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Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible

339 points by acconrad 16y ago

bherms 16y ago
I don't really agree here.. While I do have my own gripes with Stack Overflow, I don't think this is the biggest issue. It took me two days of casual browsing/asking/answering to get a reputation of about 50 or so and another few weeks to get into the hundreds. -- Keep in mind I'm not a super genius expert or anything, I just asked a few questions and contributed a few answers in areas I was knowledgeable about. It's not that hard. The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites.
- kylec 16y ago
  If you have more than 200 rep on SE site A, you can associate that account with your account on SE site B and get a 100 rep bonus on site B. This lets users that are already familiar with the system comment and vote up on any site without having to have gained rep first.
  - bryanlarsen 16y ago
    I just finished writing "the only milestone that matters on StackOverflow is 50 Karma", and then you point out that 200 is useful, too. Oh well it won't take long to get 30 more karma if I want it.
  - bherms 16y ago
    Oh cool.. I didn't realize that! I have about 250 now, but haven't ventured out of SO in a while. Thanks for the tip!
  - myhf 16y ago
    Do you have to do something to enable this? I have over 200 rep on Stack Overflow, and my profile page there and on Super User both show each other under "related accounts", but on Super User I am still at 1 reputation. Edit: I created an account on Cooking, and it gave me the linking bonus everywhere. I guess I hadn't created accounts on any Stack Exchange sites since reaching 200 rep on one of them.
- fakelvis 16y ago
  > The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. By design, I would argue. And a good decision, too. To use a facetious example just to illustrate my point: without separate reputations, one could build up a huge reputation on http://apple.stackexchange.com/ http://apple.stackexchange.com/ and then use that influence over at http://askubuntu.com/ http://askubuntu.com/ to provide a mediocre answer. This mediocre answer could then get upvoted to the top by those who do not know a better way purely because of this user's reputation. Meanwhile the perfect answer provided by a newcomer to the SE network may remain hidden in second place. N.B. I think the "bonus" reputation points that can be transferred are a way of addressing this imbalance while pushing people to use other SE sites at the same time.
  - RuadhanMc 16y ago
    Exactly. Reputation is supposed to illustrate your expertise. If you gain 1000 rep points in the cooking SE, does that mean that you should have 1000 rep points in the programming SE? Of course not, since your expertise is with cooking and not programming. If you were to carry across reputation from one SE to another then it would make the reputation meaningless. Instead of being an expert cook with 1000 rep points you would be an expert SE user with 1000 points that might have come from answering questions about cooking, programming Ubuntu, startsup, etc. Now THAT would break the system.
- stonemetal 16y ago
  Why should it transfer? Just because you are a great software engineer(as determined by your 23K rep. on SO), doesn't mean you are a great chief and should have a 23K rep on the cooking SE.
  - rtghnyhjm 16y ago
    Because at low reps they are an anti-spam measure. If I have demonstrated I'm not a spammer by having a solid score on SO then I should be allowed to post a comment straight away on cooking. That's the reason for the 100rep liking bonus - it's a grandfather clause
    - bherms 16y ago
      This ^ edit: I was asked a question which was perfectly answered by rtg. Should've provided more substance, but I wanted to endorse this as being exactly what I was talking about.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  >The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. Putting rep aside, I don't even know what all the other development-related SE sites are, let alone can be bothered to monitor them all. This means that there are interesting questions I'll never see because I only visit StackOverflow. I don't see how people other than complete SE junkies are supposed to stay on top of this site creation and forking extravaganza. Good for them, but I don't have the energy.
  - dangrossman 16y ago
    You're not supposed to. They're separate sites with separate communities. Your interest in StackOverflow doesn't mean you should be keeping up with recipe questions on the Cooking StackExchange site.
    - frou_dh 16y ago
      I did say "development-related".
Khao 16y ago
I've never seen stackoverflow as a race to get the most rep possible. Reputation is just a "bonus", not a prerequisite to participate in the website. I like stackoverflow the way it is
- SandB0x 16y ago
  During the development of Stack Overflow, Joel and Jeff talked about the answers staying up-to-date in a wiki-like fashion. I think what the author means is that in order to participate in this - i.e. edit and improve an existing answer - you have to have a certain amount of rep. It's quite likely that a user Googling for their particular issue might find an incomplete or out-of-date answer on Stack Overflow. When they finally solve it they are unable to improve the existing entry, which is unfortunate as for many "long tail" problems they are best placed to contribute.
  - kylec 16y ago
    This used to be true, but there's a feature currently in testing that will allow anyone (even someone coming from Google) to propose an edit to a post. This edit proposal can be approved either by a moderator or several users with sufficient rep. Hopefully this will make Stack Overflow more wiki-like and help solve the problem with answers getting out of date.
    - deleted 16y ago
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    - rhizome 16y ago
      This sounds similar to how Discogs has implemented quality ratings (via votes) for arbitrarily edited content, in between full editorial control and open wiki.
    - davros 16y ago
      That sounds like a great idea to me
  - rtghnyhjm 16y ago
PaulHoule 16y ago
Personally I haven't gotten involved in SO precisely because of this. I don't feel the prize is worth the amount of effort that I'd put into playing the game. However, plenty of people do feel that it's worth it, and certainly the barrier to entry keeps out (some of) the griefers that inevitably show up in online communities.
- RuadhanMc 16y ago
  The prize is the satisfaction you get from helping other people with a great answer. The reputation is window dressing. If you think of rep as the end goal, then of course it is not worth your time. If you enjoy answering people's questions, then it probably is worth your time.
  - PaulHoule 16y ago
    There are a lot of social things to do on the web, and probably I should be doing less of them and more real work For me, participating on SO is like the Weather Channel. I've got another other things I could be doing rather than waiting for "Weather on the 8s" to come around.
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adnam 16y ago
"but you quickly realize that every question that’s not some vague, poorly worded, open ended impossibility has already got 10 answers" Exactly :) Stackoverflow has built-in breaks to control growth. Maybe HN could benefit from this ;)
noarchy 16y ago
"Rep grinds" (see how MMO-speak has influenced us?) on non-gaming web sites may be becoming the norm. You grind out some rep, and get privileges based on that rep. One can argue that this serves as an effective barrier to keep out would-be posters of bad content and discussion, but as we can see it also screws with "legit" posters. Determined individuals will figure out how to work the game to their advantage, both for good and bad.
- ddkrone 16y ago
  What game and what advantage? It's a Q/A site. The only way you are going to game the system is if you ask clearly delineated questions and provide thoughtful and clear answers.
  - kstenerud 16y ago
    A few techniques: Form a cabal of vote sharers, who always vote for each other's posts. Post a bunch of semi-plausible content once a day and you'll have tons of karma in no time. Post quick responses that have little insight. You'll always get votes for being first. Post LOTS of trivial questions. More people will upvote than will downvote on the whole.
    - ddkrone 16y ago
      All the things you mentioned requires a lot of effort. In fact it's more effort than just actually providing one or two good answers and questions a day. Also, I have never seen any of the popular answers get answers that are not really close to the mark. Even the unpopular ones always get good answers that float to the top. Organizing a cabal of voters and then monitoring new questions within your area of expertise just so you can post semi-plausible answers to move up the ranks is borderline psychotic and I have yet to encounter these people on SO.
dansingerman 16y ago
The thing is StackOverflow really really works. If I search Google for a programming query I nearly always find links to useful information on SO, if not the precise answer. (I've even found my own answers via Google when I have forgotten how to do something) That is SO's first and foremost use case. And I reiterate - it works extremely well. The community features are secondary to that (it's not Quora), and there are thousands of users who will tell you that it is not 'impossible' to use.
- Gobiner 16y ago
  I've found plenty of helpful information on StackOverflow via Google as well, but I definitely would not say that it "really really works." I've asked two questions (C#/.NET so there's a large pool of potential answerers) and neither question ever got the answer it deserved, even though both got answers from genuine experts (Jon Skeet and Eric Lippert). I found the answer to my first question on some MSDN blog after I asked on StackOverflow, the second question is still unresolved.
