
Our approach to subjective programming questions - natosaichek
http://blog.slant.co/post/42487997802/tired-of-being-told-you-aren-t-constructive
======
charlieflowers
Cool! You have "discovered what Stackoverflow users were doing," and where
Stackoverflow stomped it out like a plague, you have made an offering for it.
Good job!

I'm still amazed at Stackoverflow's failure to follow their own stated
philosophy ("discover what your users are doing and enable it") in this
particular area.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Pretty much for any question you find via Google that you are really
interested in, you will find an SO question that fits the bill and has some
big long jibber jabber filled message about being closed for such and such
reason.

The strange thing to me was that when Jeff left was like when it went full
tilt. It's like Mao died and the rest of the party big wigs realized they
weren't being the best communists they could be and just started going
overboard to stomp any possible conflict with Maoist ideology.

------
6ren
I think many people, like me, have been waiting for someone to address this
obvious niche that has been crying out for attention.

There's also an interesting path to monetization: it's pretty much models the
buying process, esp for the enterprise. Also generalises to purchasing
decisions, in general - it's relevant to _all_ transactions. i.e. the whole
economy.

However... very hard to do well. It's good start, but nailing it will take a
lot of time, effort and luck. Starting in this very focussed and narrow niche
is a great way to build understanding of what's needed and how to do it.

 _EDIT_ I found the site slow to load (actually got the _wait or cancel_
dialog). Because such a site thrives on as many users as possible, it may be
more important to make it accessible to more people at the expense of
prettiness (I assume the pie-charts are partly to blame for the slowness). It
also biases the answers and votes (maybe a good thing - target that niche?);
might explain why emacs got few votes.

The presentation of information is too "detail-heavy" (i) the list of
questions includes 3 alternatives and even some lines about each. The typical
user wants to scan the topics to find one of interest. (though I guess having
a some context is good, since that's what SO does; but only to clarify the
question, not the answer).

(ii) in the actual answer, there's no summary of the results [ _EDIT_ whoops,
there is a summary; somehow I went directly to one of alternatives at first];
no comparison of the alternatives; and no indication of what context each tool
best suits ("job" for the tool); instead, each page is all about one
alternative. I would guess that something like a grid might work better, with
the tools listed vertically, and the attributes horizontally (with the
"job"/context first). The user can then scroll down to examine each point in
detail (or maybe drill-down, with expanding sections, for truly
secondary/tertiary content, like comments/debates). Attributes could be voted
on.

In short: organise it to suit the user-task, not the subject matter.

~~~
StuieK
> I found the site slow to load (actually got the wait or cancel dialog).

Sorry about that, we are under some heavy load and didn't have time to do even
the most basic speed optimisations (gzip etc). Its very high priority.

> The presentation of information is too "detail-heavy" (i) the list of
> questions includes 3 alternatives and even some lines about each. The
> typical user wants to scan the topics to find one of interest. (though I
> guess having a some context is good, since that's what SO does; but only to
> clarify the question, not the answer).

Totally agreed. I know how to fix this, will be done soon.

> (ii) in the actual answer, there's no summary of the results; no comparison
> of the alternatives; and no indication of what context each tool best suits
> ("job" for the tool); instead, each page is all about one alternative. I
> would guess that something like a grid might work better, with the tools
> listed vertically, and the attributes horizontally (with the "job"/context
> first). The user can then scroll down to examine each point in detail (or
> maybe drill-down, with expanding sections, for truly secondary/tertiary
> content, like comments/debates). Attributes could be voted on.

We have this page: [http://slant.co/topics/what-s-the-best-jabber-gchat-
client-f...](http://slant.co/topics/what-s-the-best-jabber-gchat-client-for-
ios) that shows ALL the options and an overview of what they are suitable for.
To further improve this we are working on a comparison matrix style feature
that is approximately what you described here.

Would it be possible for you to email me? (stuart@slant.co) I'd love to be
able to show you some 'in the works' features as they are being built for some
feedback.

