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Anecdotal: Searching github issues has long since surpassed the usefulness of stackoverflow for me. Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed

Anecdotal: Searching github issues has long since surpassed the usefulness of stackoverflow for me. Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. Or the people who could answer are also the people who are too busy and/or don't care enough to play the karma game.

slig 7y ago
This has been my experience recently as well, specially with fast-moving JS frameworks and libraries.
- Avamander 7y ago
  Yep, the time dimension is seriously overlooked by people flagging questions closed. IMO the duplicate close reason shouldn't accept questions older than a year.
  - baud147258 7y ago
    It depends on the tag, for some languages/framework that aren't moving that fast, you'd find a lot of older answer that are still valid
    - Avamander 7y ago
      Too hard to determine which questions expire or not. Most do.
- sefrost 7y ago
  I’m the same and it’s a lot better since they added reactions to messages. If there are a lot of messages, I scroll straight to the bottom of the page, then slowly scroll up until I find a message with lots of thumb up or checkmark emoji reactions. So it’s like a slightly less efficient StackOverflow!
adamparsons 7y ago
I wonder if it has anything to do with people using the account and site combination that they use in their jobs and don’t want to be seen for being toxic. Nonetheless I absolutely agree, lately I remove the open/close filter and just type a keyword and there’s almost always a perfectly healthy discussion from others experiencing the same thing, sometimes you can even just skim read for the post with tons of thumbs up emoji’s on it
umvi 7y ago
> Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. No, I think it's the former. I use SO to find out how to do equivalent tasks in new languages. For example, I use Python a lot; JavaScript, not so much. So when I do use JavaScript, I'm always searching for things like "js iterate over object" or "js string slicing", etc. SO is great for that. GitHub issues would be completely useless for that. I think you underestimate how many students/novices are reliant on SO for this type of searching. GitHub issues are more for if you are having a specific problem with a specific library.
- abacadaba 7y ago
  Very possible. In js land at least, I usually just look up syntax question in the mdn docs now, but I guess that presumes you know what to look for.

slig 7y ago

This has been my experience recently as well, specially with fast-moving JS frameworks and libraries.

Avamander 7y ago
Yep, the time dimension is seriously overlooked by people flagging questions closed. IMO the duplicate close reason shouldn't accept questions older than a year.
- baud147258 7y ago
  It depends on the tag, for some languages/framework that aren't moving that fast, you'd find a lot of older answer that are still valid
  - Avamander 7y ago
    Too hard to determine which questions expire or not. Most do.
sefrost 7y ago
I’m the same and it’s a lot better since they added reactions to messages. If there are a lot of messages, I scroll straight to the bottom of the page, then slowly scroll up until I find a message with lots of thumb up or checkmark emoji reactions. So it’s like a slightly less efficient StackOverflow!

adamparsons 7y ago

I wonder if it has anything to do with people using the account and site combination that they use in their jobs and don’t want to be seen for being toxic. Nonetheless I absolutely agree, lately I remove the open/close filter and just type a keyword and there’s almost always a perfectly healthy discussion from others experiencing the same thing, sometimes you can even just skim read for the post with tons of thumbs up emoji’s on it

umvi 7y ago

> Possibly the types of questions I need answered has changed, but I think it's more that everything on stackoverflow is out of date or off topic. No, I think it's the former. I use SO to find out how to do equivalent tasks in new languages. For example, I use Python a lot; JavaScript, not so much. So when I do use JavaScript, I'm always searching for things like "js iterate over object" or "js string slicing", etc. SO is great for that. GitHub issues would be completely useless for that. I think you underestimate how many students/novices are reliant on SO for this type of searching. GitHub issues are more for if you are having a specific problem with a specific library.

abacadaba 7y ago
Very possible. In js land at least, I usually just look up syntax question in the mdn docs now, but I guess that presumes you know what to look for.