

Quora and Stack Overflow: two very different experiences - tommorris
http://jeremiahlee.tumblr.com/post/70994751181/i-did-an-experiment-on-the-behavior-of-two-online

======
mlangdon
The overall ethos of rigidity at stackoverflow has gotten out of control.

On the one hand if I want to make a one character edit because some code
snippet is broken in a non obvious way that will frustrate the next hundred
people, I am told to add six. If I add six, say a comment on the edited code,
I am very very likely to be rolled back. Good luck making diligence work for
you in that scenario.

On the other hand, if I ask a question about a specific, mildly arcane
manipulation of a data structure in python and I ask it in ordinary language
that will probably make for good googling... But the answer, not the question
already exists, I get voted to close. I.e., why didn't I already know the
answer so I would know the correct terms to google when I googled my question
five ways before asking?

Overall, it has become a more and more frustrating experience to participate
in over last few years. Still a valuable thing to have exist, but I do not
relish the moment when it occurs to me that an SO question might be the most
expedient solution.

~~~
ethomson
Having a question closed as a duplicate isn't something that should be taken
personally.

You're not expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the StackOverflow
answers. But some people do. And the goal of SO is not _just_ to answer your
question but to provide a useful resource for others. Having multiple
questions that differ slightly and have the same answer provides a very high
signal to noise ratio, so your question was closed.

If your question wasn't actually a duplicate, or provided significant
differentiation from the one that it (supposedly) duplicated then it does
sound like your question should have stuck around.

But otherwise, this is the right kind of housekeeping that keeps the site from
turning into Yahoo Answers. It's really a win-win: you got your question
answered and the corpus of the site did not grow.

~~~
mlangdon
The questions were pretty radically different. The other question just
happened to contain the answer to mine. So mine provides a valuable link for
people asking the question I was asking while needing the answer to that other
previously ungoogleable-by-the-terms-of-my-question question.

Basically, if you weren't thinking of my question in terms of "recursion" you
could not find the existing answer.

The new answers also provided specific-to-my-question details.

It's not about personal. To me it's about making the site more searchable,
navigable and complete.

Edit: Reply to child post: I also skew towards answering (about 4 to 1). But
on the rare occasion when I can't find an answer and ask a question, I always
get this treatment. The presumption is always against the asker. And this has
made me less likely to answer questions (this being resentment).

~~~
ethomson
Understandable. I've seen a lot of complaints about SO lately (and indeed
they've changed some things in an effort to address some of these issues), but
I haven't seen much of this first hand.

However I tend to be on the answering side of questions rather than the asking
side. I appreciate your further explanation as I try not to propagate these
sorts of complaints.

------
yoha
Whenever I stumble across a Quora question, the website hides everything with
a subscription overlay. Even after getting rid of it, I'm only shown the first
answer. After some time, my mind has associated Quora with “I don't want to be
there”. Stack Overflow (SO) gained a lot of popularity by having open access;
that's basically the Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique.

On the other hand, I have witnessed that up-only websites usually have a
better content (e.g. HN) than up-or-down websites (e.g. Reddit). This is
easily understood because people will tend to use the down vote against things
they do not agree (politics, to obvious of a question, etc) with instead of
badly-shapped posts.

I think the way SO goes is pretty good despite the known flaws, and I would
not be competent enough to propose solutions for these.

Edit: removed incorrect expression "out of random"

~~~
DanBC
HN is not up-only for anyone over 500 (?) karma.

The downvote button should be used early and often.

Downvotes are not used enough on HN. Upvotes are used in a weird way.

~~~
yoha
Yes, I did not consider that. But I think the fact that recent account can
only upvote is a good thing for the quality of comments. I agree that
downvotes can be meaningful, but they are often used to vote against an
opinion, which is not good for a conversation.

------
32bitkid
To play devils advocate for a bit: Perhaps it was a "basic" question, but it's
also pretty terse. More importantly, you have not given me any _reason why_ I
should want to help you.

You don't provide any information about what you are trying to do, what
problem you are trying to solve, attempts that you have made to solve your own
problem. You tell me no story, nor prove that you are a "peer" \-- someone who
has put the same effort into that craft as a potential person who may have the
answer will have.

Ultimately you haven't answered the "What have you tried?" question.
[http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/](http://mattgemmell.com/what-
have-you-tried/)

You are asking someone to _help_ you; a little more humility couldn't hurt. I
don't get _paid_ to help you solve your problem -- other than worthless
internet points -- so just give me a reason to _want_ to help you solve your
problem. I want to help, but not if you are going to be a jerk.

------
ronaldx
Since I've been using native Javascript, StackOverflow has become a pointless
visit for this very reason.

The comment or answer to any Javascript question seems to be essentially 'use
jQuery' (and sometimes just that alone).

This is never the answer that I am looking for, so I always look elsewhere.

