that
more active users continue to feel appreciated and find it rewarding to share
their knowledge on SO, where so many others can benefit from it. There's
plenty more we can do on both fronts, but I'm not too worried that we're
running out of ways for devs to contribute if they want to.

Disclosure: I work at Stack Exchange. I love Stack Exchange. I am not an
unbiased observer of Stack Exchange. My mom says I and my company are special,
and I believe her.

~~~
uiiuwer8
stop bullshiting please. Your site is racist as hell. I am from India and just
because my name is Indian my questions are downvoted.

Then I created profile with american ( Christan ) name and same question have
got 50+ upvotes.

Fact is that many of American scumbags , who in reality do nothing at their
jobs and just show up for $$ between 8 to 4 have been dominating site for at
least two years.

Another problem is ,every new question which your stupid moderators don't
agree with are closed without regard irrespective of value of the question.

Its one thing to occasionally close the question but its another when you call
every question poster stupid, opinion-based and especially judge based on
nationality.

I have kept proof of how same people and their tone change when I post with
american name.

My honest feedback is if you want to maintain the site quality stop judging
question posters.

~~~
dang
> stop bullshiting please

Comments like this are not ok on Hacker News. Please review the site rules:

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[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

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_RPM
No, Stack Overflow is just getting more popular. A lot of beginner programmers
want to know how to send a JavaScript variable to a PHP script. This has been
solved years ago on Stack Overflow, so it will get closed. This is just an
example.

------
Someone1234
It is fun when you google stuff, get SO results, and then see that it was
"closed due to duplication." Particularly when it is the top Google result
with no clarification what it is a "duplication" of or similar.

~~~
cheald
If a SO question is closed as a duplicate, there's a big banner at the top of
it saying what it's a duplicate of.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27002661/c-sorting-
arrays](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27002661/c-sorting-arrays) for
example - that grey box at the top shows the answer it was marked as a
duplicate of.

~~~
techdragon
And isn't it awesome that we have no way to fight back, with the argument that
"the old question is irrelevant because it's too old". Sometimes things change
and old answers become VERY BAD

For instance any question that suggests a Python programmer use PIL instead of
Pillow. And for another example any recommendation that a Python programmer
'easy_install' something, pip is now the recommended tool and easy_install is
depreciated.

~~~
cheald
So add comments (or updated answers) on the original questions/answers. Those
are the ones with the search engine juice anyhow!

------
DanBC
So long as the existing answers can be gradually refined and improved.

The other problem is when questions are sort of the same but not quite.

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/207397/what-
word-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/207397/what-word-means-
the-feeling-of-discomfort-caused-by-watching-peoples-ineptitud)

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12350/what-is-
the...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12350/what-is-the-word-for-
the-emotion-i-feel-when-i-see-someone-being-humiliated)

