Ask HN: How would you improve Stack Overflow? - harrychenca
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mancerayder
Up the barrier to entry to being able to be an off-topic/duplicate question
Nazi. Sometimes those low-lying fruit are too tempting for some of the more
OCD types not to pick.

Don't get me wrong, we need to police and remove / flag off topics and dups.
But sometimes the flaggers don't understand what they're flagging and nuances
get lost.

Make it harder for people to do what can amount to useful information being
lost, which in my opinion is a costlier risk than a duplicate question or
whatnot.

~~~
loumf
The biggest offenders (IMO) have tons of rep, badges, etc (or will get them if
need be).

My idea on this same problem is to make downvoting harder on questions by
brand new users.

1\. Can't downvote to less than 0 if the question is asked by a user with less
than 20 rep

2\. Someone with enough rep can adopt the question, which temporarily makes it
only possible to be edited by them and the questioner -- the purpose is to
improve the question. The adopter cannot answer the question (perhaps only
with a wiki answer -- so they can't adopt to get rep)

3\. Downvotes past -1 should cost the downvoter a LOT more rep to stop pile-
ons.

There are many times where I think the best course of action for a question is
to just help the questioner and close the question as being off-topic. I am
fine not getting rep if I do it -- I just hate the way new users are treated
-- I am not in SO to help build a database of useful questions -- I am more
interested in helping newbies.

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alexAME
There should be a real difference between good questions and questions which
could be solved by having a look at the docs.

People are just too lazy, SO became a replacement for many references, docs
and trivial things.

At the current state, it's not possible to judge a developer by the SO points,
we have to check the profile, browse through a few given answers and
eventually create an opinion based on the quality of the answers.

It's simply because they might have answered a question called "How do I fill
an array with 4 elements". Thousand of people are lazy and voted that question
up and also the answer.

What we have now, is a guy who got a ton of points by asking a stupid question
and a guy who answered a trivial stupid question and got 120 up votes on that.

Why should we change that?

SO is a great huge site, developers can show what they have to offer, you can
set up resume and you can search for jobs over SO.

SO just establish itself as an important tool for recruiter and companies
looking for top notch developers but the points are misleading, someone who
has answered lots of trivial questions isn't necessarily a good developer
because of those trivial answers to trivial questions.

On the other hand, we got many people with below the 3k mark, who just
answered really hard questions with 3-4 up votes.

What I'm afraid of is that someone with more points gets preferred in a
decision between two developers from SO for a job position.

~~~
hasenj
> People are just too lazy, SO became a replacement for many references, docs
> and trivial things.

That was its original purpose. It wasn't meant to be a place for answers to
detailed questions. It was designed with the aim of being the first Google
result for things like "How do I collapse border tables?". Trivial questions
where the answer is buried deep inside technical documentation.

~~~
fratlas
This. So much easier than trawling through terribly structured docs. I find
the CLI version even more useful for this purpose.

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_RPM
The <textarea> place where you write your answer really needs to be improved.
It would be nice if they could make it wider, or allow for it be expanded by
native browser functionality. Also, it would be great if when I pressed the
tab key, it inserts a tab into the text buffer.

~~~
neilsimp1
The tab key thing more than anything else drives me crazy about SO.

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gilleain
Make it clearer WHY so called 'homework questions' are not allowed and maybe
come up with a different terminology. I see so many questioners get annoyed
and say "But it's not homeowrk!!!" \- it may not literally be homework, but
it's a trivial question that you are just asking someone else to churn through
for you.

On the other hand, more and more lazy questioners are just hiding the fact
that it's a homework question. Confusingly, of course, there is the help-
vampire/point chaser feedback that encourages this whole mess.

Furthermore, the rules that require MVC (minimal, verifiable, complete)
examples don't work in all areas. The [algorithm] tag, for example tends to
attract speculative questions where the questioner naturally hasn't written
any code because they don't have an algorithm yet!

Finally, it might be nice to be able to combine answers to make one
comprehensive one where two different answerers have different parts of the
answer.