~~~
argonaut
Another thing I particularly like about threads comparing two or more
different technologies/frameworks/languages is when someone says "X does Z
badly, and here is why Y does Z better." Slant seems to not be able to
facilitate this very well.

~~~
T-R
Good point. We plan to add something along the lines of "counterpoints" ("X
does Z badly"), and we have other viewpoints ("Y does Z well"), but directly
pointing users toward solutions that solve those counterpoints ("[take a look
at Y, because] Y does Z better") isn't something we'd considered. I'll
definitely keep that in mind as we hash out the counterpoints idea a little
more. Thanks kindly.

------
nirvanatikku
Gotta say, at first glance I really like this approach..

Here are a few things that are going on in the back of my mind.

> I'd love to see a __time __based filter. For example, consider the evolution
> of JavaScript libraries. For simplicity's sake, let's take the shift from
> prototype to jQuery. What you guys are creating could effectively answer
> this question: 'When did jQuery surpass Prototype as being the premier
> library, and why?' The filter would have to be periodic (since votes are
> going to be spread out), but I would find it fascinating to glean the shifts
> in developer technologies. Think Backbone, ember, angular, etc..

> I see a lot of ULs in place of what seem to be 'features'. While this may
> only be relevant for things that are capable of being compared (apples-to-
> apples so to speak), I imagine significant value will be come out of a
> resulting table of comparison; that is, if each bullet point could somehow
> be categorized, tagged or curated in some way. This may be hard to achieve
> (and may not be relevant in some cases), but you could effectively build out
> a report highlighting things that _are_ and _are not_ available (instead of
> having contributors write long lists that then users have to parse and
> reconcile). Does that make sense?

> In the blog post you state "we aren’t actually trying to tell you what the
> best programming language to learn first is" -- I appreciate that you don't
> want to suggest the 'best', but I imagine that's how most developers
> (particularly newcomers) are going to interpret the results. I'm curious if
> such a forum would influence new developers for the better or worse.

> Sign in with Facebook? What about stack exchange/github? I don't know what
> you guys think about leveraging reputation, but it would be nice to bring my
> existing recognition - score and tags (albeit slim) - along with me. Even
> integrating LinkedIn could be interesting with skills. Just a thought.

~~~
StuieK
Awesome feedback.

1: That is a really cool idea and something I have been thinking about since
day 1. I want to be able to show a graph that displays the relative change in
opinion over time, annotated with the addition of new citations to the
Viewpoints. So when someone updates the Ember Viewpoint with new information
and the citation for it, you can do some basic "cause analysis" on what
changed,when and why :)

2: Absolutely makes sense. We are still debating the best way to do this, but
one simple solution is an editable comparison matrix that shows the simple
features/specs that the Viewpoints have. The ULs would then be used to further
flesh out the more significant points that can't be explained in matrix format
(for eg how nice the UI is for a particular app)

3: Again, we debate this point all the time. What do you think about the
phrasing "What are the different programming languages suitable to learn
first?" or something along those lines?

4: Awesome idea, we are going to add additional login options soon, but the
idea of bringing in external rep is very interesting!

~~~
TeeDub
Maybe you could present the different options in reverse order of votes?
(filtered a bit so that spammy answers aren't always first.) Changing the
order of presentation can be a good way to stem cascade effects from
seniority/etc. For example, the US supreme court votes in reverse order of
seniority to help prevent cascading effects. (That way less senior justices
can vote Wo undue influence...)

------
RKoutnik
As the author of the recently closed/opened/locked question about brackets [0]
on Programmers.SE thanks so much for creating something like this. I'm really
enjoying all the additional detail on _why_ something is/isn't the best. Keep
it up!

<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/188455/54164>

~~~
itafroma
Wow, they closed _and_ locked that? That type of question is pretty much
exactly what Programmers.SE was intended for.

But unless I'm not understanding Slant's mission correctly, this type of
question wouldn't work there: it's for things like "What programming language
should I learn next?" or, a little closer to your closed question, "Should I
use curly or straight brackets to denote scope when designing a programming
language?"

------
tobyjsullivan
At first blush, this looks fantastic and I'm excited for it's potential.
Particularly in my experimental side-projects, I'm constantly looking for some
guidance from others.

Closed StackOverflow questions infuriate me to no end - not least because
that's where the experts are that are eager to help!

~~~
StuieK
Thanks for the comment and the content you added Toby!

------
anateus
I like a lot of this approach. But, please replace the pie charts.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_and_visual_perception)

Humans aren't that good at telling more than very rough ratios in angle rather
than length. Yes, when the differences are large you could tell at a glance
the overall distribution of answers, but when it is close, you lose that. A
horizontal stacked bar would achieve a similar visual flair but would be much
more intuitively _accurate_.

------
Flenser
It would be great if you could let users indicate preferences between answers
so that you could produce an ordered graph of which answers are better than
others. I'm thinking of something similar to the less wrong textbook
recommendations[1] with it's rules:

    
    
       1. Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject.
       2. You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject.
       3. You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain 
          why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.
       
       Rules #2 and #3 are to protect against recommending a bad book that only seems
       impressive because it's the only book you've read on the subject. 
    

AFTER EDIT: I'm thinking this would be particularly useful if you've narrowed
your choice down to a few options and wanted to see comparisons between those
options.

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subject/)

------
goatslacker
I think it's great to have a centralized place where you can find answers to
subjective questions; however, the current format makes it difficult to digest
__why__ something is considered better than its competitors.

It would be useful to have a set list of pros and cons of each entry.

~~~
StuieK
Hey mate!

