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> You basically asked how to architecture a security aspect of your software. And you asked for other people's experiences to boot, instead of a canonical solution.

That's exactly what I want to discuss on SO.

Most SO questions/answers are things that could easily be googled/RTFM with 5 minutes worth of effort. Seasoned developers/architects don't need that, and to be frank, it's pretty low-hanging fruit and not super valuable.

What is valuable are opinions, experiences, perspectives on trade-offs and engineering considerations. These are, of course, highly personal and subjective. But that's why it's so important - it's this kind of experience that people pay high salaries for, not answer to specific code one-liners.

If SO isn't willing to provide that kind of discussion, they're going to very susceptible to someone who starts up a competing platform to do so.




That’s the point though: when StackOverflow was born, people used forums to discuss such things. And forums had this annoying property of you having to scroll past a dozen opinions, off topic dicussion, and other rubbish to find the answer.

The whole philosophy of StackOverflow was that it wasn’t about sharing opinions, discussions, etc. - it was about questions that have an answer.

Jon’s post points out this difference: that some askers want to ask a question, but haven’t taken the time to understand what makes StackOverflow different to the discussion forums of old.


exactly. I think it gets frustrating for people because the people who are there are the ones you'd probably like to have a more subjective conversation about design with.


But they're there because you can't. I remember the days of Usenet and the various news groups for help. You help a person with a question and then go on to read something else... and there's a followup question a few minutes later. And another. And another.

The people answering questions have time boxed their involvement. Here's 15 minutes, here's an answer and move on.

I've had discussions on slack that span days. But that's ok... because its people I know and trust to be mindful of my time and theirs. They ask interesting questions that make me think.

To open up the spigot to everyone asking those questions (and while they are the ones I'd be most interested in having a discussion with), would make it impossible for me to ask or find anything in the future.

And as an expert in my domain, I'd be rather annoyed at getting dozens (or I suspect hundreds Jon's case) questions asking my opinion each day. I don't have time for them. I've chosen to spend time to answer this question and have a reasonable work / life / social-site balance.


So where does one find discussion forums where those kinds of questions are welcome? Did StackOverflow kill them off?


A lot of people don't seem to be aware that the Stack Exchange network consists of lots of different sites. StackOverflow is just the biggest one, but there are sites for all sorts of discussion: https://stackexchange.com/sites

Those sites all work exactly the same as StackOverflow and you can login with a single account. Just the rules regarding content are different. See for example https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/

There is also the Area 51 site for proposals for new sites: https://area51.stackexchange.com/


Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, mailing lists, google hangouts, irc, slack or discord channels.

They're still around. They're smaller... and by being smaller they are more useful.

What Stack Overflow killed off was Experts Exchange and a smattering of forums. Some are still around, but they're not trying to be searchable. Reddit's /r/javahelp or Code Ranch - every time there's a question its posted as a new question. Few people go back to find old posts there, but then that's the way the community works... and it works because it is so much smaller than Stack Overflow.


Pretty much, or at least shrinked them a lot. If you make a initially better experience for 75% of the content, few communities manage to survive while only dealing with 25%. (ratio choosen at random, I have no idea what it looks like in practice)

IRC channels and Slacks have taken some of it, with all the downsides that comes with that.


> That's exactly what I want to discuss on SO.

Is discuss the keyword here? Because a back-and-forth is not exactly what the Q&A format enables.


I think it isn't, more like "getting an answer/opinion from an expert" would be more appropriate. I think he is using the word "discuss" in informal meaning of "talking".

And I think that Q&A format of SO is actually quite appropriate for that sort of thing; unlike the usual discussion forums, which may get into real discussion of nuances of expert consensus. (Maybe that's where the cultural misunderstanding about SO comes from, that people actually want a site which will give an expert opinion, more or less, without having to read experts arguing too much?)


Stack Overflow is for facts, data, and science. Head over to Quora to see how the other path turned out.


Ironically, a lot of Quora answers still pop up on HN/Reddit to this day as being gems of high quality answers and opinions from experts. Most of the SO answers that pop up in these same forums of the same quality have been archived as being off topic but historically significant.

i.e. these high quality but subjective answers are still being created on Quora, but not SO. That strikes me as being a problem for SO.


