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To be fair, that best answer is totally editable by any user to be more informative and/or link to the canonical source of information. There are few projects w
by acjohnson55 10y ago
To be fair, that best answer is totally editable by any user to be more informative and/or link to the canonical source of information. There are few projects whose docs have such low contribution friction, for better or worse. And unlike project-specific documentation, it comes in one basic format and set of norms.
I also don't think there's a problem of spoonfeeding information to developers. If a developer at Company X tries to solve all their problems via StackOverflow questions, waiting for someone to come save them, I'd have to assume that this would manifest as them being blocked all the time. At that point, it's up to their lead to teach them and hold them accountable for exercising other ways of resolving their problems, including RTFM.
- lstamour 10y agoI was just idling in the Documentation chat channel and based on what I was seeing there, it appears links to sources are discouraged on StackOverflow documentation. Presumably, they're aiming to eventually host new content that's better than what's already out there. I think it's a bit silly -- at least make a Sources section where folks can click to view links to existing docs!
- recursive 10y agoEveryone knows that cool urls don't change, but the problem with links is that not all urls are cool urls. Links rot over time.
- theli0nheart 10y agoSo the answer is to not use links at all?
- voxic11 10y agoSometimes it's better to pass by value, sometimes it's better to pass by reference.
- sanbor 10y agoPut the content AND the link, instead of just the link. This way, if the link changes the info will stay in SO.
- true_religion 10y agoWouldn't that be a copyright violation?
- slavik81 10y agoLike in any other writing, a short quote is fine. If it's long, then you may have to summarize the content in your own words.
- avindroth 10y agoBut that violates DRY principle tho
- unethical_ban 10y agoZero percent chance of valid source is worse than some percent chance.
- acjohnson55 10y agoFortunately, as I said earlier, anyone can edit. We should definitely make links, they greatly increase the utility of a post. If they rot, it just takes one person to make the fix.
- foota 10y agoI think the advice is that if you link a url you should include the meat of the link in your post to ward against link rot.
- Shog9 10y agoDonno who told you that, but have it straight from the project lead: > it's fine to link to external sources, but the same basic "content should stand on it's own"-guidelines apply (so no link-only examples and the like) - http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/117558?m=31845619#31845619 http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/117558?m=31845619#3... Which is pretty standard advice on Stack Overflow; we spend an awful lot of time cleaning up broken links that were probably pretty useful at one time, but... Disclaimer: I work for Stack Overflow and also really hate broken links.