  - dansingerman 16y ago
    Maybe my enthusiasm for the quality of StackOverflow results in Google is because I remember the pre-SO days of scrolling through experts-exchange's hideous site and fictional paywall for a low quality answer in a tiny font.
    - 6ren 16y ago
      Me too; though I also thought that experts-exchange was a good idea at the time, including its concept of an economic reward system (in fact, I got a wonderfully helpful answer on that forum). Yet, it turned out to have problems, which lead to SO with an even better, karma/game mechanics reward system. And now, some people experience problems with SO. This opens an opportunity for something even better than SO. I wonder what that would be?
  - allwein 16y ago
    Have you gone back and provided the answer to your first question? If not, then you're part of the reason that SO doesn't "really really work" in all cases.
kylec 16y ago
It's definitely true that there are a lot of people waiting for new questions so they can pounce with a quick answer and get a few upvotes. However, there's also a large backlog of unanswered questions as well (http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered) that are very much in need of a "thoughtful, correctly documented" answer. And while it's unfortunate that legitimate brand-new users are unable to post comments, the reason behind the rep threshold was to reduce spam on the site. Commenting requires 50 reputation, or about 5 upvotes on an answer/10 upvotes on a question (both of which can be easily accomplished in an hour or two) - just high enough to deter spam.
- ck2 16y ago
  I simply do not understand this ego thing with "points". A million points gets you what? An award for most wasted time? I wish HN had an option to turn off points on an account, I can't even block it with adblock because there's no element id. There's more to life than meaningless "points".
  - pinko 16y ago
    FWIW, I know at least one person whose considerable SO karma helped them land a job (and who wrote those comments with that goal in mind). It's not all about ego.
  - Tycho 16y ago
    I think in the specific case of StackOverflow, having a lot of points is something that indicates to potential employers that you are a useful/knowledgable candidate. And it's not just a vague signifier - they can actually go and look at your answers and see what you're about.
    - bryanlarsen 16y ago
      Yes, but quality matters almost as much as quantity. I'd rather hire somebody who got 1000 karma through 10 questions/answers than somebody who got 2000 karma through 100. Although quantity is important too -- even if it's not a definitive answer, a partial answer is better than no answer to the questioner. It's just that when I'm hiring, those definitive answers really indicate somebody who knows what they're doing. [edit: answering here because there are several good responses, who are all right. The most important thing to do as a potential important employer is to read a few answers rather than just blindingly accepting the karma. You can't do that for everybody, but you can do it for your shortlist.]
jwtanner 16y ago
Is Stack Overflow a game in which the goal is to get the most reputation and badges? Or are you using it as a tool to discover solutions to programming problems? Or Both?
- CrLf 16y ago
  Any community where you get "points" of any kind becomes a game, which eventually becomes more important than the community itself.
markstahler 16y ago
Is rep important enough to warrant a blog post complaining you cant get enough? Man, money is too hard to get. I wish this damned CEO wasn't getting a 600k salary + bonuses. Blog post upcoming.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tdoggette 16y ago
  He's not complaining that he can't get enough rep, he's complaining that he can't contribute without it.
bryanlarsen 16y ago
It sounds like this guy wants to participate in StackOverflow just to be there rather than because he finds it a useful tool for his own work. I'm glad there are hurdles for people who are just there to "get a good rep" rather than there to support their real work. A (hopefully) more common workflow would look something like this: - a developer googles a problem, the StackOverflow answer floats to the top, and he notices this is a particularly good answer. - this keeps happening, and the developer gets impressed then one of two things happens (or both): - he googles a question, and finds an old question without a great answer, and adds an answer. Yes, old questions don't get as many upvotes on their answers, but they do get upvoted, and at 10 points an upvote, it doesn't take long to get to 50. - he googles a question and doesn't find an answer, so he posts a question Neither of these require any rep, and you only have to do it once or twice with a good question or answer to get to the magical 50 karma. And 50 karma is the only milestone that matters on StackOverflow, in my opinion.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  Heh, in the time it took to create this comment, this post went from 1 comment to 15 comments, making mine less relevant, meaning I'll get fewer upvotes. And as far as I'm concerned, gaming Hacker News to get karma is much more useful than gaming Stack Overflow. 500 karma is required to downvote, and it takes a long time to hit 500 karma. Of course, now that I have the 500 I rarely downvote. I wish I would have known that earlier. :) In my opinion, PG should adopt the Stack Overflow downvoting rule (you lose karma for downvoting), and lower the required threshold. It's hard to tell if downvoting is being used more for good than evil, but it's definitely used to express opinion more often than it should be.
  - deleted 16y ago
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- guelo 16y ago
  I've been a casual via-Google user for 2 1/2 years. I have 5 answers and 2 questions with a total of 1 upvote. My rep is 11. Whenever I go to SO I go in with the mentality of not even trying to participate because anything I try will be denied.
foljs 16y ago
Em, it's a community Q&A website, it's not a game, and it's purpose is not to jack up some high score. Just ask when you need to (when you want to know something you don't already know) and answer when you feel you can contribute an answer. And stop caring if you get up-or-downvoted, and start caring about the quality of your output.
lukasb 16y ago
"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
praptak 16y ago
"So if you’re knowledgeable enough to provide a counterpoint to someone else’s poor answer, you have to post it as a new answer… and then you get down voted (lose rep!) for adding a new answer versus just commenting on the original, flawed answer." Never happened to me. Sometimes I even noticed that the author had deleted the original wrong answer and left a positive comment on mine.
- alxp 16y ago
  Yep, also if you just have 1 reputation getting downvoted doesn't cost you anything, you stay at 1. So it doesn't hurt in the least even if this did occur, which I haven't seen myself, either. I often see that SO users will be helpful to new users who seem to be trying to be helpful.
reason 16y ago
You are concerning yourself with increasing a meaningless stored value on a website on the internet that, chances are, you'll move on from in a relatively short period of time. Take a second to think about that. That applies to here and all other social-voting websites. It's an unnecessary worry. Focus on things that matter.
sajidnizami 16y ago
Rep whoring? Q&A sites are there to help out not to give you points and stroke your ego. I think if SO is hindering you into getting a good rep, probably you don't have enough domain knowledge. PS: I've been there since the beginning and I still got 114 rep. I love the place because it has gotten me solutions at times without even asking.
- sad_hacker 16y ago
  I agree. I enjoy that you get answered so quickly and if you are rep whore, you can just ask good questions, they get up-voted and you get points. But I really don't see any point, it's a serious Q&A site.
nopal 16y ago
Maybe not from his perspective, but from the perspective of those asking questions and looking for answers, it works pretty well.
acconrad 16y ago
I'd like to point out that while I definitely did not write this post, I did feel it easy to relate, because it seems hard at this point to gain reputation without gaming the system a bit. But there are so many ways to get involved...I think the best seems to be being knowledgeable in a very specific area of expertise - answering C# questions is really tough, but if you know Heroku, there are so many more questions there without answers that you can really gobble up quite a bit of reputation by knowing something niche.
- phwd 16y ago
  All the while one does not / is not able to answer questions, he can learn from the answers that have already been submitted, no reputation gained but knowledge (I have heard people compiling e-books on the best posts from Stackoverflow). I call that a step forward.
alexsherrick 16y ago
A lot of people are dogging acconrad, but I have to agree with him. I was having a problem with rails, and I found the answer on stackoverflow. The right answer had no upvotes, so I figured I would upvote it; this way the original "asker" would know it is the right answer. However, it said I didn't have enough rep to upvote... I'm sure he'll figure it out but this would save him from checking the other "solutions".
- phwd 16y ago
  This is to prevent "voting rings" using new accounts. It is a small measure of activity. All it would have taken from you was 15 rep, 1 Upvoted Answer (+10) and 1 Upvoted Question (+5) or 1 Question Upvoted (3 times) (+15) or 3 Upvoted Questions (+15) (It is actually 14, since you start off with 1 rep) That is really not a lot of activity/work needed from an individual. Most likely a next user would have seen the answer on rails and voted by now.
- smackfu 16y ago
