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In my experience IRC is absolutely the worst place to ask technical questions. You have to be there at the same time as someone who knows the answer, you have t

by l0b0 8y ago

In my experience IRC is absolutely the worst place to ask technical questions. You have to be there at the same time as someone who knows the answer, you have to stick around and be ready to respond if someone replies, all the while multi-tasking to filter out all the other conversations in case the responder doesn't use your nick in the response, once you get a response you either have to clunkily weave your conversation into a bunch of other chat or use a direct chat, and the chance of anyone else ever seeing your question and locating the answer is tiny, going to zero if you use direct chat after the initial response. And as the author says, you can't paste more than a line of code without breaking netiquette. A close second is mailing lists, which the author does mention. I think it's pretty well established that the only way a mailing list can be pleasant to read is if every single participant is uses the same mail client and formats their responses identically, taking great pains to format the exact same way, which has never happened. There is already a solution which naturally encourages all the good behaviour in this article: Stack Overflow and co.

deleted 8y ago
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detaro 8y ago
It really depends in my experience: I think I prefer IRC for more complex/specialized/niche topics. Quick back-and-forth for details is very efficient compared to e-mail or postings somewhere if asking for details is really needed. Similarly, it feels more appropriate for really short questions. The waiting isn't so much an issue if you have a stable IRC setup (or the channel has good infrastructure), but can be a problem for people that don't have that. Generally, "please ping me if you reply" works fine, and less active channels can be quite good at directing questions to the right person. And a big thing is audience: if there's only a few people I think will know a good answer, asking in an IRC channel or on a mailing list they use is more efficient to get them to see it. On Stack Overflow I have the risk of not only having it to word in a way that the few people I want a response understand it, but also so that everyone else doesn't feel like it's a bad question, can only ask questions SO finds acceptable, and maybe the right people don't even look at SO, or don't see the question. This obviously doesn't apply to questions many people from a larger community can answer.
stevenwoo 8y ago
The guide would have been extremely relevant in the days before Stack Overflow and useful search came around along with the rest of the web friendly internet - the lack of date on the article makes me question when it was originally written, in those days one had to pray someone posted the same question on Usenet or else one would have to go on a road trip to a book store, do an extensive real life document search, then failing that, hope that the technical book store might have something to address the issue or, failing that, copious back issues of IEEE periodicals/Dr Dobbs/etc at the college library (or the ones one had in personally library first).
ken 8y ago
In my experience, StackOverflow has become oversaturated, while IRC is as good as it ever was. There's so many questions on StackOverflow these days you're counting on luck that someone (qualified) sees your question. Most questions I've asked in the past year never get to even 10 views, or 1 answer. Another problem is that you're not supposed to respond unless you have The Answer, so if you don't happen to get an expert to read it, you often get nothing at all. Some fields seem to be perpetually full of beginners -- Lisp-related tags are often loaded with "help with hello world" questions. StackOverflow also has the Close Police, who seem to patrol questions looking for any excuse to close it. Even after 10 years, I can't predict when a question might be flagged. On IRC, there might be only 5 people actively participating in a channel, but 100 lurkers. When you ask a question, people respond with suggestions even if they don't have The Answer, and this often leads to a workable solution. The average quality of response on IRC is much higher, as well. A lot of the lurkers are actually semi-famous developers. On more than one occasion, I've asked how to do something like $(app) does, and someone says "$(dev) here wrote $(app), just ask them!". StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break. IRC is from the pre-web generation of software, where there are no absolute rules, and you just want to get shit done.
- l0b0 8y ago
  Weird. I was on IRC for many years before Stack Overflow (and crap alternatives like Experts Exchange, Yahoo! Answers, etc) existed, and I have pretty much the exact opposite experience. For example, while SO tags certainly have different distributions of expertise, out of my most recent 30 questions (involving mainly Python, Django, Docker, Rust and WebExtensions) only four have no answers yet. > StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break. Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response. Stack* is about questions and answers, learning and doing.
  - ken 8y ago
    > Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response. All (software) IRC channels have basically the same culture. It's essentially what you mean when you say StackOverflow "naturally encourages all the good behaviour". I have no idea what you mean by "supplicate before the right people to get a civil response". I don't think I've ever seen that. Unlike StackOverflow, you have the option to ask one person directly, but you're never obligated to.

