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SO is definitely a force, but I feel its usefulness has faded from inattention to the user experience and use cases. For example: #1. There's a huge "homewor

SO is definitely a force, but I feel its usefulness has faded from inattention to the user experience and use cases. For example: #1. There's a huge "homework problem" (narrow, specific questions that aren't broadly useful). Consider flagging homework as homework (and excluding it from searches), trying to divert questioners to other resources before their question is posted ("this looks like homework..."), and more thinking about ways to codify the use case. I'd gladly help with homework if there were tools focused on that (e.g. ability to comment on specific lines of code -- Gooogle Docs for posted source code, etc.) #2. There are oddly subjective editorial decisions, such as closing my question about an API for generating USPS priority mail labels as "off topic": https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690713/how-to-programmatically-generate-usps-priority-mail-labels https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690713/how-to-programma... (My view: "is there any API for doing X" is no different than "is there any method/function for doing X", it's a question of existence, not opinion. But even then, opinions are often very useful!) #3. The best answer is often buried under the "accepted" answer. Over time, highly upvoted answers should drift to the top. #4. There should be explicit UI support for flagging stale/out-of-date information. SO has a long tail of information now, and much of it is dated. It should be super easy to note and see that.

bmh_ca 9y ago
On #3 and #4 I had what I believed to be some reasonable conceptions to formulate parameters for a discussion, here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71522 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71522 Basically I suggest dividing the questions into categories of: 1. Timeless: Questions with a timeless best answer, which is unlikely to be improved or updated in the future; 2. Revolving: Questions with a "best answer" today but in the future there will be a "better answer"; and 3. Wiki: Questions that are constantly being improved and updated. Among a few other notions. Insofar as it was a problem of interest when I wrote it in 2010, it's only become a more prominent issue since.
ProAm 9y ago
Questions should never be closed on a site that has a voting system. Completely defeats the purpose of both options. There is nothing wrong with asking a similar question to another or posting answers that are similar to others. People learn in different manners, sometimes it might take a person to read the same question (but a little different) a few different times before they can grasp the concept. It's meant to be a forum to help people, not rewrite the manual on a programming language. If there was only one way people should literally just RTM.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  'Closing' isn't a big deal really. There isn't anything wrong with asking a similar question, but if it's effectively a duplicate then it's helpful to consolidate the answers in 'one place' (one question). > It's meant to be a forum to help people, not rewrite the manual on a programming language. If there was only one way people should literally just RTM. Actually, it's not meant to be a forum. It's meant to be more like a manual, the manual that no one has written (because the SO manual [potentially] covers everything, not just one product or package or library).
  - ProAm 9y ago
    > Actually, it's not meant to be a forum. It's meant to be more like a manual It's meant to be a question and answers site, if they want it to be a reproduction of the manual they should just link to the actual manuals. I feel it completely defeats the purpose of having a community to help others if it's not meant to be forum-esque.
  - DougWebb 9y ago
    if it's effectively a duplicate then it's helpful to consolidate the answers in 'one place' To do this, they've already got the tech to identify similar questions. They should just leave all the variations of the question open, and have a prominent "Similar Questions" list displayed for all of them. That would encourage question titles that express what makes them distinct from similar questions, and give people the option of finding the most appropriate variant and getting an answer for that specific variant.
    - shagie 9y ago
      The existing system, a question that is closed as a duplicate automatically redirects users who aren't logged in (most users are anonymous google users) to the question that is the duplicate target. All of the questions that target that duplicate or mention it in another post are listed in the 'linked questions' on the sidebar. If it truly is not a duplicate question, then it should not be closed as a duplicate. However, many people asking new questions either don't search or are unaware that their question actually is that other question. Leaving a question open doesn't help any of the google users and instead makes it harder to find the canonical answer to the question as little tidbits of information are scattered around. If the canonical duplicate target is insufficient in answering the question, add an answer to it that does a better job than the other answers.
aeorgnoieang 9y ago
[2] isn't an example of "subjective editorial decisions"; your question was off-topic because 'recommendation' questions are prohibited. For that tho, there's a Stack Exchange sister site: - [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) I don't like that 'decision', i.e. to not allow recommendations, but I understand the reasoning behind it, that recommendation questions are basically polls. [But isn't everything on which people can vote basically a poll too? Obviously yes in my opinion.]
- ken 9y ago
  I never understood it, either. By that reasoning, almost any technical question is an "opinion" question asking for a "recommendation". For example, pretty much any question about C string handling has many possible answers, e.g., [1] admits that comparing two strings is "rather broad" and the various answers there recommend looping over each index and comparing chars with ==, sscanf, strncmp, regexes, and PEGs. Opinions galore! But if you want to know the difference between AWS EC2 and EB [2], even though there's one pretty clear answer, somehow the admins unanimously find the question to be "primarily opinion-based". [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16013031 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16013031 [2]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25956193 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25956193 My hunch is that due to the desire for longevity of content, there's a large unspoken bias in favor of questions about simple programs, and against questions about remote services (which are more likely to disappear or change, even though that's not likely to happen with major AWS services), and that the question closure explanations like "primarily opinion-based" are just a smokescreen.
  - fhood 9y ago
    Also there seems to be no problem with users who submit opinions instead of answers. Q: How do I do X extremely specific thing that I need because I have an unusual case that needs this specific thing. A (top voted): Why would you want to do X? You shouldn't do that. I clearly know more about your problem than you do because I assume everyone on here is a college student and not a developer working with a large mostly static codebase. You should do Y instead. It is much better.
chaoticmass 9y ago
Did you ever find a solution for USPS labels? I used to use Endicia.
alphaalpha101 9y ago
Your USPS question has now been deleted by the way. Wow.
mkalygin 9y ago
I also noticed that simple questions somehow get higher popularity. If you ask something very specific to your problem, chances are this question won't be answered and also will be downvoted. So people rather answer "how to find an object in JS array" rather than "I have this weird error in X library, how to fix it?". But in my opinion, basic stuff is not what you face with in everyday job. It's all these unexpected errors, bugs and lack of documentation, what makes you Google it. In this sense, GitHub Issues does a better job than SO.
- Noumenon72 9y ago
  I have never seen GitHub Issues in a search result. It seems like it is for bug reporting in personal projects. Why would it help with other people's errors?