~~~
paul_f
I hate this so much too. StackOverflow needs a "no jquery" filter.

------
eitland
Great experiment! As have been stated time and time again the stack* sites
have a set of rules.

This post touches into why the rules are enforced in what I think is a less
than stellar way.

Now if I could get myself to use quora again after them burning all goodwill
and trust a while ago.

~~~
davidgerard
All rules cost you. All of them. Even the ones you need.

------
gushie
Stack Overflow appears to be starting to suffer from Wikipedia editor
syndrome. All is well until a few people suddenly realise they have a bit of
power and instead of using it for good, decide to just yield it just because
they can, putting more effort into fiercely enforcing minor rules to push
their own agenda, rather than providing useful content. Yes rules are
important, but some battles are more important than others.

~~~
yoha
The point is that these people think that they are doing something good.
However, they do not realize that they are in a context where contribution is
done on voluntary participation and that they are making contributors flee.
They still think as if their website was some kind of closed circle where
people want to belong.

------
raverbashing
Quora is more focused towards open questions, I don't think a technical
specific question is common there.

Also, keeping things behind a curtain is very debatable.

It is unfortunate that janitorial tasks are being rewarded
_disproportionately_ in SO, looks like they're headed the Wikipedia way of a
closed editorial group.

~~~
nasalgoat
I was answering very specific technical questions on Quora for awhile, so it's
actually okay for that purpose.

I stopped answering questions because the questions never got beyond stuff
that you should be able to google in five minutes.

~~~
raverbashing
"I stopped answering questions because the questions never got beyond stuff
that you should be able to google in five minutes."

Yes, there's that as well.

------
DanBC
How much reputation do you get for janitorial work on SO? I was under the
impression that it wasn't much, especially compared to actual answers.

I tend to agree that the moderation has got a bit vigorous.

------
notastartup
I've been using stackoverflow for over 4 years. I have asked hundreds of
questions. Over those years, it has become virtually impossible to ask
questions because it "does not fit the guidelines".

I've grown so frustrated by the negative experience, I have visited that site
less and less and my engagement has fallen off.

I've complained about this issue for years ago on meta.stackexchange, that new
users will experience negativity from the cynical comments if not the
discouragement from the censorship (downvoting and closing the question)
regarding the context of the question being asked, and that the mods are
taking the questions literally as it is written without the human compassion
of trying to understand. As if on cue, the question was downvoted to damnation
and I found myself fighting a flame war with angry set of engineers and was
eventually blocked from adding to the discussion as if some verdict has been
drawn. It didn't help that lower reputation members agreed with what I was
saying, because your reputation on SO is measured by how many accepted
questions you can show to your potential employer (btw many employers seem to
dislike finding leads on careers.stackoverflow.com for some reasons).

the chat at stackoverflow is even worse. I don't know if it's the
"brogrammers" slacking off at work or just university kids trolling, lot of
the starred comments in the chat are vulgar. Even the high reputation members
seem no different at times.

Honestly, I think that stackoverflow has shot itself in it's own foot. It's
feeling less like a community and more like a system of cold engineers ready
to rip a newcomer's question apart or how well they can emulate a computer.

I don't like Quora because I dislike the fact that you have to be logged in to
view more of the answer or other stuff.

I've sought refuge in Ask HN because so far, no "but this is not efficient
obviously OP doesn't know what he's doing" type of comments often seen on
stackoverflow, stackexchange sites.

Everytime I ask a question on stackoverflow I feel like I'm walking across a
minefield and I've been a member for over 4 years.

~~~
mlangdon
As someone who helps recruit developers for my company and has input on hiring
decisions, I would find a high SO rank (say 10k plus) to be a cause for
skepticism at this point. Certainly not a disqualifier, but not at all a
positive mark as I'm sure the SO gamers imagine it to be.