So the idea is to have the list of Pros/Cons! For example checkout this one:

[http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-
we...](http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-search-engine-for-web-
applications/opinions/elasticsearch)

It tells you what its good for, as well as the "cons"

Edit: Also topics like: [http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-javascript-
drawing-l...](http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-javascript-drawing-
library/opinions/raphael) make it clear what the best use-case is for the
various options. Do you want something a little more like a "comparison
matrix"? Thats also in the works to help compare specs/basic features.

------
danso
I do like the content so far, but this isn't really a Q&A...it's more of a
WikiAnswers, isn't it?

The good thing about StackOverflow is that, when in doubt, you can always use
a user's score/comment history to gauge their credibility (though yes, that is
an argument by appeal to authority...)

With Slant, the tracing of comments/submissions is as hard as it is on
Wikipedia.

And the "the answer must be in article-ish form" has its disadvantages, of
course, not least of which is that some of the best answers come through
repartee, as they have in StackOverflow.

Also, I'm not sold on the font. It's not great at small sizes and you may want
to stick with a sans-serif.

~~~
StuieK
Hi Mate,

> With Slant, the tracing of comments/submissions is as hard as it is on
> Wikipedia.

We are building an "authority" SO style karma system, and unlike Wikipedia you
can easily see who is a contributor to a post. This is something we agree is
really important, but just didn't make the cut for the Alpha product. Please
also note that your edits need to be initially approved by the existing
contributors, which helps keep quality high and helps you trust the content.

> I do like the content so far, but this isn't really a Q&A...it's more of a
> WikiAnswers, isn't it?

Well there are questions asked and answers listed.. but you're right in that
it's not really Q&A. Someone the other day told me it was "Q&Os" (Question and
opinions)

------
tgflynn
Seeing the vote breakdown for alternatives could be one of the best features
of this site. Can users vote easily without leaving comments ?

Being able to get a quick overview of community sentiment on what's the best
library/tool to use for XXX on/in YYY could be very helpful when one is
researching alternatives.

~~~
StuieK
You can vote without leaving comments, but you have to create an account to do
it.

------
xsmasher
Maybe it's because I am not signed in, but it looks like you are missing a lot
of the tools needed to spot sockpuppets / shills, like history of votes /
edits for a user, and list or voters for each answer.

If your site gets popular you will be flooded with astroturfers and over-
enthusiastic project promoters.

~~~
T-R
Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding sockpuppet accounts and the like, we do have that information - some
of it will get more visible as we build out profiles and moderator tools, it's
just been on hold while we focus on more user-facing features, since it hasn't
been an issue yet. Account validation e-mails are also on the way.

Spam is definitely a concern, but we hope the fact that most content requires
acceptance from another user before getting visibility will put up some
barrier to entry, and in the cases where it's not sufficient, it should help
us get some information on associated accounts. In cases where that fails,
there's always manual moderation.

Regarding astroturfing, we welcome it, to some degree - we don't expect each
viewpoint to maintain NPOV, we just want to make sure that each viewpoint gets
visibility. Cons/criticisms will eventually broken out into a separate feature
to reflect this.

------
greggman
I like idea but... the first question that interested me was

"What the best 2D Game Engine" <http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-
best-2d-game-engine>

And I'm confused by my options on slant. What is a 2D game engine? Can we even
discuss that? Example: Phonegap, should I add it? People make games with it.
They also make non-games with it. I didn't see a place to bring up this
discussion (meta-discussion?)

Next: I've been looking at 2D engines recently so I thought about adding
entries but I don't know the engines enough to do anything other than add them
to the list. Except apparently I'm not supposed to do that? But even that is
useful info (ie, to know what the choices are)

Anyway, not sure if that's useful feedback.

------
epaga
It always seemed to me that StackExchange's own
<http://programmers.stackexchange.com> was intended for this very concept.
From the FAQ:

 _What about subjective questions?

Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean “anything
goes”. Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd
be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's
probably not appropriate here, either._

For example, here is a question re: CSS pre-processors that seems pretty
subjective: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181536/are-
th...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181536/are-there-any-
advantages-of-sass-over-less)

~~~
fuzzix
Until your highly subjective question gets closed:

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-
do...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-
programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones)

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The problem with that question is that there isn't really any answer to it. It
basically just ends up being that at some point someone made an arbitrary
decision to do something that way and a bunch of other people copied them.

------
lelandbatey
I think this is awesome, especially since I asked about this exact thing just
hours ago before you posted.[0] I'm really excited and I can't wait to see you
take off!

