
StackOverflow Man Remakes Net One Answer at a TIme - Anon84
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/stackoverflow-jeff-atwood/
======
zitterbewegung
The mere idea of creating the site was revolutionary. The platform and the
concept of creating a site where you house questions and FOCUS on the quality
of questions is pure genius.

Making it an addicting game is great too. People love the social proof.

I use stack overflow and its sister sites nearly every day. On theoretical
computer science stack exchange its allowed me to ask better questions. It has
increased my research maturity by one hundred times. I know more about
topology and I am sincerely in debt to the quality of this concept and
platform.

Cheers to Jeff. This is his magnum opus. I can't wait what he thinks of next.

~~~
Goladus
It's certainly better than the alternatives that preceded it. I can't tell you
how many times I've searched for <topic>, found my question in a forum about
<topic>, and instead of answers or straightforward discussion I find a bunch
of attitude from high-postcount forum jockeys saying "use the search
function", "RTFM," changing the subject, and otherwise contributing lots of
useless static noise (often they won't even bother to actually link a FAQ).

------
btilly
Ironically I see this the day after I've decided to quit Stack Overflow due to
interacting with moderators.

For the last few months I've been in the habit of searching for algorithm
questions, and answering them for fun. And then
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11314077/algorithm-for-
ex...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11314077/algorithm-for-exclusion-of-
numbers/11317787) came along. It was the most fun algorithm question that I
had seen in the last week. I put a fair amount of effort into rewriting a
response I learned a nice trick from into a response that programmers with no
theoretical background should be able to understand. But 4 moderators decided
that it should be closed despite multiple votes, stars, and so on.

I then asked at [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138678/can-we-
please...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138678/can-we-please-
reopen-this-programming-question) and the immediate response was that I got
downvoted into oblivion, the question got deleted by clearly senior members of
the community (it since has become undeleted, but there is no question what
the "wise elders" think should have happened), and I got a lesson in what they
really do and do not want to see on their site.

I understand what they are aiming for, and clearly what I find fun is simply
not a fit for what they want on their site. The site that they'd like me to go
to instead is <http://http://cs.stackexchange.com/>. I looked. It is
practically dead in comparison. What little does appear there seems strongly
geared towards computer science students. Given that I'm self-taught in CS, I
doubt I'll stay there.

So, goodbye Stack Overflow. I wonder how many other people you don't see there
any more.

~~~
runn1ng
I don't see your problem.

They are trying to put specific questions to specific stackexchange subsites.
So, there is <http://programmers.stackexchange.com> for conceptual questions ,
<http://cs.stackexchange.com/> for "easy" computer science and
<http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/> for "hard" computer science.

I don't see the problem in trying to split the horde of questions into more
subsites.

~~~
legutierr
The problem is that by splitting the community into these micro sites they are
making the whole stack-exchange universe less valuable and interesting.

First, the idea that questions can be easily classified into discrete
categories is bullshit. Why have they set it up so that multiple tags can be
assigned to individual questions? Because most, if not all questions span
genres. Not only is it possible for a submitter not to know what category a
question goes in, but it is also possible for the same question to
legitimately belong in multiple categories.

Most importantly, however, the populations asking and answering these
questions (or that you want asking and answering these questions) are not
different. Do you really think that people answering questions under
"programmers" and under "cstheory" wouldn't also be suitably answering
questions under "cs"? Would a question posted under "cstheory" not be useful
to people posting under "cs"? At what point in one's academic path does one
transition from asking questions in "cs" to doing so in "cstheory"? After your
second year of college, after graduating, or after being accepted to a phd
program?

Think about it mathematically. Take 1,000 people posting in stackoverflow,
divide that population in half and distribute one half of them equally between
programmers, cs, and cstheory. The total possible connections and interactions
between people in communities of size 500, 167, 167 and 166 is far fewer than
the total possible connections and interactions within a single community of
size 1000.

I had actually not heard of there being different stackexchange sites for
"programmers", "cs" and "cstheory" before reading your comment. What a
ridiculous thing to do, to split up these sites. And then to shut down popular
questions inside stackoverflow in order to push people into these marginal
sites? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

~~~
codinghorror
The example I like to use here is Skiiers vs. Snowboarders. Both are about
going downhill really fast on snow, so should the all be on they all share the
same site? How different could they be?

I'd argue that Snowboarders have a very different _culture_ than Skiiers, with
their own sets of terminology, equipment choices, and social norms. That's why
they need a community to themselves, with their own moderators, reputation
systems, and ideas of what kinds of questions they find on or off topic.

------
acslater00
"But the biggest reason for the site’s success is the use of game mechanics."

No. No no. No. It isn't.

The biggest reason for the site's success is that it provides a really broad
range of useful and detailed content in a useable (and search-indexable)
format and doesn't charge for it. It helps that there is a community of
thousands (millions?) of developers who need this information on a daily basis
and keep going back to the site out of necessity.

If the lesson you take from Stack Overflow is "Wow, I should really add game
mechanics to my site. That'll do the trick!" you are simply beyond help.

~~~
nathan_long
Well, you're right, but:

"provides a really broad range of useful and detailed content"

...which it gets from users. Who are motivated to contribute using game
mechanics.

No, you can't just slap a points mechanism at any site and magically make it
great. But "get credit for your work" is a motivation that is basic to human
nature.

I say this as a longtime user with more than 10k points. I like helping
others, but I must admit that having points to show for it is also a
motivation.