  The weird thing is how it doesn't tell you that you can't upvote until you try to do it.
  - cruise02 16y ago
    It tells you in the FAQ. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation
    - smackfu 16y ago
      I meant that it is surprising that they don't hide the controls that you can't use.
- alanh 16y ago
  Hey, let’s all downvote alexsherrick and tell him he’s an idiot for not understanding site policy instead of recognizing that he is pointing out an undesirable effect of that policy!
angdis 16y ago
Stack-overflow is amazingly effective, especially when one considers the alternatives like those countless forgettable websites heavily laden with front-and-center ads, and the ones that have nag screens that block responses to answers until you "sign up", and the ones with clueless dilettantes fumbling in the dark. My only concern is that I think the exchange community might get fractured/diluted if there are too many separate stack exchange sites.
jswinghammer 16y ago
I went through a short period where I really cared about what my profile looked like there. I don't know why I ever felt that way. I think my top voted answer is telling someone what I thought important concepts in C to communicate to students are. I don't think that says anything about me positive or negative to be honest. If you look around the top contributors to the python tag you'll realize there is a lot of room for people to submit good, thoughtful answers. If you take the time to write something good then it will get voted up and if that's what you want you'll be all set. It seems like no worse of a way to spend your time than anything save perhaps reading a good technical book and let's face it there aren't very many of those.
pgroves 16y ago
While I actually can empathize with the author on wanting to help out, he's really making stackoverflow sound awesome - knowledgeable people are falling all over themselves to answer your question, and don't worry about being a freeloader, they already have too much free labor going into the answers.
ddkrone 16y ago
There is nothing sucky about the stackexchange sites. They are designed to be useful and growing repositories of frequent question and answers. The whole rep/voting thing is just a gaming layer on top to make the process of participation a little more fun but if you just focus on the gaming aspect and take it way too seriously like this guy then you miss out completely.
- bherms 16y ago
  While it may seem like just a gaming aspect, there are a lot of benefits as you gain more reputation on the site. Unlike many "points systems", SE actually allows you to become essentially a moderator of the site as you gain reputation. Once you've hit a certain mark you can edit, close, delete, etc. I think it's brilliant.
  - ddkrone 16y ago
    The old forums had the same system so there is nothing new or brilliant going on here, the stackexchange sites just measure things in terms of reputation/votes and the old forums did something similar with posts/replies. The only innovation I see is the automation of how promotion happens in terms of votes/rep.
    - jbri 16y ago
      In other words ... the autopromotion happens to people who provide quality contributions rather than those who add to the noise? And you don't see how that's significantly better?
jws 16y ago
The right question is as important as the right answer. The easiest entry is to ask a good question. The next time you run into a poorly documented problem, do some research, and eventually work out an answer, reformulate it as the question you wish Stack Overflow contained and ask it. You can always comment on things in your own question so you can guide the answers if they are going wrong. • Two question up votes and you can vote things up. • Five and you can comment anywhere
- allwein 16y ago
  Or you can just answer your own question, which is completely acceptable behavior in SO.
topcat31 16y ago
I completely disagree with both the premise and conclusion of this blog post. I'm a complete coding noob (http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001 http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001) and along the way to learning programming have relied on StackOverflow for about 10 questions. For every single one I have received complete, thorough, helpful and patient answers. In short, I could not be happier with SO. As a beginner it's been a phenomenal resource both for searching and for answering specific issues. The post makes the point that newbies can't answer questions - and for me this is one of the reasons the quality of the site is so high. If you let anyone answer then you don't know how good quality the response is. As a beginner how am I to know if a given answer is correct? Of course, any community site still has problems like this and SO is not immune to it but IMHO this is one of the ways they keep the quality bar higher than any other Q&A platform out there.
cletus 16y ago
Let me add some perspective as a relatively highly ranked user (cletus) on SO. I've seen this kind of post before and frankly it's annoying. The typical template is "I tried to answer 2 questions and didn't get 1000 points so it sucks" or some variation revolving around faster answerers or whatever. Rather than being a problem, SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers. Compare this to forums or mailing lists which I abhor as a means of asking programming questions. You'll often get no replies or useless replies (eg a bunch of people who don't understand the problem telling you that you shouldn't be doing that or asking you why) or the right answer might be buried on page 17 when the thread descended into an OT discussion on page 7. There are certainly low-hanging fruit on SO (reputation wise) and people do compete for those. In my case, I used SO to learn things because of the quick feedback loop you got when you said something demonstrably wrong. Now I barely go there because whether there's something to answer or not is pretty random and I really don't have time for the waiting game anymore. Other priorities now. But to complain about a system where there are too many people answering questions is, to be perfectly blunt, ridiculous and narcissistic ("what about me?" rather than what about the asker). Also, the questions are, for me anyway, a lot less interesting. For a lot of topics, they've now been covered. New questions are rarer and cover increasingly edgier cases. So you're reliant on new languages, tools and problems, which doesn't seem to come at the same pace the earlier questions did, which were basically backfill. Let me also say that there is an art to answering questions on SO. The OP bemoans the quick answer getting the points while you write a thoughtful answer. My response? To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "he's doing it wrong". SO teaches you this. If the question can be answered in one line, this is what you do. If more comments will add to the value of the answer, explain deeper issues or perhaps help in cases not necessarily directly relevant to the OP but possibly relevant more generally, then you edit your answer as you go, adding as necessary. And if you think you can't write thoughtful answers on SO, you obviously haven't looked at some of the great answers that are there.
- notyourwork 16y ago
  As a regular SO user these were my thoughts exactly. It takes time to built reputation, just like the real world. Well thought out response, I find it upsetting someone is so quick to draw conclusions about a community which as far as I can tell is thriving. When I started SO I got the right answer and a whole lot more quicker than walking over and asking my officemate.
rhizome 16y ago
"Impossible" seems exaggerated. Somehow, in an article decrying rep-whoring, the OP decided that title-whoring was OK.
AgentConundrum 16y ago
What a terrible article. I'm sorry for the rant, but this really pissed me off. Admittedly, I don't participate in StackOverflow that much right now - I sort of go through an ebb and flow where I get really gung ho about answering questions, then it sort of wears off for a while - but this guy sounds a lot like he wants to game the system, and is only in it for the points. I'm not trying to put words in Jeff/Joel's mouth, but I think the "answer before you comment" system is constructed the way it is so that noise can be reduced. By that, I mean that the system wants you to actually contribute something to the site to get used to how it works before you can "join the discussion". Comments aren't downvotable, presumably because they don't want to silence dissenting opinions in a discussion, and the average comment doesn't get upvoted at all. If anyone could just walk in off the street and leave a comment, you would end up with a bunch of "YouTube comments" being left by random passersby. For a newbie, your only way to contribute to a question is to write an answer. Answering has a different social contract than does commenting. When you answer a question, you are expected to provide, well, an answer! If your answer is incorrect, then it will be downvoted to distinguish good information from misinformation. Downvoting is a way of saying "this content is harmful", and this is a perfectly valid response to a bad answer, but not a valid response to a bad opinion (i.e. a comment you disagree with). If the OP provided answers on StackOverflow and was downvoted, then his answer most likely was simply wrong. I haven't seen many, if any, correct answers with negative scores on StackOverflow. The system tends to be fairly self-correcting in that respect. If someone is downvoted wrongly, there is more often than not another user who will upvote the answer back to zero. If the OP is simply lamenting that he isn't receiving upvotes (in contrast to the idea that he's being downvoted, which is a separate concept), then maybe his answer simply isn't as good as he thinks it is, and the "flawed answer" he wants to comment on simply isn't that flawed. If the flawed