

Why Stack Overflow Sucks (2012) - gillis
http://sergworks.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/why-stackoverflow-sucks/

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bunkat
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.

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rhth54656
(Post is from 2012)

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.

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sonabinu
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

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lumens
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!

------
bdfh42
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.

~~~
popctrl
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.

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qntmfred
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

~~~
nextweek2
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.

------
prohor
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.

~~~
egoebelbecker
I see this often too, usually when Google brings me in via the "duplicate"
question. I end up steered to a question that is kinda close, but no cigar.

But these moderators have a job to do. If they allow too many "duplicates" SO
might run out of drive space or something.

------
cookerware
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.

~~~
rhth54656
_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.

~~~
cookerware
Well, that mechanism has not worked well. Especially, someone with a large
reputation point appears to be exempt and there exists elitism amongst it's
members.

Largely, Stackoverflow has now become something like wikipedia, just an index
of questions and answers with zealous moderators and elitists and no longer a
community.

~~~
jeremysmyth
That was _always_ the design goal. It was never a place for discussions,
_ever_.

They eventually implemented the chat rooms because there was a demand for
community-style conversations and interactions, but they've never allowed
discussions or conversations in the Q/A format, and comments that turn into
conversations are discouraged in the code.

Subsequently, one of the founders (Jeff Atwood) went on to form Discourse,
which _is_ about conversation and community.

