4 ms·

I think this is one of Stack Exchange's great successes: persuading knowledgeable people to answer beginners' questions. There are plenty of other things going

by Pitarou 10y ago

I think this is one of Stack Exchange's great successes: persuading knowledgeable people to answer beginners' questions. There are plenty of other things going on there, too, but that's part of the success story.

thr0waway1239 10y ago
If you are familiar with Jon Skeet (who last time I saw had #1 rep on StackOverflow), I will add one more - the most knowledgeable people frequently were also just damn good writers. You can quite literally see the evolution in Jon's answers - as time went by his recent answers started becoming better. Today, most of his answers a) have almost zero ambiguity and b) round off the knowledge you gained by adding a few related points, preventing future ambiguity too. Obviously I am a big fan of his writing, but I think he puts a lot of effort into his answers and even reflecting on those answers. For example, I saw an interview where he mentions the tradeoff between precision and concision in writing, and then making it readable on top of that! Very, very few people can succeed on all three fronts in technical writing.
- Pitarou 10y ago
  I reckon this is another interesting consequence of the feedback system. Stack Exchange encourages fair writers to get really good, and discourages poor writers until they give up. > Very, very few people can succeed on all three fronts in technical writing. Indeed! A successful writer needn't be a brilliant writer. It's more important that they know which combinations of precision, concision and readability they can achieve, and they select the combination that is best suited to the task at hand. More talented writers can achieve better trade offs, but even Vladimir Nabokov would get downvoted if he answered a hello world question with exhaustive documentation of compiler flags.

4 ms·

I think this is one of Stack Exchange's great successes: persuading knowledgeable people to answer beginners' questions. There are plenty of other things going

by Pitarou 10y ago

thr0waway1239 10y ago
If you are familiar with Jon Skeet (who last time I saw had #1 rep on StackOverflow), I will add one more - the most knowledgeable people frequently were also just damn good writers. You can quite literally see the evolution in Jon's answers - as time went by his recent answers started becoming better. Today, most of his answers a) have almost zero ambiguity and b) round off the knowledge you gained by adding a few related points, preventing future ambiguity too. Obviously I am a big fan of his writing, but I think he puts a lot of effort into his answers and even reflecting on those answers. For example, I saw an interview where he mentions the tradeoff between precision and concision in writing, and then making it readable on top of that! Very, very few people can succeed on all three fronts in technical writing.
- Pitarou 10y ago
  I reckon this is another interesting consequence of the feedback system. Stack Exchange encourages fair writers to get really good, and discourages poor writers until they give up. > Very, very few people can succeed on all three fronts in technical writing. Indeed! A successful writer needn't be a brilliant writer. It's more important that they know which combinations of precision, concision and readability they can achieve, and they select the combination that is best suited to the task at hand. More talented writers can achieve better trade offs, but even Vladimir Nabokov would get downvoted if he answered a hello world question with exhaustive documentation of compiler flags.