answer is indeed flawed, then there is no harm in adding a new answer. Simply write your own detailed answer and include evidence explicitly proving that the current top voted answer is incorrect. When you post an answer, the site will kick the question back to the front page of the site, so you should get the opportunity for your "correct" answer to get exposure, and if it's any good, it should get upvotes. What I take the most issue with in this article, however, is the OP's lament that any question he wants to answer is already answered. That's the whole point of the site! If the question is already answered, then the system is working. The site doesn't exist for answerers to get points; it exists for askers to get answers to their questions. If a question gets a lot of responses, that is a Good Thing. Now, OP used to have a valid point about having a lot of "in progress" answers being posted. This was the so-called "Fastest Gun in the West" problem, and was solved by modifying the site to display same-scored answers in a randomized order. At this point, an "in progress" answer which doesn't yet provide enough value shouldn't have any upvotes, and therefore a new answer would have the same opportunity to be viewed as that answer. If you get your answer into a steady-state first, then you will get upvotes and you will get views. If someone else does, and gets upvoted, then at least the asker will get a proper answer to their question. If you're complaining about other people giving "minimum viable answers" which nonetheless help the asker, then you're probably just "rep whoring". For my part, I tend to answer questions in the same way. I'll quickly add an answer which provides a technically correct answer that at least gives the asker enough to finish the answer on their own (for example, "This can be accomplished using the some_function function" is enough of a hint that it's useful - the asker can look up the some_function documentation and learn for themselves). Once that answer is in place, I'll go back and edit the answer to include links to the documentation (I'll usually save at this point), then add a thorough explanation of how the answer works and how to use it. I've been commended by askers and other users for my in-depth answers to questions, and I've even beaten the "horde of already submitted answers" due to my quality. O a few occasions, I've come to a question that already had 5+ answers with "minimal correct answers", some of which have upvotes, and have written an answer with a lot of detail which ended up either the highest voted, or accepted by the asker (or both). Basically what I'm saying is that if you're only trying to be a "rep whore" then yes, the system is against you, but that's a Good Thing. If you're in it to actually help people, then taking the time to write a detailed, quality answer is the best way to go, and it'll often net you points to boot.
spinlock 16y ago
Or you could just ask questions. I don't write too many answers on Stack Overflow either but I usually do get a good answer to my programming/Ubuntu issues. I would actually argue that Stack Overflow works great. This article is an excellent example of how their badge system creates a strong desire in their user-base to contribute answers to and participate in the site. Maybe I'm just weird because I could care less about karma and just want to get my questions answered (by the karma obsessed trolling the new questions list :).
randrews 16y ago
I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked. But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea of good style: http://stackoverflow.com/posts/2669817/revisions http://stackoverflow.com/posts/2669817/revisions It's that last one that really gets me. Someone with more karma gets to put words in my mouth? And my name gets left on the edited post? Wow. Done. I get why they allow it, they want the site to be more searchable. And in a way I'm glad, because I get a lot from reading answers to things other people ask, but I will never again write anything there myself.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  Not worth quitting over. Editing of others' posts is part of the culture and almost never an attack.
  - randrews 16y ago
    That's exactly why it is worth quitting over: I don't want to be part of a culture where that's normal.
    - chrisaycock 16y ago
      I edit articles on Wikipedia just to correct grammar and spelling. Are you offended by that, too?
- AgentConundrum 16y ago
  Clarity is a good thing, and uniformity and standards definitely help with that. Looking at the revision page you linked, I don't see anything there that's offensive. I may have made similar edits myself had I seen it (at least, if it were a question in an area I'm familiar with). Keep in mind that StackOverflow isn't just about answering your question; it's about providing a large searchable knowledge-base so others with similar questions can easily find ready-made answers. Like it or not, collaborative editing of this kind is a cornerstone of the site, and is explicitly addressed as part of the FAQ[1]. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing
rexreed 16y ago
Am I the only person that doesn't get this whole Stack / Quora thing? Why does anyone care about points? Don't get me wrong - I love the fact that there's a place I can go to ask a question and get it answered by knowledgeable people. But what does that have to do with points? If people want to help each other, then great. If not, then don't. Newsgroups used to fill this role quite well without points, but came with all sorts of negatives (as detailed above). The benefit of the Stack / Quora stuff is that you don't have to wade through irrelevant stuff to find what you need. but points?
- ddkrone 16y ago
  The voting is a crude proxy for correctness. I say crude because sometimes the first few answers get way too many votes for simply being the first but over time the correct answers float to the top.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
alanh 16y ago
To me, the #1 problem with Stack Overflow is the number of plain bad answers that are given and often accepted. CSS question? Here’s someone’s un-researched and invalid first guess, that doen’t work in practice. +10 karma and accepted. Hard question? Here’s some loser’s gut feeling of “can’t be done” in exchange for +2 karma, and then a knowledgeable follow-up a day later from someone who has actually been there, done that, and figured it out. Example: Someone with 82k karma posts a non-answer rudely telling me I should be using another technology altogether, a cheap and worthless move that earned +2 karma: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4696128/bash-script-determine-if-file-modified/4696145#4696145 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4696128/bash-script-deter... So often it’s apparent people are just throwing best-guess answers out there for karma, and this is hugely unhelpful. There should be a large penalty for stating incorrect guesses as fact. It’s to the point where I instantly mistrust any answer from someone with over 10k reputation as I learned there is a good chance they are just shooting from the hip for karma.
- cruise02 16y ago
  You pointed out yourself in the comments to that answer that rsync was helpful, but that you didn't like the rude tone. The answer you accepted also agreed that you should use rsync until you edited the question to add more details. Now it's cheap and worthless? The system seems to work. The top-voted answer is the one you accepted.
  - alanh 16y ago
    I was being generous, as rsync could be a useful suggestion to other visitors to the page, but it absolutely doesn’t answer the question that was asked. The top-voted answer, to the contrary, was edited to be genuinely helpful and an accurate answer, and deserves those upvotes. Also keep in mind that the page is getting activity because it’s linked from this discussion, so some karma changes have been triggered just now.
- bosie 16y ago
  care to explain how he was rude and his tone off-putting? and i hope my question isn't rude ;)
toephu 16y ago
stackoverflow rocks, you just suck at using it cuz ur an idiot.
mcantor 16y ago
This post appears to be written from the perspective that the goal of Stack Overflow is to gain points, when I believe the goal of Stack Overflow is to answer questions.
RuadhanMc 16y ago
I would encourage anyone who is interested about the thinking behind Stack Overflow, reputation, money, question and answer sites, badges, commenting, wiki, etc, to go back and listen to the early Stack Overflow podcasts. You will get an hour by hour insight into their thinking behind certain features of the site and will see that there are some very good reasons (and to be honest, some not) for some things being the way they are. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/
quinndupont 16y ago
The information on Stack Overflow is fantastic, but I just don't want to be a leach. And contributing something useful is challenging. Maybe I just don't have anything wonderful enough to say.
olalonde 16y ago
That's why I try to avoid StackOverflow as much as possible when I can ask my question on a smaller StackExchange site such as http://askubuntu.com http://askubuntu.com or http://programmers.stackexchange.com http://programmers.stackexchange.com. The quality of answers on smaller SE sites is usually 10x higher.
kaffeinecoma 16y ago
I totally disagree with this blog posting, but here's a situation that I feel SO could do better. I wish there were a feature whereby as a question-asker, you could say "I've dutifully read all the provided responses, and none of them answers my question. Marking this as 'unsolved'". And then the "unsolved" questions would not count against your percentage in "accept rate". When new answers come in, you'd need to go back and re-evaluate whether or not the new responses answer your question or not. The original idea of publishing askers' accept ratio is to encourage people to "give credit where credit is due". But it also has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging people to accept sub-par answers at times. Apart from that I love the site, and hope Jeff makes a bundle (or at least a happy existence) from it.
