4 ms·

SO is like Amazon, I don't like using it, I don't want to use it, but its so big it's unavoidable. The culture on SO is pretty bad, while it might be better th

by ProAm 8y ago

SO is like Amazon, I don't like using it, I don't want to use it, but its so big it's unavoidable. The culture on SO is pretty bad, while it might be better than the Q&A sites of yesteryear it's not a lot better.

monksy 8y ago
Also it's been that way for years.
Kaveren 8y ago
What improvements could be made to Q&A sites to deal with the culture problems you point to?
- ProAm 8y ago
  I just don't go there unless it's my last resort. I'll turn to irc, github, discord, quora and sadly even reddit before I go to SO.
jessriedel 8y ago
It's not just a bit better, it's miles away the best. Likewise for Wikipedia, which is unparalleled at its job and also has lots of negative culture. I'd challenge you to find a community-generated and community-run site that is a tenth as big/successful as either of those but is substantially more welcoming. In other words: the problem is probably not with anything particular to StackOverflow or Wikipedia, the problem is with human beings. That's not to claim that a new website with new rules/structure couldn't arise that was even bigger yet more welcoming -- there's no reason to think the insights that drove StackOverflow are optimal -- but just that it will require further innovations in how communities are structured.
- ProAm 8y ago
  I disagree. The old sites while sometimes had wildly varying answers, so does SO, especially in newer technologies that change frequently (React, etc...) you'll find answers that are 6 months old but out of date and new questions get closed pointing to the old ones. And the culture on the old sites was never as vile as SO is. I won't be sad when the next gen Q&A comes around to fix the problems SO introduced, just like when SO came around to fix the issues of the other sites.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    Your opinion that the quality of programming answers available was roughly as good before StackOverflow as after is very uncommon.
    - ProAm 8y ago
      To be fair how people learn on the internet has changed too and I fully admit that. Prior to SO you had to read quite a bit of answers that were close but not quite what you were looking for, but by going through that process of reading you learned quite a bit more as to how things worked, what the language/software/hardware was trying to do and I feel as a result grasped a deeper understanding to the problem and technology you were using. Now, questions and answers are much more specific and thus create a much more of a copy and paste environment where people just get stuff in and hope it works without really learning the how and why. Part of that is because the need for programmers over the past 20 years has grown to such an extent people really don't care as much about the quality of work as long as it sort of works. They needed a programmer with a pulse and will fix poor quality work later because they need to ship now. Hardware also vastly outpaced the programs in performance so doing things in a less than best manner wasn't as evident. Just a generational/era thing. SO definitely tried to reinvent the 'manual' for many years, which was silly when there was already a manual to read.
      - scott_s 8y ago
        I feel the opposite: SO posts are often the launching-off point for me to find the even more detailed stuff. Your feeling that things were somehow better when they were worse, is I feel, misguided. Developers learning answers to specific questions allows them to be better faster.
        ProAm 8y ago
        I guess to each their own, I can see both sides but more often I see developers stopping after a copy/paste from SO, and still have no better understanding to how things work.
- teh_klev 8y ago
  I'm an early SO user (userid < 500) and watched and got involved as the site developed. I'm in agreement with you, SO is still by a million miles way ahead of the traditional Q&A sites. This isn't a personal bias and I'll admit that SO's had its ups and downs trying to find that balance between not being flooded by shit and not being overly authoritarian when trying to stem the flow of shit. I was a diamond mod on the site for a while, and despite what folks may think, the rest of the diamond crew are genuinely trying to maintain a good quality question and answer environment. I think it mostly works for the better. Sure there's the odd outrage here and there, but these are exceptions to the rule. So here's a wee anecdote to finish up with. Whilst I'm a fairly experienced developer and engineer (30+ years in the biz) my latest project involves a bunch of Salesforce integration stuff (Apex code, triggers, callouts, inbound API bobbins...). How much did I know about Salesforce a month ago?....zilch/nada/zero; I was a complete and utter noob. Guess where I found the best answers to my umpteen google searches? Stackoverflow and the dedicated Salesforce SE site. Sure there's some good material in the Salesforce forums, but hoo...boy...there's a serious amount of utter dross that should just be deleted, which is what actively happens in SO. Sure there's the odd mistake here and there...for example, I found an answer the other week to a python thing I was having some trouble with. Google had a SO result but upon clicking through the question had for some reason been deleted. Turns out it was a misunderstanding and after a quick post on SO meta the question was re-instated. No big deal and no drama. Every now and again we see posts like this here and there, folks bumping their gums about how terrible SO is, and how the moderation is overbearing and "my nebulous question about 'best frameworks'" was closed....blah, blah, blah. But like many things, in my experience, these complaints are usually from a noisy tiny minority. For the rest of us with a modicum of common sense SO and the SE network works just fine and we quietly get on with our day jobs.
scott_s 8y ago
As someone who reads a lot of SO posts when looking up nitty-gritty stuff, I think it's much better. I have yet to ask a question. But, for example, just this morning I wanted to know what kind of support Java has for POSIX signals, and I feel that the SO posts asking similar questions have given me a good operational understanding (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19711062/alternative-to-sun-misc-signal; https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19711062/alternative-to-... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2541475/capture-sigint-in-java https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2541475/capture-sigint-i...). As a resource, I think SO is invaluable.
- mtberatwork 8y ago
  I agree and it's not just the nitty-gritty stuff either. With the amount of context-switching programmers need to do these days, it's very helpful as a memory-jog resource.

by ProAm 8y ago

monksy 8y ago

Also it's been that way for years.