[0]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5286601>

~~~
StuieK
Thank you!

------
Glide
This is awesome. I browsed stackoverflow when it first started and just
wondered when the first wave of overzealous "editors" would take over the
site. It took a while, but those people killed spirit of the site for me.

This looks great.

IMO, a lot of the difficult things are subjective. Good luck.

------
wanderingstan
I was just thinking of this idea over dinner tonight, when a friend was giving
his recommendations on PHP and Ruby frameworks and their pro/cons. "There
should be a site for this type of knowledge!" I thought. And --boom!-- I get
home, and here it is on HN.

------
michaelmior
Looks like a great start. One thing that strikes me is that it's really hard
to see how useful the data is on first glance. I kind of like that the pie
chart is front and center, but for me it's useless without showing the total
number of votes.

~~~
StuieK
> useless without showing the total number of votes.

Hover and you can see the % and on the Viewpoints it shows the votes they
received but obviously to be even remotely trusted we need total votes.
Consider it on the to-do.

------
logn
This is super awesome. You're getting criticism of the font. But I have to say
that I really like it. I just created my own issue and like the UI all around.

For karma, I'd recommend that each person gets points in proportion to the
number of upvotes combined with the number of characters they added to an
answer that appear in the final answer.

Also, I think you need some sort of comparison or overview for each issue. And
next to the pie chart I think you should allow for a 140 character final
recommendation, listed individually for each user. E.g., "Dan recommends
SilkJS because it's easy to write, fast, and better than Node"

~~~
T-R
Great ideas! Thanks kindly.

------
jyrkesh
I really like the idea, and what few bits of criticism I had you have already
seemed to address.

I just wanted to compliment you on something specifically that I though was
really great: the registration process. Very similar, no confirmation fields,
and, most importantly, I was signed in immediately after clicking finish. It
didn't take me away from or reload the page I was on, and it didn't ask me to
confirm my email. The small things really matter.

------
te
Guys, I really like what you are doing, I think there is a market opening for
this type of site. Couple comments: (1) You probably ought to get tags
implemented ASAP so it's easier to find stuff in broad categories (2) Some ppl
might not be too thrilled with your lifting so much content from SO. I realize
you're probably just trying to seed some content, but still. Might leave a bad
taste for some ppl.

~~~
StuieK
Thanks! Agreed on the SO point, I actually just tried it out on the "Haskel"
topic and maybe a couple others with it all fully cited but stopped as it
didn't feel right...We have over 300 topics right now with only those few from
SO.

Working on point #1 right now.

------
adev
I like this, but I'm having serious issues reading the content in a manner I'd
use it.

It's the font choice, size, and line-spacing to start with. It doesn't lend
itself to quick skimming, and to succeed in this segment you really need to
nail this aspect -- because this is what we all want... quick answers.

~~~
StuieK
Really good points and I do agree that we need some work on the presentation.
Thanks for the feedback.

------
niggler
Please please please don't pull a quora and force people to have to register
to see the vote counts.

------
prtamil
Thanks you guys, i feel like you are the guys invented democracy to save us
from SO tyranny.

Small Suggestion: All caps in Title makes the title very harder to read. so
instead of WHAT IS BEST EDITOR can you change like What is Best Editor.

------
Falling3
Looking pretty good. A few things that I noticed:

\- "Read More" and "Seem n more viewpoint(s)" go to the topic page when I
expected them to just load some additional information.

\- "Read More" link is still present on individual topic page even though it
goes nowhere.

~~~
StuieK
Totally agree and we have plans to fix both points :) Thanks for the feedback!
Was there anything else you noticed that was confusing?

------
bconway
Great site, I've signed up.

Suggestion: Disambiguate questions where voting on multiple choices is
recommended. It makes sense to be able to choose more than one answer on a
what-are-your-favorite-... question, but not on a yes/no question.

------
mendicant
I like the idea, but it crashes Opera.

~~~
T-R
Thanks for the feedback. One of the projects that our front-end engineer is
currently working on should fix this issue, though it may not be live for a
few days. Very sorry for the inconvenience.

------
woah
Beautiful and informative. Great job.

------
martinced
Yes, yes and yes!

Why limit topics to stuff where there's no objective answer? There are a _lot_
of people (including people with 20K rep+ on SO) who quit SO in disgust and
who would just _love_ to share their knowledge on both objective and non-
objective question.

Pivot immediately. Do both objective and non-objective : )

Instant winner IMHO, going to help people there immediately!

~~~
pnathan
I found SO (over time) to give less and less useful information: the best
information was always in the quasi-subjective questions. It's nice to know
_how_ to use something, but really, I want to understand _why_. The SO/SE
theory is against those questions. I have 19K rep on SO, 5Kish on P.SE, and I
barely contribute anymore.

So I am planning on creating a Slant account and experimenting when I get
home.

~~~
charlieflowers
I feel exactly the same way (not with the high rep you have, but a decent rep
that I worked hard to cultivate in the past).

I think there are a good number of us who feel this way.

It is frustrating for a company to say it wants to "discover what its users
are doing and enable it", and then to see that company squash so many
individual pieces of excellent content those users have created.