basha 16y ago
Why not to try a new site for programmers http://tagmask.com http://tagmask.com. It provides the ability to filter out content according your preferences and looks really good. Have you checked it out?
flipside 16y ago
Any Q&A site that discourages potentially useful answers is doing it wrong. As it happens, I've come up with an algorithm that would solve the most common problems with Q&A sites (included the ones cited in this article) and am in the process of building a prototype.
ben1040 16y ago
I thought the same thing when I joined SO a few months ago, and agreed with a lot of what was written in the blog post. But, then I decided to give SO another chance just now. I posted two answers and in ten minutes got enough upvotes to get me out of the 15-rep new-user jail. So consider my mind changed and I don't see what the big problem is, now.
ForumRatt 16y ago
I frequent the sister site Super User, I had no problem in getting rep points, so far I am at over 8K in less than 8 months. No these are not forums and you will be berated for not following the proper order of things. If you can't compete stay off the site, its not for everybody like a forum is.
infocaptor 16y ago
No matter what others say, but SO is awesome. I have got nearly instant responses. Only once I had to pay someone on freelancer to solve my jquery issue. It is like having SO community helping me in my development. I know it is tempting to gain reputation points by answering simple questions. Simple questions will have tons of responses. Instead try to pick the tough ones and answer them.
petercooper 16y ago
I agree 100%. I was in SO early (the beta) and still encountered this. Not only that, but a quick/early bad answer would tend to do better long-term than a later but correct answer. Given this (and I'm no stranger to accumulating high levels of karma/followers/whatever by natural participation on sites) I only use Stack Overflow as a user now and rarely answer anything. It works great for that and I can sift through the answers and pick the one that works best while ignoring the score. It's clearly not for me in terms of participating fully but I can live with that.
nlawalker 16y ago
Headline is misleading - the real complaint isn't that participating is impossible, it's that reputation is hard to earn. In SO's nascent days, you could earn rep simply by showing up and answering questions. Now that it's popular, if you want to gain rep, you have to muscle your way in using methods like the author describes. I find it amusing that SO's creators chose the term "reputation" for their participation points, as opposed to "karma" or something else, because in this aspect it's pretty similar to real-life reputation. When supply is high, it's hard to gain reputation without gaming the system. That's not SO, that's life.
tmachinecharmer 16y ago
In this article you say that you are <strike>a pretty and smart</strike> "a pretty smart guy". Then you are definitely welcome at SO. NOT participating in SO is neither a solution to your problem nor a decision that a pretty smart guy would take. Give it a shot buddy! and I am sure you will NOT write an article about how awesome SO is because you won't find the words to describe SO awesomeness.
RobertKohr 16y ago
Who cares? If I hit a wall while working on a problem, I toss into the gladiator pit known as Stack Overflow, and after it has been mawed to pieces by a bunch of brilliant people, I stop by and get my answer and can continue whatever I was doing. Usually this all happens in the time it takes for me to get some coffee and maybe take a short walk. It is a beacon of hope and joy to someone who has wasted too much time in the past trying to find the answers to hard problems. So they are at each-others' throats trying to out answer other users so they can increment up a point counter. Gamefication is a great motivator, and I am happy that I don't have to use the typical motivators of begging, pleading, or -ugh- paying for quality technical support. Emotional reactions to the competitiveness is the success of a very well designed game that has the outcome of great answers to problems that are typically hard to find.
vannevar 16y ago
I think the poster makes a good point. In the early days of SO, as in any QA site, there were a surplus of questions and a dearth of answers. It would've been suicidal to obstruct people from providing answers, so the bar was set low there. Comments on the other hand are less valuable early on, so there was no reason to encourage them. Fast forward to today, and now there are a critical mass of people willing---even eager---to answer questions, so that every new question has a surplus of answers, many of them wrong. SO might well improve their signal/noise ratio by reversing their policy and requiring higher karma for answers than they do for commenting. As the poster points out, a newb is unlikely to come up with an answer not already posted, but nonetheless might have some unique experience or insight on that answer that could be helpful.
jodrellblank 16y ago
Do programming language designers look for repetetive questions on SO and improve their languages so those questions wont come up in future?
devin 16y ago
"The point system is all wrong!" Epic fail at life.
lhnn 16y ago
Why <noun> sucks, and <false hyperbole>
eliben 16y ago
SO is optimized for askers, not for answerers and intentionally so! The whole goal of the website is to make asking questions simple, finding related questions (reasonably) simple, and getting good answers quickly. As you can see from profiles of some users, some people exchanged their books for SO (why look it up - just ask). True, the rep game is a tough one, but so is life, so get over it.
david_shaw 16y ago
Please stop saying that StackOverflow is 'broke.' The word you're looking for is broken. StackOverflow's overflowing stack of cash is doing quite well, actually. Other than that admittedly nitpicky detail, the article is accurate and provides insight on a problem that I, too, have experienced. However, I don't think that StackOverflow is broken, I just think it's overcrowded. And for a question-and-answer style website, isn't that a good thing?
marcusEting 16y ago
The other bad thing about SO is that when a question has some answers, even if they are not really right, nobody really pays attention to the question anymore. So it feels like questions that move down in the queue with a few proposed answers are basically dead.
cfontes 16y ago
I Disagree badly... It's a wonderful environment for developers. I personnaly love it and I only have 101 points. that doesn't keep me from doing a thing there. Really bad, bad article.
d0mine 16y ago
> Edit: closing comments since I’m tired of moderating (and I didn’t delete any but the obvious spam). Thanks for letting me vent. It is ironic to hear it from a guy who complains that he can't comment without enough reputation points on a site visited by millions.
messel 16y ago
I believe SO is designed so that new users ask questions. Then after getting a few rep points from questions they can contribute back with answers or comments (my preferred input).
kstenerud 16y ago
I've never liked karma systems. On the surface it seems to make sense: People who are helpful/insightful get lots of karma. In practice, it fails on two fronts: First, karma systems in and of themselves work based on popularity, under the mistaken idea that popularity = correctness/insightfulness/suitability. Quite often, the most insightful or thought provoking ideas are unpopular (or speaking the truth is unpopular). What you get is a system that automatically filters out the ideas that the majority are unconfortable with, and so you end up with an echo chamber which doesn't admit new ideas. Second, the policies formed around the karma system grow biased AGAINST new users over time, which leads to community stagnation: The initial couple of years are great. The early adopters are all eager to participate in meaningful ways, and build a thriving, vibrant community. Then the gamers join in. They learn how to game the system to gain points. They do this just to show that they can. Closely related, the karma whores move in. Their sole goal is to gain points for self-worth. The community is meaningless; points are everything. As the gamer's techniques become more widly known, the spammers move in, automating the techniques to promote their spam, and the cat-and-mouse game begins, usually at the expense of making things more difficult for the users. These measures are almost always done with consideration of the already established user base, using them to determine what a "normal, real" user is like. Once you hit this point, it starts to become prohibitively expensive for a new user to join in, thanks to the biased notion of a "normal user". Stack Overflow is a prime example of this, where you have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops just to be able to even comment or gasp edit your own question because upon re-reading, you decide it's not as clear as it could be. And so you complain. But people don't like complainers, so they all jump on you and say "It's not so bad! I went through the red tape and so should you!" and "If you don't like the red tape, there's no place for you here!" There's a word for this: Bureaucracy. As a service provider, you should be doing everything in your power to make things MORE accessible to new users, not LESS accessible. You should be ENCOURAGING participation, not throwing hurdles in their way. New users are fickle. Their first experience on your site will largely shape their perception of it forever. Start them off with a bad experience and they'll refuse to participate. Rampant bureaucracy is a sign of severe failure in the system.