by l0b0 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

detaro 8y ago

It really depends in my experience: I think I prefer IRC for more complex/specialized/niche topics. Quick back-and-forth for details is very efficient compared to e-mail or postings somewhere if asking for details is really needed. Similarly, it feels more appropriate for really short questions. The waiting isn't so much an issue if you have a stable IRC setup (or the channel has good infrastructure), but can be a problem for people that don't have that. Generally, "please ping me if you reply" works fine, and less active channels can be quite good at directing questions to the right person. And a big thing is audience: if there's only a few people I think will know a good answer, asking in an IRC channel or on a mailing list they use is more efficient to get them to see it. On Stack Overflow I have the risk of not only having it to word in a way that the few people I want a response understand it, but also so that everyone else doesn't feel like it's a bad question, can only ask questions SO finds acceptable, and maybe the right people don't even look at SO, or don't see the question. This obviously doesn't apply to questions many people from a larger community can answer.

stevenwoo 8y ago

The guide would have been extremely relevant in the days before Stack Overflow and useful search came around along with the rest of the web friendly internet - the lack of date on the article makes me question when it was originally written, in those days one had to pray someone posted the same question on Usenet or else one would have to go on a road trip to a book store, do an extensive real life document search, then failing that, hope that the technical book store might have something to address the issue or, failing that, copious back issues of IEEE periodicals/Dr Dobbs/etc at the college library (or the ones one had in personally library first).

ken 8y ago

In my experience, StackOverflow has become oversaturated, while IRC is as good as it ever was. There's so many questions on StackOverflow these days you're counting on luck that someone (qualified) sees your question. Most questions I've asked in the past year never get to even 10 views, or 1 answer. Another problem is that you're not supposed to respond unless you have The Answer, so if you don't happen to get an expert to read it, you often get nothing at all. Some fields seem to be perpetually full of beginners -- Lisp-related tags are often loaded with "help with hello world" questions. StackOverflow also has the Close Police, who seem to patrol questions looking for any excuse to close it. Even after 10 years, I can't predict when a question might be flagged. On IRC, there might be only 5 people actively participating in a channel, but 100 lurkers. When you ask a question, people respond with suggestions even if they don't have The Answer, and this often leads to a workable solution. The average quality of response on IRC is much higher, as well. A lot of the lurkers are actually semi-famous developers. On more than one occasion, I've asked how to do something like $(app) does, and someone says "$(dev) here wrote $(app), just ask them!". StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break. IRC is from the pre-web generation of software, where there are no absolute rules, and you just want to get shit done.

l0b0 8y ago
Weird. I was on IRC for many years before Stack Overflow (and crap alternatives like Experts Exchange, Yahoo! Answers, etc) existed, and I have pretty much the exact opposite experience. For example, while SO tags certainly have different distributions of expertise, out of my most recent 30 questions (involving mainly Python, Django, Docker, Rust and WebExtensions) only four have no answers yet. > StackOverflow is from the social media generation of software, where you need a pretty avatar, and accumulate points, and there's rules you must not break. Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response. Stack* is about questions and answers, learning and doing.
- ken 8y ago
  > Unlike IRC, where people need to learn and adopt the particular culture of a channel, and (in extreme cases) need to supplicate before the right people to get a civil response. All (software) IRC channels have basically the same culture. It's essentially what you mean when you say StackOverflow "naturally encourages all the good behaviour". I have no idea what you mean by "supplicate before the right people to get a civil response". I don't think I've ever seen that. Unlike StackOverflow, you have the option to ask one person directly, but you're never obligated to.