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There is a fundamental problem with StackOverflow and I don't know they (a new CEO) can fix it. Many "new users" of the service view (or want to view) SO as a

There is a fundamental problem with StackOverflow and I don't know they (a new CEO) can fix it. Many "new users" of the service view (or want to view) SO as a "question and answer" site similar to ask.com or Quora. I don't think this is unreasonable at all as even Google will suggest that SO is one of the most popular question and answer sites on the web. This flies in the face of the desire of SO leadership, many of its moderators and, the "old guard" to have the site be a curated programming resource akin to Wikipedia. This is also not unreasonable. The rub comes with SO desire to invite questions to be answered rather than soliciting tutorials or documentation akin to how Wikipedia works. SO even had a failed attempt at exactly this (SO Documentation) a year or two ago. In essence, they (SO) want the benefits of both models while not recognizing the irreconcilable conflict. New users find the community hostile and belittling, seasoned users find questions condescendingly trivial and repetitive. I look forward to seeing what their new CEO's vision is. Cultural change is hard though.

snowwrestler 8y ago
I think there's also a distinction between "what's the best way to do X in Y language" (which I would call educational) and "please help me find the bug in this block of code" (which I would call operational). Any platform that invites the former, inevitably gets a lot of the latter. It's never great to feel like random strangers are demanding that you do their job for them. And often those "find my bug" questions are not at all illuminating for other readers. Like, knowing that this particular person misspelled the variable name or forgot a semicolon is not going to be make you a better coder. And I think we've all seen some variation of "questions" like "please to write code to sort this list and insert it into Salesforce" or whatever, where it's clearly a simple job that someone just wants the Internet to write for them.
zelon88 8y ago
Perhaps with the rise in computer learning SO can someday try to determine the level of experience of the OP and then only show those questions to developers of similar skills and experience. That way veterans won't have to sift through "hello world" scripts all day and C# guys don't have to wade through tons of java posts. kind of like a curated FB newsfeed, but for SO. More relevant content should make everyone happier while solving the hostility problem and making SO (dare I say it) enjoyable for everyone.
- mark-r 8y ago
  When computer learning gets that good, programmers will be out of jobs. I don't see it happening in my lifetime.
mattigames 8y ago
There should be a way to demote a question to non-permanent, meaning the question should remain open but after a couple of weeks after being answered (or inactive) it should be removed from any listing (incl. search engines), and only the creator and the people that already answered it can access it and anyone with the full url (e.g. no referer); that way it satifisfaces people that want a quick Q&A site and the people that want it as a wiki for programming. The other thing is that a question should never show anything less than -1 as its score, internally they may keep count of the downvotes but never show the user anything less than -1 because its too demoralizing for newcomers.
w-m 8y ago
On top of that, the QA style is simply not a good fit for helping "new users", as you put them. If you are just starting out with programming, you don't have a feeling for what constitutes a good question that people can effectively answer. As of a couple days ago, StackOverflow now tries to guide you into putting in the relevant parts of the question with a wizard. But still a very high percentage of questions is just lacking the information to make the question answerable. Even if you have lots of patience and work with the user (through comments on the question and edits) to shape the question into something that can be answered, the format is still bad: You can now write an answer, but depending on the problem, the user may still need some help understanding parts of it. Or they have trouble using the code in their program. Now a discussion in the comments of the answer starts, but in the comments you can't really write any code. Or you keep editing the answer with new information. Or ask the user to write a new question, referencing the old one, but it's a mess. The point is, helping people to learn new things is a discussion. You need to probe them for what they understood, and where they need more help. It's a back-and-forth. And StackOverflow is completely unfit to provide this. It's great for people who have gathered enough knowledge to clearly identify their problem. But it's awful for newcomers. I'm also interested to see how this develops, it's definitely not an easy task to solve.
- bluedino 8y ago
  >> site similar to ask.com or Quora. One huge advantage SO has over a site like Quora is that on SO there are generally very few 'poor' answers that get voted up. Quora is a shit show when it comes to both questions and answers (at least related to programming)
- MuffinFlavored 8y ago
  I'm a senior software engineer with 10+ years experience who has never had a problem getting a job at any company. I've had 10-20 times where I've wanted to contribute on a SO question/answer (that I have no doubt who have benefitted somebody else) but I don't have enough reputation to comment... The industry qualifies me as worth good enough, but SO doesn't?
  - 8y ago

snowwrestler 8y ago

I think there's also a distinction between "what's the best way to do X in Y language" (which I would call educational) and "please help me find the bug in this block of code" (which I would call operational). Any platform that invites the former, inevitably gets a lot of the latter. It's never great to feel like random strangers are demanding that you do their job for them. And often those "find my bug" questions are not at all illuminating for other readers. Like, knowing that this particular person misspelled the variable name or forgot a semicolon is not going to be make you a better coder. And I think we've all seen some variation of "questions" like "please to write code to sort this list and insert it into Salesforce" or whatever, where it's clearly a simple job that someone just wants the Internet to write for them.

zelon88 8y ago

Perhaps with the rise in computer learning SO can someday try to determine the level of experience of the OP and then only show those questions to developers of similar skills and experience. That way veterans won't have to sift through "hello world" scripts all day and C# guys don't have to wade through tons of java posts. kind of like a curated FB newsfeed, but for SO. More relevant content should make everyone happier while solving the hostility problem and making SO (dare I say it) enjoyable for everyone.

mark-r 8y ago
When computer learning gets that good, programmers will be out of jobs. I don't see it happening in my lifetime.

mattigames 8y ago

There should be a way to demote a question to non-permanent, meaning the question should remain open but after a couple of weeks after being answered (or inactive) it should be removed from any listing (incl. search engines), and only the creator and the people that already answered it can access it and anyone with the full url (e.g. no referer); that way it satifisfaces people that want a quick Q&A site and the people that want it as a wiki for programming. The other thing is that a question should never show anything less than -1 as its score, internally they may keep count of the downvotes but never show the user anything less than -1 because its too demoralizing for newcomers.

w-m 8y ago

On top of that, the QA style is simply not a good fit for helping "new users", as you put them. If you are just starting out with programming, you don't have a feeling for what constitutes a good question that people can effectively answer. As of a couple days ago, StackOverflow now tries to guide you into putting in the relevant parts of the question with a wizard. But still a very high percentage of questions is just lacking the information to make the question answerable. Even if you have lots of patience and work with the user (through comments on the question and edits) to shape the question into something that can be answered, the format is still bad: You can now write an answer, but depending on the problem, the user may still need some help understanding parts of it. Or they have trouble using the code in their program. Now a discussion in the comments of the answer starts, but in the comments you can't really write any code. Or you keep editing the answer with new information. Or ask the user to write a new question, referencing the old one, but it's a mess. The point is, helping people to learn new things is a discussion. You need to probe them for what they understood, and where they need more help. It's a back-and-forth. And StackOverflow is completely unfit to provide this. It's great for people who have gathered enough knowledge to clearly identify their problem. But it's awful for newcomers. I'm also interested to see how this develops, it's definitely not an easy task to solve.

bluedino 8y ago
>> site similar to ask.com or Quora. One huge advantage SO has over a site like Quora is that on SO there are generally very few 'poor' answers that get voted up. Quora is a shit show when it comes to both questions and answers (at least related to programming)
MuffinFlavored 8y ago
I'm a senior software engineer with 10+ years experience who has never had a problem getting a job at any company. I've had 10-20 times where I've wanted to contribute on a SO question/answer (that I have no doubt who have benefitted somebody else) but I don't have enough reputation to comment... The industry qualifies me as worth good enough, but SO doesn't?
- 8y ago