339 points by acconrad 16y ago

I don't really agree here.. While I do have my own gripes with Stack Overflow, I don't think this is the biggest issue. It took me two days of casual browsing/asking/answering to get a reputation of about 50 or so and another few weeks to get into the hundreds. -- Keep in mind I'm not a super genius expert or anything, I just asked a few questions and contributed a few answers in areas I was knowledgeable about. It's not that hard. The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites.

kylec 16y ago
If you have more than 200 rep on SE site A, you can associate that account with your account on SE site B and get a 100 rep bonus on site B. This lets users that are already familiar with the system comment and vote up on any site without having to have gained rep first.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  I just finished writing "the only milestone that matters on StackOverflow is 50 Karma", and then you point out that 200 is useful, too. Oh well it won't take long to get 30 more karma if I want it.
- bherms 16y ago
  Oh cool.. I didn't realize that! I have about 250 now, but haven't ventured out of SO in a while. Thanks for the tip!
- myhf 16y ago
  Do you have to do something to enable this? I have over 200 rep on Stack Overflow, and my profile page there and on Super User both show each other under "related accounts", but on Super User I am still at 1 reputation. Edit: I created an account on Cooking, and it gave me the linking bonus everywhere. I guess I hadn't created accounts on any Stack Exchange sites since reaching 200 rep on one of them.
fakelvis 16y ago
> The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. By design, I would argue. And a good decision, too. To use a facetious example just to illustrate my point: without separate reputations, one could build up a huge reputation on http://apple.stackexchange.com/ http://apple.stackexchange.com/ and then use that influence over at http://askubuntu.com/ http://askubuntu.com/ to provide a mediocre answer. This mediocre answer could then get upvoted to the top by those who do not know a better way purely because of this user's reputation. Meanwhile the perfect answer provided by a newcomer to the SE network may remain hidden in second place. N.B. I think the "bonus" reputation points that can be transferred are a way of addressing this imbalance while pushing people to use other SE sites at the same time.
- RuadhanMc 16y ago
  Exactly. Reputation is supposed to illustrate your expertise. If you gain 1000 rep points in the cooking SE, does that mean that you should have 1000 rep points in the programming SE? Of course not, since your expertise is with cooking and not programming. If you were to carry across reputation from one SE to another then it would make the reputation meaningless. Instead of being an expert cook with 1000 rep points you would be an expert SE user with 1000 points that might have come from answering questions about cooking, programming Ubuntu, startsup, etc. Now THAT would break the system.
stonemetal 16y ago
Why should it transfer? Just because you are a great software engineer(as determined by your 23K rep. on SO), doesn't mean you are a great chief and should have a 23K rep on the cooking SE.
- rtghnyhjm 16y ago
  Because at low reps they are an anti-spam measure. If I have demonstrated I'm not a spammer by having a solid score on SO then I should be allowed to post a comment straight away on cooking. That's the reason for the 100rep liking bonus - it's a grandfather clause
  - bherms 16y ago
    This ^ edit: I was asked a question which was perfectly answered by rtg. Should've provided more substance, but I wanted to endorse this as being exactly what I was talking about.
frou_dh 16y ago
>The only major broken part (IMO) of SO is that the SE network is becoming so disjointed and your rep doesn't transfer between sites. Putting rep aside, I don't even know what all the other development-related SE sites are, let alone can be bothered to monitor them all. This means that there are interesting questions I'll never see because I only visit StackOverflow. I don't see how people other than complete SE junkies are supposed to stay on top of this site creation and forking extravaganza. Good for them, but I don't have the energy.
- dangrossman 16y ago
  You're not supposed to. They're separate sites with separate communities. Your interest in StackOverflow doesn't mean you should be keeping up with recipe questions on the Cooking StackExchange site.
  - frou_dh 16y ago
    I did say "development-related".

Khao 16y ago

I've never seen stackoverflow as a race to get the most rep possible. Reputation is just a "bonus", not a prerequisite to participate in the website. I like stackoverflow the way it is

SandB0x 16y ago
During the development of Stack Overflow, Joel and Jeff talked about the answers staying up-to-date in a wiki-like fashion. I think what the author means is that in order to participate in this - i.e. edit and improve an existing answer - you have to have a certain amount of rep. It's quite likely that a user Googling for their particular issue might find an incomplete or out-of-date answer on Stack Overflow. When they finally solve it they are unable to improve the existing entry, which is unfortunate as for many "long tail" problems they are best placed to contribute.
- kylec 16y ago
  This used to be true, but there's a feature currently in testing that will allow anyone (even someone coming from Google) to propose an edit to a post. This edit proposal can be approved either by a moderator or several users with sufficient rep. Hopefully this will make Stack Overflow more wiki-like and help solve the problem with answers getting out of date.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhizome 16y ago
    This sounds similar to how Discogs has implemented quality ratings (via votes) for arbitrarily edited content, in between full editorial control and open wiki.
  - davros 16y ago
    That sounds like a great idea to me
- rtghnyhjm 16y ago

PaulHoule 16y ago

Personally I haven't gotten involved in SO precisely because of this. I don't feel the prize is worth the amount of effort that I'd put into playing the game. However, plenty of people do feel that it's worth it, and certainly the barrier to entry keeps out (some of) the griefers that inevitably show up in online communities.

RuadhanMc 16y ago
The prize is the satisfaction you get from helping other people with a great answer. The reputation is window dressing. If you think of rep as the end goal, then of course it is not worth your time. If you enjoy answering people's questions, then it probably is worth your time.
- PaulHoule 16y ago
  There are a lot of social things to do on the web, and probably I should be doing less of them and more real work For me, participating on SO is like the Weather Channel. I've got another other things I could be doing rather than waiting for "Weather on the 8s" to come around.