~~~
goostavos
It's slightly embarrassing, but the first time I answered a question, got an
upvote and a check mark, well, it felt pretty good.

~~~
codinghorror
No reason to be embarrassed!

Learning from/teaching your peers, while leaving useful breadcrumb trails for
other people to follow -- that's supposed to feel good!

~~~
nathan_long
That's what I like about SO's points: they prove my answers have helped
someone, which does feel good. It's not like an actual video game, where
you're like, "Hey, I got 5,000 points, which means... absolutely nothing
outside the game."

------
gearoidoc
Is it just me or has the quality and quantity of answers dropped in the past
year or so?

I find SO perfect for the simple problems you have when you're new to a
language/framework/whatever but when you get into the real nitty gritty
problems its like nobodys home.

~~~
jcurbo
I have found lots of good answers on SE sites (almost all completely via
Google) and I don't think it's getting any worse. I do find it hard to
participate in the sites as I almost never have a question that is not already
answered, which is a drag because without sufficient rep you can't vote on
answers, and I don't want to just add comments because it feels like I'm just
adding noise.

I did finally get enough rep on Server Fault that I can upvote things, which
may help there. But I don't want to go through a concerted effort on each and
every SE site I care about in order to participate. Maybe that's what SE wants
(I know they want strong communities, I listened to the SE podcast since the
very beginning) but it feels like a limiting factor to me.

~~~
kmontrose
You can vote before you can comment (15 and 50 rep generally speaking).

Once you get over 200 rep anywhere in the network, you'll automatically get a
+100 rep bonus on other sites you join so you don't have to "grind it out" for
the basic privileges.

The low rep hurdles (anything < 100) are basically "know how everything works"
bars (the number of people who mistake "answer" for "forum-style reply" and
"community close votes" as "moderators" backs up the need for such hurdles),
the high ones (down vote, edit, close, etc.) are the "strong community" ones.

~~~
jcurbo
Thanks, I wasn't aware of some of those numbers. I still find the question
hurdle to be the biggest... I personally just haven't found the time or energy
to go and find questions I can answer, or do research necessary to answer.

My gut feeling is that SE's post structure, handling of reputation and
permissions is overly complex... feature creep in a way.

I am glad to hear that your rep can affect other sites rep. I feel like the
fractured approach doesn't work very well and it is good to see some
improvements in account handling from the beginning like: \- Easier account
creation and management(openid feels very arcane and this has smoothed out a
lot since the beginning I think) \- Logging you back on when you visit (I
guess they changed how they did session cookies or something, I get these
'welcome back' messages now) \- Cross-site notifications and relationships

Maybe if they had gone with centralized SE accounts at the beginning with per-
site reputations it would have been simpler. The current method might be
because of how SE evolved from the 'original trilogy'.

------
balakk
What a lousy headline. And the article is almost content-free.

~~~
nakkiel
Clearly a paid-for article. Jeff is onto something these days and needs some
press.

Regarding the down-votes: it's the second time in a week that Jeff publishes
something free of any interesting content and makes it big enough to reach a
large audience while mentioning each time that he's onto something but can't
say anything about it. If that's not a PR exercise, please tell me what it is.

~~~
nathan_long
PR exercise, maybe. "paid-for" is an accusation you can't back up and
shouldn't make.

~~~
nakkiel
You're right, it's just my opinion based on the tone of the article and what I
perceive of Wired. I'd change the wording to reflect that if I could edit the
post. Also, this was not really meant as an accusation in the sense that I
make no value judgement on Jeff based on what he did or did not pay for the
article (but I hear I'm strangely wired (yeah, hum) when it comes to
translating my opinions into judgements; YMMV so, you've got another point
there because I should be more cautious).

------
cadab
Currently -" 2 million registered users and averages 5,000 new questions per
day and 10,000 new answers per day"

2008 - "By the end of 2008 users were posting 100,000 answers per day"

I find that hard to believe? Surely it'd be more like the other way round? Or
has it really dropped off 4 years on?

~~~
klint
Sorry, this is an error. It should have been 100,000 per month by the end of
2008 and 10,000 per day currently (so around 300,000 a month).

------
praptak
_"The site zoomed past in Experts Exchange in terms of traffic in summer 2009,
according to Alexa data Atwood posted to the StackOverflow blog."_

It looks even better nowadays. Experts-exchange now looks like statistical
noise compared to stackoverflow:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com+experts-
exch...](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com+experts-
exchange.com#trafficstats) Serves them well for hiding community-provided
information behind a paywall.

------
willvarfar
> “I have some things in the hopper,” he says. “Communities are still the holy
> grail. What if you could make every site on the internet as good as it can
> be?"

Speculation on what that might be? A curated disqus competitor, or?

------
josephscott
Unless the Internet involves using PHP, in which case he'd rather kill it :-)

------
tubbo
Don't learn to code. Otherwise, you'll end up looking like this man:
<http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/?attachment_id=24755>