Only if that's what you want SO to be. But how often do you find a question on how to exclude a particular artifact from a maven configuration on Quora? or finding the cause of a particular compiler issue? Or why sending a particular date through an object mapper works while another one fails? Or trying the sequence of objects to change a class path resource (URL) to a File in Java (URL - URI - Paths - toFile).

They are different sites for different purposes and different audiences. Trying to make one site to be everything for all people doesn't work well for any of them.


I LOLed at that and then I saw who posted this. That made me almost cry.

If SO is for facts, data, and science why do I so often see accepted answers that are wrong. And I'm not even talking about accepted answers that got wrong because the environment changed.


"Accepted" is marked by the question asker for what helped them, not chosen by an all-knowing overseer or a community vote.


Yes, and that's part of the problem.

The person who asked the question can only tell if it did supposedly solve their problem. They can't tell if the answer is actually sound advice or if it has subtle problems that another answer solves better.

The accepted answer also gains the top spot, even if other answers have gained more upvotes.


> > You basically asked how to architecture a security aspect of your software. And you asked for other people's experiences to boot, instead of a canonical solution.

> That's exactly what I want to discuss on SO.

Broad-ish architecturing questions belong on https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ (formerly known as programmers.SE). A good rule of thumb for which of those two sites to go to is, does your question have code?

(Also, "discuss" is a forbidden word on StackExchange - it's Q&A, not discussion)


I wonder how many people can pinpoint where the boundary between the two communities lies.

What does this division help to achieve? The two communities are in exactly the same format.


The distinction between the two is described in the help/on-topic page ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic - be sure to follow the links) and various faq tagged pages on the meta - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483

The division is there so that questions about design and architecture have a place to get asked that don't get closed as off topic (lacking code) on Stack Overflow. Consider a question like In an agile process, how much work should be done by the PO on a project or feature before presenting it to the team? - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3676...

The format doesn't dictate topicality... there are many sites that use the same format. https://cooking.stackexchange.com for example.


> If SO isn't willing to provide that kind of discussion, they're going to very susceptible to someone who starts up a competing platform to do so.

Isn't that kinda what hackernews is? The breadth of discussion here is far more varied than hackernews. I'd also think a place like lobste.rs or maybe an architecture specific slack would be a good spot for this.

I personally think it is fine for SO to set boundaries of what is acceptable discussion, and at the same time it is ok for you to be frustrated with that and think of other places to ask your (very valid) question.


HN is not especially geared toward asking questions. Ask HN page is low-traffic, unless a particular question makes the front page.


Ah, maybe Reddit then? I guess my point was SO "knows" what it is not. It isn't a place for discussion.


One of the articles that helped influence Stack Overflow's design is A Group is its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirkey ( http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem... ). If you poke at the early Stack Overflow podcasts you'll find Jeff mention Clay as a person who mentored or inspired him... And he's on the board of Stack Overflow ( https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp... )

With that introduction, I strongly recommend reading A Group... in particular the fourth item of the Fourth Things to Design For.

> 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.

The design of Stack Overflow is one that tries to hinder the ability to discuss. This is intentional. Consider how hard it is to search discussions. Try finding a comment here or a particular post on Reddit, or something someone said on Usenet or a mailing list archive. They work ok in small sizes, but they fail miserably when the scale goes up.

If polling / opinion gathering / discussions were allowed, Stack Overflow would be no more useful than forums of old. It would be impossible to find anything of value later because there would be too much noise. All of the chatter makes finding the questions and answers that people are searching for harder. Having questions that don't follow the "One question, one complete answer" make it more acceptable to ask more of those questions making it even harder to find the question with the answer.

There are other sites that are better designed for polling and discussions. Stack Overflow because of that. Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, Slant.co. Stack Overflow doesn't need to be all things to all people.

Stack overflow doesn't need to be all things for all people. Its trying to do one thing and do it right. Fighting against that design brings friction in usability. Fighting against the intent behind that design brings friction in the community.

Stack overflow is susceptible to someone providing a better Q&A site. But building a better Q&A site that provides for discussions? I haven't seen that design scale much beyond the department Confluence install.

Continuing to the next paragraph from A Group...

> This is an inverse value to scale question. Think about your Rolodex. A thousand contacts, maybe 150 people you can call friends, 30 people you can call close friends, two or three people you'd donate a kidney to. The value is inverse to the size of the group. And you have to find some way to protect the group within the context of those effects.




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