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adnam 16y ago

"but you quickly realize that every question that’s not some vague, poorly worded, open ended impossibility has already got 10 answers" Exactly :) Stackoverflow has built-in breaks to control growth. Maybe HN could benefit from this ;)

noarchy 16y ago

"Rep grinds" (see how MMO-speak has influenced us?) on non-gaming web sites may be becoming the norm. You grind out some rep, and get privileges based on that rep. One can argue that this serves as an effective barrier to keep out would-be posters of bad content and discussion, but as we can see it also screws with "legit" posters. Determined individuals will figure out how to work the game to their advantage, both for good and bad.

ddkrone 16y ago
What game and what advantage? It's a Q/A site. The only way you are going to game the system is if you ask clearly delineated questions and provide thoughtful and clear answers.
- kstenerud 16y ago
  A few techniques: Form a cabal of vote sharers, who always vote for each other's posts. Post a bunch of semi-plausible content once a day and you'll have tons of karma in no time. Post quick responses that have little insight. You'll always get votes for being first. Post LOTS of trivial questions. More people will upvote than will downvote on the whole.
  - ddkrone 16y ago
    All the things you mentioned requires a lot of effort. In fact it's more effort than just actually providing one or two good answers and questions a day. Also, I have never seen any of the popular answers get answers that are not really close to the mark. Even the unpopular ones always get good answers that float to the top. Organizing a cabal of voters and then monitoring new questions within your area of expertise just so you can post semi-plausible answers to move up the ranks is borderline psychotic and I have yet to encounter these people on SO.

dansingerman 16y ago

The thing is StackOverflow really really works. If I search Google for a programming query I nearly always find links to useful information on SO, if not the precise answer. (I've even found my own answers via Google when I have forgotten how to do something) That is SO's first and foremost use case. And I reiterate - it works extremely well. The community features are secondary to that (it's not Quora), and there are thousands of users who will tell you that it is not 'impossible' to use.

Gobiner 16y ago
I've found plenty of helpful information on StackOverflow via Google as well, but I definitely would not say that it "really really works." I've asked two questions (C#/.NET so there's a large pool of potential answerers) and neither question ever got the answer it deserved, even though both got answers from genuine experts (Jon Skeet and Eric Lippert). I found the answer to my first question on some MSDN blog after I asked on StackOverflow, the second question is still unresolved.
- dansingerman 16y ago
  Maybe my enthusiasm for the quality of StackOverflow results in Google is because I remember the pre-SO days of scrolling through experts-exchange's hideous site and fictional paywall for a low quality answer in a tiny font.
  - 6ren 16y ago
    Me too; though I also thought that experts-exchange was a good idea at the time, including its concept of an economic reward system (in fact, I got a wonderfully helpful answer on that forum). Yet, it turned out to have problems, which lead to SO with an even better, karma/game mechanics reward system. And now, some people experience problems with SO. This opens an opportunity for something even better than SO. I wonder what that would be?
- allwein 16y ago
  Have you gone back and provided the answer to your first question? If not, then you're part of the reason that SO doesn't "really really work" in all cases.

kylec 16y ago

It's definitely true that there are a lot of people waiting for new questions so they can pounce with a quick answer and get a few upvotes. However, there's also a large backlog of unanswered questions as well (http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered http://stackoverflow.com/unanswered) that are very much in need of a "thoughtful, correctly documented" answer. And while it's unfortunate that legitimate brand-new users are unable to post comments, the reason behind the rep threshold was to reduce spam on the site. Commenting requires 50 reputation, or about 5 upvotes on an answer/10 upvotes on a question (both of which can be easily accomplished in an hour or two) - just high enough to deter spam.

ck2 16y ago
I simply do not understand this ego thing with "points". A million points gets you what? An award for most wasted time? I wish HN had an option to turn off points on an account, I can't even block it with adblock because there's no element id. There's more to life than meaningless "points".
- pinko 16y ago
  FWIW, I know at least one person whose considerable SO karma helped them land a job (and who wrote those comments with that goal in mind). It's not all about ego.
- Tycho 16y ago
  I think in the specific case of StackOverflow, having a lot of points is something that indicates to potential employers that you are a useful/knowledgable candidate. And it's not just a vague signifier - they can actually go and look at your answers and see what you're about.
  - bryanlarsen 16y ago
    Yes, but quality matters almost as much as quantity. I'd rather hire somebody who got 1000 karma through 10 questions/answers than somebody who got 2000 karma through 100. Although quantity is important too -- even if it's not a definitive answer, a partial answer is better than no answer to the questioner. It's just that when I'm hiring, those definitive answers really indicate somebody who knows what they're doing. [edit: answering here because there are several good responses, who are all right. The most important thing to do as a potential important employer is to read a few answers rather than just blindingly accepting the karma. You can't do that for everybody, but you can do it for your shortlist.]

jwtanner 16y ago

Is Stack Overflow a game in which the goal is to get the most reputation and badges? Or are you using it as a tool to discover solutions to programming problems? Or Both?

CrLf 16y ago
Any community where you get "points" of any kind becomes a game, which eventually becomes more important than the community itself.

markstahler 16y ago

Is rep important enough to warrant a blog post complaining you cant get enough? Man, money is too hard to get. I wish this damned CEO wasn't getting a 600k salary + bonuses. Blog post upcoming.

deleted 16y ago
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tdoggette 16y ago
He's not complaining that he can't get enough rep, he's complaining that he can't contribute without it.

bryanlarsen 16y ago

It sounds like this guy wants to participate in StackOverflow just to be there rather than because he finds it a useful tool for his own work. I'm glad there are hurdles for people who are just there to "get a good rep" rather than there to support their real work. A (hopefully) more common workflow would look something like this: - a developer googles a problem, the StackOverflow answer floats to the top, and he notices this is a particularly good answer. - this keeps happening, and the developer gets impressed then one of two things happens (or both): - he googles a question, and finds an old question without a great answer, and adds an answer. Yes, old questions don't get as many upvotes on their answers, but they do get upvoted, and at 10 points an upvote, it doesn't take long to get to 50. - he googles a question and doesn't find an answer, so he posts a question Neither of these require any rep, and you only have to do it once or twice with a good question or answer to get to the magical 50 karma. And 50 karma is the only milestone that matters on StackOverflow, in my opinion.

bryanlarsen 16y ago
Heh, in the time it took to create this comment, this post went from 1 comment to 15 comments, making mine less relevant, meaning I'll get fewer upvotes. And as far as I'm concerned, gaming Hacker News to get karma is much more useful than gaming Stack Overflow. 500 karma is required to downvote, and it takes a long time to hit 500 karma. Of course, now that I have the 500 I rarely downvote. I wish I would have known that earlier. :) In my opinion, PG should adopt the Stack Overflow downvoting rule (you lose karma for downvoting), and lower the required threshold. It's hard to tell if downvoting is being used more for good than evil, but it's definitely used to express opinion more often than it should be.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
guelo 16y ago
I've been a casual via-Google user for 2 1/2 years. I have 5 answers and 2 questions with a total of 1 upvote. My rep is 11. Whenever I go to SO I go in with the mentality of not even trying to participate because anything I try will be denied.

foljs 16y ago

Em, it's a community Q&A website, it's not a game, and it's purpose is not to jack up some high score. Just ask when you need to (when you want to know something you don't already know) and answer when you feel you can contribute an answer. And stop caring if you get up-or-downvoted, and start caring about the quality of your output.

lukasb 16y ago

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

praptak 16y ago

"So if you’re knowledgeable enough to provide a counterpoint to someone else’s poor answer, you have to post it as a new answer… and then you get down voted (lose rep!) for adding a new answer versus just commenting on the original, flawed answer." Never happened to me. Sometimes I even noticed that the author had deleted the original wrong answer and left a positive comment on mine.

alxp 16y ago
Yep, also if you just have 1 reputation getting downvoted doesn't cost you anything, you stay at 1. So it doesn't hurt in the least even if this did occur, which I haven't seen myself, either. I often see that SO users will be helpful to new users who seem to be trying to be helpful.

reason 16y ago

You are concerning yourself with increasing a meaningless stored value on a website on the internet that, chances are, you'll move on from in a relatively short period of time. Take a second to think about that. That applies to here and all other social-voting websites. It's an unnecessary worry. Focus on things that matter.

