6 ms·

The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions

79 points by dangoldin 16y ago

d4nt 16y ago
Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but... Doesn't this just suggest that the reputation points system needs tweaking.
- klochner 16y ago
  Maybe. There isn't necessarily a points-based incentive system that will achieve the desired goal here, at least without breaking something else. You can consider points and social norms as combining to form a global incentive system that is more robust (but less well defined) than a strictly points-based system.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  I agree with klochner. The most efficient legal systems have always been combination of strict rules at large scales, which are replaced by social norms on personal scales and family values on familial scales. It would be great if there were a tweak that fixed this problem without breaking anything, but I'm not surprised or uncomfortable with the fact that common sense needs to play a role.
- ot 16y ago
  A tweak could be to prevent answers to closed threads to give any reputation points, even if the answer has been posted before the thread was closed. This way if the question is obviously duplicate but not yet closed, reputation-hunters are not incentivized to post an answer.
mcantor 16y ago
Discoverability. Discoverability, discoverability, discoverability.
dangoldin 16y ago
Does anyone know whether from an SEO perspective it's better to have fewer pages with more content on each or more pages? As a user I prefer more content on one page so I'm glad Stackoverflow is approaching this problem from a wiki standpoint.
timrobinson 16y ago
They're not being entirely consistent on this. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-... Jeff in November: "Having one “perfect” form of a question that contains every possible answer to every slight variation of that question is a myth at best and actively harmful at worst" Joel, this month: "Don't answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere"
- jessriedel 16y ago
  I think it's clear that there's a sweet spot that's not at either extreme. There's naturally going to be discussion about where exactly it lies. Thanks for that link. In case anyone else is interested, here are his "official guidelines": 1. Having one “perfect” form of a question that contains every possible answer to every slight variation of that question is a myth at best and actively harmful at worst. 2. Having dozens and dozens of variations of the same question is clearly bad. 3. What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.
  - timrobinson 16y ago
    I'm happy to keep duplicate questions in the system, even if it means I repeat myself when I answer them. But question askers need to show that they've done a little research first: if I can type a few words from the OP's question into Google and get a reasonable response, then the question's a candidate for closing. (One phenomenon I've seen is "I don't believe it unless I see it on Stack Overflow". Somehow a Stack Overflow answer is better than the same information posted elsewhere...)
- BrandonM 16y ago
  Also, in this very blogpost: That’s why we actually don’t mind having several versions of every question, where there are variations in wording or circumstances. The more chance that someone types a question into Google and finds their exact question already answered, the better a job we’ve done. This seems to run contrary to most of the rest of his blog post. At this point, I was a bit confused.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Solving this problem has been a pet project of mine for some time. There's some solution space between a forum and a wiki. You need a question-based navigation, with common questions pulled out, multiple answers and viewpoints, and all of it rated and commented on. To put that structure in a forum involves too much overhead. to put that information in the structure of a wiki involves too much editorializing. I've seen many attempts at coming at this from a strict UI standpoint, as mentioned in the article, but I have never felt that they worked that well. There's also the issue of whether a question is an actual duplicate or is different, or if the difference really matters. All of this is pointed out in the article. I know I got tired of folks asking about book recommendations on HN and finally wrote an app that keeps track of what hackers recommend to each other. I tried to base the entire site of navigating from common questions to books that help answer those questions. I'm not entirely happy with the solution, but I find that trying to write a solution in code many times helps with the problem more than just talking/writing about it. Looking forward to hearing more about this as the community continues to engage the problem.
- GrooveStomp 16y ago
  Where's your app? It sounds interesting.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    Here it is: http://hn-books.com http://hn-books.com All the book recommendations are based off of common questions I see on HN. In addition, a user can go and pick their own books and order them to create their own list to answer a question (using this link http://hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm http://hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm ) The problem is that as the programmer I had to come up with an initial ranking for answers to the questions. I didn't like that, as I felt my own preferences weren't as good as some other readers. This is why I provided users the ability to select and rank book themselves. This is also why each book's detail page has automated searches where you can review what others have said about the book on various hacker sites. I even thought about a voting system, but I'm waiting to see if anybody much uses the site before I go running off with a bunch of features. I thought about tags, but tags are simply not descriptive enough. Questions, as the article author mentions, can be interpreted various different ways. Voting turns into a popularity contest. (One of my pet peeves about SO and other sites is that you see answers upvoted which are wrong, misguided, or harmful, probably because the submitter is popular on the site) So there's no solution that I'm particularly fond of when it comes to dealing with common questions. I _do_ think, however, that questions are the place to start. Topics, tags, categories, or widgets don't seem like they work, at least to me. EDIT: Another big factor is the experience level of the person asking the question. So if you wanted to know "How do I provide a search capability using JSONP?" I'd give you a completely different answer if you were a noob as opposed to somebody who has been around the block a time or two. Even through the concepts involved would be the same. It's a very slippery problem.
kleiba 16y ago
Off topic, but to me personal, what has become an even bigger annoyance is floods of newbies (< 10 reputation points) that ask a question and never come back to tick off the correct answer. Some of them even write a comment to thank the poster of a particular answer, but still they won't give them the credit they deserve. I wonder if that's because they're so new that they don't know they're supposed to mark the correct answer, of if they just don't care. It happened to me once or twice, but I've seen the pattern in other threads, too. Of course SO should be a platform that welcomes beginners, but if that problem persists, I fear that competent people will hesitate investing the time and effort to answer questions for which they may never be rewarded.
- CWIZO 16y ago
  I think users with enough reputation (>10k) should be able to accept answers on behalf of the asker. Maybe after a few days when it's clear that the OP has no intention of accepting or even coming back to the site.
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    I actually think that is a bad idea. The only time it would work properly is when the high rep user is an expert in that particular area, or when the well known "deemed correct" answer is actually the correct answer. Not to be an iconoclast, but often the value of something like StackOverflow is that the "group-think" is wrong. You see this on support forums a lot, somebody with big rep comes in and answers and then that effectively ends debate even if the answer was unhelpful. Either the high rep user will get offended when the person tries to re-ask their question and start an "internet he-man contest" cough, or everyone else will just refer back to the big rep users answer, thus chilling their chance of getting the correct answer to 0.
- klochner 16y ago
  There's an easy solution here - don't answer newbie questions. Their questions are typically less complex, which means some other newbie trying to amass points will take care of it.
colanderman 16y ago
Does Stack Overflow give points to users who follow these guidelines?

