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I think that will result in 10000 questions asking how do I add an entry to a vector. There are a lot of dear internet do my thinking for me, and no way those p

I think that will result in 10000 questions asking how do I add an entry to a vector. There are a lot of dear internet do my thinking for me, and no way those people are thinking or researching before posting

wheelie_boy 9y ago
If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer (and perhaps a bit of kind coaching on how to find answers in the future), what is the downside of letting them connect on stackoverflow? Nothing is forcing people to hang out in the novice area answering repetitive questions if they don’t want to. The downside of disallowing ‘unworthy’ questions is that people feel made stupid for asking, and unwelcome. Also, people feel made stupid for answering, and unwelcome. There is plenty of elitism in tech, and you could keep the main stackoverflow for unique, well-asked questions, as well as adding the novice area. The advantage of having a novice area of stackoverflow is that more people will use the site. While not every question will be great, the total number of great questions, and the total number of people helped, will be higher.
- mulvya 9y ago
  If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer ... what is the downside ...? Turnover/churn. If a Q/A site allowed basic questions then the site would be flooded with them since the population of novices greatly exceeds sophomores or experts. Moderation would need to keep up with silo-ing these Qs into the 'novice area' you propose. Experts would need to sift more to get to the interesting, challenging or novel Qs if moderation can't keep up, which might affect the retention of these users, thus diminishing the resource pool available on the site. To me it's clear that tact and grace is called for, and is currently mostly missing, when directing askers of basic Qs to existing answers, whether on- or off-site but there is such a thing as tragedy of the commons. Some stewardship and curation is required to maintain an acceptable SNR.
  - ericb 9y ago
    > If a Q/A site allowed basic questions then the site would be flooded with them since the population of novices greatly exceeds sophomores or experts. This is really excusing bad UI/UX (like surfacing existing answers while a user is typing a question) and a bad ranking algorithm. There is no such thing as "being flooded" only bad search algorithms, and bad UX. Google is "flooded" with a result set spanning the entire internet, and they manage to surface answers. Stack Overflow can do the same--they have more tools to rank and influence behavior (rewards, moderation, points) than google has because they control the site, its structure, and how it is gamified.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      I disagree. Excessive copies of the same question can dilute votes, which is one of their strongest signals for quality, as it should be.
- Scea91 9y ago
  They get the answer by being linked to the question they duplicated. The only problem is if the question is not exact duplicate, but that doesn't happen very often with such easy questions.

wheelie_boy 9y ago

If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer (and perhaps a bit of kind coaching on how to find answers in the future), what is the downside of letting them connect on stackoverflow? Nothing is forcing people to hang out in the novice area answering repetitive questions if they don’t want to. The downside of disallowing ‘unworthy’ questions is that people feel made stupid for asking, and unwelcome. Also, people feel made stupid for answering, and unwelcome. There is plenty of elitism in tech, and you could keep the main stackoverflow for unique, well-asked questions, as well as adding the novice area. The advantage of having a novice area of stackoverflow is that more people will use the site. While not every question will be great, the total number of great questions, and the total number of people helped, will be higher.

mulvya 9y ago
If there are people who need an answer, and people happy to provide that answer ... what is the downside ...? Turnover/churn. If a Q/A site allowed basic questions then the site would be flooded with them since the population of novices greatly exceeds sophomores or experts. Moderation would need to keep up with silo-ing these Qs into the 'novice area' you propose. Experts would need to sift more to get to the interesting, challenging or novel Qs if moderation can't keep up, which might affect the retention of these users, thus diminishing the resource pool available on the site. To me it's clear that tact and grace is called for, and is currently mostly missing, when directing askers of basic Qs to existing answers, whether on- or off-site but there is such a thing as tragedy of the commons. Some stewardship and curation is required to maintain an acceptable SNR.
- ericb 9y ago
  > If a Q/A site allowed basic questions then the site would be flooded with them since the population of novices greatly exceeds sophomores or experts. This is really excusing bad UI/UX (like surfacing existing answers while a user is typing a question) and a bad ranking algorithm. There is no such thing as "being flooded" only bad search algorithms, and bad UX. Google is "flooded" with a result set spanning the entire internet, and they manage to surface answers. Stack Overflow can do the same--they have more tools to rank and influence behavior (rewards, moderation, points) than google has because they control the site, its structure, and how it is gamified.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    I disagree. Excessive copies of the same question can dilute votes, which is one of their strongest signals for quality, as it should be.
Scea91 9y ago
They get the answer by being linked to the question they duplicated. The only problem is if the question is not exact duplicate, but that doesn't happen very often with such easy questions.