Kaveren 8y ago

What improvements could be made to Q&A sites to deal with the culture problems you point to?

ProAm 8y ago
I just don't go there unless it's my last resort. I'll turn to irc, github, discord, quora and sadly even reddit before I go to SO.

jessriedel 8y ago

It's not just a bit better, it's miles away the best. Likewise for Wikipedia, which is unparalleled at its job and also has lots of negative culture. I'd challenge you to find a community-generated and community-run site that is a tenth as big/successful as either of those but is substantially more welcoming. In other words: the problem is probably not with anything particular to StackOverflow or Wikipedia, the problem is with human beings. That's not to claim that a new website with new rules/structure couldn't arise that was even bigger yet more welcoming -- there's no reason to think the insights that drove StackOverflow are optimal -- but just that it will require further innovations in how communities are structured.

ProAm 8y ago
I disagree. The old sites while sometimes had wildly varying answers, so does SO, especially in newer technologies that change frequently (React, etc...) you'll find answers that are 6 months old but out of date and new questions get closed pointing to the old ones. And the culture on the old sites was never as vile as SO is. I won't be sad when the next gen Q&A comes around to fix the problems SO introduced, just like when SO came around to fix the issues of the other sites.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  Your opinion that the quality of programming answers available was roughly as good before StackOverflow as after is very uncommon.
  - ProAm 8y ago
    To be fair how people learn on the internet has changed too and I fully admit that. Prior to SO you had to read quite a bit of answers that were close but not quite what you were looking for, but by going through that process of reading you learned quite a bit more as to how things worked, what the language/software/hardware was trying to do and I feel as a result grasped a deeper understanding to the problem and technology you were using. Now, questions and answers are much more specific and thus create a much more of a copy and paste environment where people just get stuff in and hope it works without really learning the how and why. Part of that is because the need for programmers over the past 20 years has grown to such an extent people really don't care as much about the quality of work as long as it sort of works. They needed a programmer with a pulse and will fix poor quality work later because they need to ship now. Hardware also vastly outpaced the programs in performance so doing things in a less than best manner wasn't as evident. Just a generational/era thing. SO definitely tried to reinvent the 'manual' for many years, which was silly when there was already a manual to read.
    - scott_s 8y ago
      I feel the opposite: SO posts are often the launching-off point for me to find the even more detailed stuff. Your feeling that things were somehow better when they were worse, is I feel, misguided. Developers learning answers to specific questions allows them to be better faster.
      - ProAm 8y ago
        I guess to each their own, I can see both sides but more often I see developers stopping after a copy/paste from SO, and still have no better understanding to how things work.
teh_klev 8y ago
I'm an early SO user (userid < 500) and watched and got involved as the site developed. I'm in agreement with you, SO is still by a million miles way ahead of the traditional Q&A sites. This isn't a personal bias and I'll admit that SO's had its ups and downs trying to find that balance between not being flooded by shit and not being overly authoritarian when trying to stem the flow of shit. I was a diamond mod on the site for a while, and despite what folks may think, the rest of the diamond crew are genuinely trying to maintain a good quality question and answer environment. I think it mostly works for the better. Sure there's the odd outrage here and there, but these are exceptions to the rule. So here's a wee anecdote to finish up with. Whilst I'm a fairly experienced developer and engineer (30+ years in the biz) my latest project involves a bunch of Salesforce integration stuff (Apex code, triggers, callouts, inbound API bobbins...). How much did I know about Salesforce a month ago?....zilch/nada/zero; I was a complete and utter noob. Guess where I found the best answers to my umpteen google searches? Stackoverflow and the dedicated Salesforce SE site. Sure there's some good material in the Salesforce forums, but hoo...boy...there's a serious amount of utter dross that should just be deleted, which is what actively happens in SO. Sure there's the odd mistake here and there...for example, I found an answer the other week to a python thing I was having some trouble with. Google had a SO result but upon clicking through the question had for some reason been deleted. Turns out it was a misunderstanding and after a quick post on SO meta the question was re-instated. No big deal and no drama. Every now and again we see posts like this here and there, folks bumping their gums about how terrible SO is, and how the moderation is overbearing and "my nebulous question about 'best frameworks'" was closed....blah, blah, blah. But like many things, in my experience, these complaints are usually from a noisy tiny minority. For the rest of us with a modicum of common sense SO and the SE network works just fine and we quietly get on with our day jobs.

scott_s 8y ago

As someone who reads a lot of SO posts when looking up nitty-gritty stuff, I think it's much better. I have yet to ask a question. But, for example, just this morning I wanted to know what kind of support Java has for POSIX signals, and I feel that the SO posts asking similar questions have given me a good operational understanding (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19711062/alternative-to-sun-misc-signal; https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19711062/alternative-to-... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2541475/capture-sigint-in-java https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2541475/capture-sigint-i...). As a resource, I think SO is invaluable.

mtberatwork 8y ago
I agree and it's not just the nitty-gritty stuff either. With the amount of context-switching programmers need to do these days, it's very helpful as a memory-jog resource.