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therealgimli
tag posts as #deprecated where the question/responses refer to older versions
of packages/software

~~~
Jeremy1026
So, every answer about Facebook's API? I like this proposal.

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WorldMaker
This is a hard one: Drop the gamification (badges, points) and find a way to
intrinsically motivate a healthy community rather than extrinsically motivate
people to game the system.

~~~
DCRichards
Inclined to agree with this, I totally understand trying to maintain a
standard of answers and being able to quantify expertise in some way to ensure
quality content, but I feel like it can be more of a hinderance than a help.
Reddit is a good example, although it's often littered with poor content,
there's an overall high quality of discussion amongst more focussed threads
and subreddits and those with expertise and knowledge to offer are for the
most part respected and drive some good discussions.

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wvenable
Make it possible for me to contribute. I'm a busy experienced software
developer and I can't contribute anything to Stack Overflow because I haven't
done enough piddly bullshit elsewhere to be able to upvote an answer or
provide my own. It's a vicious cycle of non-participation.

~~~
jaydles
I work at SO, and we couldn't agree more. This is one reason we're so excited
about our upcoming launch of
[Documentation]([http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-
of-d...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-
documentation-a-proposed-expansion-of-stack-overflow)). We think that together
with developers like you, we can do for docs what the last generation kicked
off for Q&A.

To your point: Today, many of the questions devs encounter are already
covered, and covered pretty well on SO Q&A. This is obviously good for devs
_looking_ for solutions. But combined with the fact that most new questions -
that haven't been asked before - are answered quickly,it's hard for users
trying to get involved and contribute. That'll all change with Docs.

There will be _tons_ of need for contributions, plus the system has more
checks and peer support baked in, so it'll be easier to know your contribution
will help, even if you're not sure it's complete, etc. We're really excited
about how Docs will let more devs like you who want to pitch in be a part of
it. I hope you'll give it a try.

~~~
wvenable
I have actually found questions with no answer that I eventually found the
answer for myself (either from another site, trial and error, luck, or
frightening insight). I have zero ability to add an answer for these tough
problems.

The easy questions get answered quickly because it's a game. I don't play that
game, I work for a living. I have the knowledge to contribute the long tail
value of SO if I was able but I am not. I'm not sure there's a solution but
that's the gripe I have.

~~~
ruraljuror
Not sure I understand what you mean "zero ability to add an answer." Why can't
you answer the question that does not already have an answer? Or ask the
question yourself and then answer it yourself?

~~~
reitanqild
You somewhat ironically IMO need more rep to answer a question than to ask
one.

~~~
ruraljuror
I just don't understand why you and the op think this. Here is a link to what
you get with your first point of rep.

[http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-
posts](http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-posts)

Checking now, it seems you can answer without even logging in.

~~~
reitanqild
Ok, I'm sorry, I was wrong.

Now I am confused as well.

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cpg1111
Allow you to filter out certain topics you are uninterested for the questions
page. (i.e. Right now you can choose what you want to see, but say I want to
see all things that having nothing to do with windows, I can filter that out)

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reitanqild
Up the barrier for asking:

I see moderators complaining about an endless stream of low quality questions.

By requiring users to lurk or something they get an idea before being allowed
to "spam".

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detaro
Find a place for all those interesting questions that are "not a good fit for
our Q&A format", because it's frustrating to end up on those all the time.

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bpowah
The reputation system should be overhauled. A user-based PageRank-style system
would highlight the quality of work over quantity and a high rank would give a
user voting power that would take some burden off of moderation.

A monetary voluntary "tip" system (or cash "bounty" system) would be nice too.
Talented people would be more willing to contribute if it supplemented their
income. Wrought with unforeseen consequences I'm sure...

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tmaly
I would come up with a better way to organize the information and also maybe
have a filter to only show entries that have an accepted answer.

Many times there are a ton of duplicate questions just because the information
on existing posts is not well organized and people cannot find it.

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fiftyacorn
The good answers are often linked to in blog posts. You know the answers that
have taken time to construct. Use the link back to improve the standing of the
author

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dyeje
Allow editing comments past the 5 minute grace period.

~~~
brudgers
I sometimes copy the text from my comment needing edits to the clipboard,
delete the original, and post a new edited version.

------
brudgers
More better answers.