79 points by dangoldin 16y ago

d4nt 16y ago

Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but... Doesn't this just suggest that the reputation points system needs tweaking.

klochner 16y ago
Maybe. There isn't necessarily a points-based incentive system that will achieve the desired goal here, at least without breaking something else. You can consider points and social norms as combining to form a global incentive system that is more robust (but less well defined) than a strictly points-based system.
jessriedel 16y ago
I agree with klochner. The most efficient legal systems have always been combination of strict rules at large scales, which are replaced by social norms on personal scales and family values on familial scales. It would be great if there were a tweak that fixed this problem without breaking anything, but I'm not surprised or uncomfortable with the fact that common sense needs to play a role.
ot 16y ago
A tweak could be to prevent answers to closed threads to give any reputation points, even if the answer has been posted before the thread was closed. This way if the question is obviously duplicate but not yet closed, reputation-hunters are not incentivized to post an answer.

mcantor 16y ago

Discoverability. Discoverability, discoverability, discoverability.

dangoldin 16y ago

Does anyone know whether from an SEO perspective it's better to have fewer pages with more content on each or more pages? As a user I prefer more content on one page so I'm glad Stackoverflow is approaching this problem from a wiki standpoint.

timrobinson 16y ago

They're not being entirely consistent on this. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-... Jeff in November: "Having one “perfect” form of a question that contains every possible answer to every slight variation of that question is a myth at best and actively harmful at worst" Joel, this month: "Don't answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere"