bmh_ca 9y ago

On #3 and #4 I had what I believed to be some reasonable conceptions to formulate parameters for a discussion, here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71522 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71522 Basically I suggest dividing the questions into categories of: 1. Timeless: Questions with a timeless best answer, which is unlikely to be improved or updated in the future; 2. Revolving: Questions with a "best answer" today but in the future there will be a "better answer"; and 3. Wiki: Questions that are constantly being improved and updated. Among a few other notions. Insofar as it was a problem of interest when I wrote it in 2010, it's only become a more prominent issue since.

ProAm 9y ago

Questions should never be closed on a site that has a voting system. Completely defeats the purpose of both options. There is nothing wrong with asking a similar question to another or posting answers that are similar to others. People learn in different manners, sometimes it might take a person to read the same question (but a little different) a few different times before they can grasp the concept. It's meant to be a forum to help people, not rewrite the manual on a programming language. If there was only one way people should literally just RTM.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
'Closing' isn't a big deal really. There isn't anything wrong with asking a similar question, but if it's effectively a duplicate then it's helpful to consolidate the answers in 'one place' (one question). > It's meant to be a forum to help people, not rewrite the manual on a programming language. If there was only one way people should literally just RTM. Actually, it's not meant to be a forum. It's meant to be more like a manual, the manual that no one has written (because the SO manual [potentially] covers everything, not just one product or package or library).
- ProAm 9y ago
  > Actually, it's not meant to be a forum. It's meant to be more like a manual It's meant to be a question and answers site, if they want it to be a reproduction of the manual they should just link to the actual manuals. I feel it completely defeats the purpose of having a community to help others if it's not meant to be forum-esque.
- DougWebb 9y ago
  if it's effectively a duplicate then it's helpful to consolidate the answers in 'one place' To do this, they've already got the tech to identify similar questions. They should just leave all the variations of the question open, and have a prominent "Similar Questions" list displayed for all of them. That would encourage question titles that express what makes them distinct from similar questions, and give people the option of finding the most appropriate variant and getting an answer for that specific variant.
  - shagie 9y ago
    The existing system, a question that is closed as a duplicate automatically redirects users who aren't logged in (most users are anonymous google users) to the question that is the duplicate target. All of the questions that target that duplicate or mention it in another post are listed in the 'linked questions' on the sidebar. If it truly is not a duplicate question, then it should not be closed as a duplicate. However, many people asking new questions either don't search or are unaware that their question actually is that other question. Leaving a question open doesn't help any of the google users and instead makes it harder to find the canonical answer to the question as little tidbits of information are scattered around. If the canonical duplicate target is insufficient in answering the question, add an answer to it that does a better job than the other answers.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago

[2] isn't an example of "subjective editorial decisions"; your question was off-topic because 'recommendation' questions are prohibited. For that tho, there's a Stack Exchange sister site: - [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) I don't like that 'decision', i.e. to not allow recommendations, but I understand the reasoning behind it, that recommendation questions are basically polls. [But isn't everything on which people can vote basically a poll too? Obviously yes in my opinion.]

ken 9y ago
I never understood it, either. By that reasoning, almost any technical question is an "opinion" question asking for a "recommendation". For example, pretty much any question about C string handling has many possible answers, e.g., [1] admits that comparing two strings is "rather broad" and the various answers there recommend looping over each index and comparing chars with ==, sscanf, strncmp, regexes, and PEGs. Opinions galore! But if you want to know the difference between AWS EC2 and EB [2], even though there's one pretty clear answer, somehow the admins unanimously find the question to be "primarily opinion-based". [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16013031 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16013031 [2]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25956193 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25956193 My hunch is that due to the desire for longevity of content, there's a large unspoken bias in favor of questions about simple programs, and against questions about remote services (which are more likely to disappear or change, even though that's not likely to happen with major AWS services), and that the question closure explanations like "primarily opinion-based" are just a smokescreen.
- fhood 9y ago
  Also there seems to be no problem with users who submit opinions instead of answers. Q: How do I do X extremely specific thing that I need because I have an unusual case that needs this specific thing. A (top voted): Why would you want to do X? You shouldn't do that. I clearly know more about your problem than you do because I assume everyone on here is a college student and not a developer working with a large mostly static codebase. You should do Y instead. It is much better.

chaoticmass 9y ago

Did you ever find a solution for USPS labels? I used to use Endicia.

alphaalpha101 9y ago

Your USPS question has now been deleted by the way. Wow.

mkalygin 9y ago

I also noticed that simple questions somehow get higher popularity. If you ask something very specific to your problem, chances are this question won't be answered and also will be downvoted. So people rather answer "how to find an object in JS array" rather than "I have this weird error in X library, how to fix it?". But in my opinion, basic stuff is not what you face with in everyday job. It's all these unexpected errors, bugs and lack of documentation, what makes you Google it. In this sense, GitHub Issues does a better job than SO.

Noumenon72 9y ago
I have never seen GitHub Issues in a search result. It seems like it is for bug reporting in personal projects. Why would it help with other people's errors?