jessriedel 16y ago
I think it's clear that there's a sweet spot that's not at either extreme. There's naturally going to be discussion about where exactly it lies. Thanks for that link. In case anyone else is interested, here are his "official guidelines": 1. Having one “perfect” form of a question that contains every possible answer to every slight variation of that question is a myth at best and actively harmful at worst. 2. Having dozens and dozens of variations of the same question is clearly bad. 3. What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.
- timrobinson 16y ago
  I'm happy to keep duplicate questions in the system, even if it means I repeat myself when I answer them. But question askers need to show that they've done a little research first: if I can type a few words from the OP's question into Google and get a reasonable response, then the question's a candidate for closing. (One phenomenon I've seen is "I don't believe it unless I see it on Stack Overflow". Somehow a Stack Overflow answer is better than the same information posted elsewhere...)
BrandonM 16y ago
Also, in this very blogpost: That’s why we actually don’t mind having several versions of every question, where there are variations in wording or circumstances. The more chance that someone types a question into Google and finds their exact question already answered, the better a job we’ve done. This seems to run contrary to most of the rest of his blog post. At this point, I was a bit confused.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Solving this problem has been a pet project of mine for some time. There's some solution space between a forum and a wiki. You need a question-based navigation, with common questions pulled out, multiple answers and viewpoints, and all of it rated and commented on. To put that structure in a forum involves too much overhead. to put that information in the structure of a wiki involves too much editorializing. I've seen many attempts at coming at this from a strict UI standpoint, as mentioned in the article, but I have never felt that they worked that well. There's also the issue of whether a question is an actual duplicate or is different, or if the difference really matters. All of this is pointed out in the article. I know I got tired of folks asking about book recommendations on HN and finally wrote an app that keeps track of what hackers recommend to each other. I tried to base the entire site of navigating from common questions to books that help answer those questions. I'm not entirely happy with the solution, but I find that trying to write a solution in code many times helps with the problem more than just talking/writing about it. Looking forward to hearing more about this as the community continues to engage the problem.

GrooveStomp 16y ago
Where's your app? It sounds interesting.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Here it is: http://hn-books.com http://hn-books.com All the book recommendations are based off of common questions I see on HN. In addition, a user can go and pick their own books and order them to create their own list to answer a question (using this link http://hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm http://hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm ) The problem is that as the programmer I had to come up with an initial ranking for answers to the questions. I didn't like that, as I felt my own preferences weren't as good as some other readers. This is why I provided users the ability to select and rank book themselves. This is also why each book's detail page has automated searches where you can review what others have said about the book on various hacker sites. I even thought about a voting system, but I'm waiting to see if anybody much uses the site before I go running off with a bunch of features. I thought about tags, but tags are simply not descriptive enough. Questions, as the article author mentions, can be interpreted various different ways. Voting turns into a popularity contest. (One of my pet peeves about SO and other sites is that you see answers upvoted which are wrong, misguided, or harmful, probably because the submitter is popular on the site) So there's no solution that I'm particularly fond of when it comes to dealing with common questions. I _do_ think, however, that questions are the place to start. Topics, tags, categories, or widgets don't seem like they work, at least to me. EDIT: Another big factor is the experience level of the person asking the question. So if you wanted to know "How do I provide a search capability using JSONP?" I'd give you a completely different answer if you were a noob as opposed to somebody who has been around the block a time or two. Even through the concepts involved would be the same. It's a very slippery problem.

kleiba 16y ago

Off topic, but to me personal, what has become an even bigger annoyance is floods of newbies (< 10 reputation points) that ask a question and never come back to tick off the correct answer. Some of them even write a comment to thank the poster of a particular answer, but still they won't give them the credit they deserve. I wonder if that's because they're so new that they don't know they're supposed to mark the correct answer, of if they just don't care. It happened to me once or twice, but I've seen the pattern in other threads, too. Of course SO should be a platform that welcomes beginners, but if that problem persists, I fear that competent people will hesitate investing the time and effort to answer questions for which they may never be rewarded.

CWIZO 16y ago
I think users with enough reputation (>10k) should be able to accept answers on behalf of the asker. Maybe after a few days when it's clear that the OP has no intention of accepting or even coming back to the site.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  I actually think that is a bad idea. The only time it would work properly is when the high rep user is an expert in that particular area, or when the well known "deemed correct" answer is actually the correct answer. Not to be an iconoclast, but often the value of something like StackOverflow is that the "group-think" is wrong. You see this on support forums a lot, somebody with big rep comes in and answers and then that effectively ends debate even if the answer was unhelpful. Either the high rep user will get offended when the person tries to re-ask their question and start an "internet he-man contest" cough, or everyone else will just refer back to the big rep users answer, thus chilling their chance of getting the correct answer to 0.
klochner 16y ago
There's an easy solution here - don't answer newbie questions. Their questions are typically less complex, which means some other newbie trying to amass points will take care of it.

colanderman 16y ago

Does Stack Overflow give points to users who follow these guidelines?