sajidnizami 16y ago

Rep whoring? Q&A sites are there to help out not to give you points and stroke your ego. I think if SO is hindering you into getting a good rep, probably you don't have enough domain knowledge. PS: I've been there since the beginning and I still got 114 rep. I love the place because it has gotten me solutions at times without even asking.

sad_hacker 16y ago
I agree. I enjoy that you get answered so quickly and if you are rep whore, you can just ask good questions, they get up-voted and you get points. But I really don't see any point, it's a serious Q&A site.

nopal 16y ago

Maybe not from his perspective, but from the perspective of those asking questions and looking for answers, it works pretty well.

acconrad 16y ago

I'd like to point out that while I definitely did not write this post, I did feel it easy to relate, because it seems hard at this point to gain reputation without gaming the system a bit. But there are so many ways to get involved...I think the best seems to be being knowledgeable in a very specific area of expertise - answering C# questions is really tough, but if you know Heroku, there are so many more questions there without answers that you can really gobble up quite a bit of reputation by knowing something niche.

phwd 16y ago
All the while one does not / is not able to answer questions, he can learn from the answers that have already been submitted, no reputation gained but knowledge (I have heard people compiling e-books on the best posts from Stackoverflow). I call that a step forward.

alexsherrick 16y ago

A lot of people are dogging acconrad, but I have to agree with him. I was having a problem with rails, and I found the answer on stackoverflow. The right answer had no upvotes, so I figured I would upvote it; this way the original "asker" would know it is the right answer. However, it said I didn't have enough rep to upvote... I'm sure he'll figure it out but this would save him from checking the other "solutions".

phwd 16y ago
This is to prevent "voting rings" using new accounts. It is a small measure of activity. All it would have taken from you was 15 rep, 1 Upvoted Answer (+10) and 1 Upvoted Question (+5) or 1 Question Upvoted (3 times) (+15) or 3 Upvoted Questions (+15) (It is actually 14, since you start off with 1 rep) That is really not a lot of activity/work needed from an individual. Most likely a next user would have seen the answer on rails and voted by now.
smackfu 16y ago
The weird thing is how it doesn't tell you that you can't upvote until you try to do it.
- cruise02 16y ago
  It tells you in the FAQ. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation
  - smackfu 16y ago
    I meant that it is surprising that they don't hide the controls that you can't use.
alanh 16y ago
Hey, let’s all downvote alexsherrick and tell him he’s an idiot for not understanding site policy instead of recognizing that he is pointing out an undesirable effect of that policy!

angdis 16y ago

Stack-overflow is amazingly effective, especially when one considers the alternatives like those countless forgettable websites heavily laden with front-and-center ads, and the ones that have nag screens that block responses to answers until you "sign up", and the ones with clueless dilettantes fumbling in the dark. My only concern is that I think the exchange community might get fractured/diluted if there are too many separate stack exchange sites.

jswinghammer 16y ago

I went through a short period where I really cared about what my profile looked like there. I don't know why I ever felt that way. I think my top voted answer is telling someone what I thought important concepts in C to communicate to students are. I don't think that says anything about me positive or negative to be honest. If you look around the top contributors to the python tag you'll realize there is a lot of room for people to submit good, thoughtful answers. If you take the time to write something good then it will get voted up and if that's what you want you'll be all set. It seems like no worse of a way to spend your time than anything save perhaps reading a good technical book and let's face it there aren't very many of those.

pgroves 16y ago

While I actually can empathize with the author on wanting to help out, he's really making stackoverflow sound awesome - knowledgeable people are falling all over themselves to answer your question, and don't worry about being a freeloader, they already have too much free labor going into the answers.

ddkrone 16y ago

There is nothing sucky about the stackexchange sites. They are designed to be useful and growing repositories of frequent question and answers. The whole rep/voting thing is just a gaming layer on top to make the process of participation a little more fun but if you just focus on the gaming aspect and take it way too seriously like this guy then you miss out completely.

bherms 16y ago
While it may seem like just a gaming aspect, there are a lot of benefits as you gain more reputation on the site. Unlike many "points systems", SE actually allows you to become essentially a moderator of the site as you gain reputation. Once you've hit a certain mark you can edit, close, delete, etc. I think it's brilliant.
- ddkrone 16y ago
  The old forums had the same system so there is nothing new or brilliant going on here, the stackexchange sites just measure things in terms of reputation/votes and the old forums did something similar with posts/replies. The only innovation I see is the automation of how promotion happens in terms of votes/rep.
  - jbri 16y ago
    In other words ... the autopromotion happens to people who provide quality contributions rather than those who add to the noise? And you don't see how that's significantly better?

jws 16y ago

The right question is as important as the right answer. The easiest entry is to ask a good question. The next time you run into a poorly documented problem, do some research, and eventually work out an answer, reformulate it as the question you wish Stack Overflow contained and ask it. You can always comment on things in your own question so you can guide the answers if they are going wrong. • Two question up votes and you can vote things up. • Five and you can comment anywhere

allwein 16y ago
Or you can just answer your own question, which is completely acceptable behavior in SO.

topcat31 16y ago

I completely disagree with both the premise and conclusion of this blog post. I'm a complete coding noob (http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001 http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001) and along the way to learning programming have relied on StackOverflow for about 10 questions. For every single one I have received complete, thorough, helpful and patient answers. In short, I could not be happier with SO. As a beginner it's been a phenomenal resource both for searching and for answering specific issues. The post makes the point that newbies can't answer questions - and for me this is one of the reasons the quality of the site is so high. If you let anyone answer then you don't know how good quality the response is. As a beginner how am I to know if a given answer is correct? Of course, any community site still has problems like this and SO is not immune to it but IMHO this is one of the ways they keep the quality bar higher than any other Q&A platform out there.

cletus 16y ago

Let me add some perspective as a relatively highly ranked user (cletus) on SO. I've seen this kind of post before and frankly it's annoying. The typical template is "I tried to answer 2 questions and didn't get 1000 points so it sucks" or some variation revolving around faster answerers or whatever. Rather than being a problem, SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers. Compare this to forums or mailing lists which I abhor as a means of asking programming questions. You'll often get no replies or useless replies (eg a bunch of people who don't understand the problem telling you that you shouldn't be doing that or asking you why) or the right answer might be buried on page 17 when the thread descended into an OT discussion on page 7. There are certainly low-hanging fruit on SO (reputation wise) and people do compete for those. In my case, I used SO to learn things because of the quick feedback loop you got when you said something demonstrably wrong. Now I barely go there because whether there's something to answer or not is pretty random and I really don't have time for the waiting game anymore. Other priorities now. But to complain about a system where there are too many people answering questions is, to be perfectly blunt, ridiculous and narcissistic ("what about me?" rather than what about the asker). Also, the questions are, for me anyway, a lot less interesting. For a lot of topics, they've now been covered. New questions are rarer and cover increasingly edgier cases. So you're reliant on new languages, tools and problems, which doesn't seem to come at the same pace the earlier questions did, which were basically backfill. Let me also say that there is an art to answering questions on SO. The OP bemoans the quick answer getting the points while you write a thoughtful answer. My response? To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "he's doing it wrong". SO teaches you this. If the question can be answered in one line, this is what you do. If more comments will add to the value of the answer, explain deeper issues or perhaps help in cases not necessarily directly relevant to the OP but possibly relevant more generally, then you edit your answer as you go, adding as necessary. And if you think you can't write thoughtful answers on SO, you obviously haven't looked at some of the great answers that are there.

notyourwork 16y ago
As a regular SO user these were my thoughts exactly. It takes time to built reputation, just like the real world. Well thought out response, I find it upsetting someone is so quick to draw conclusions about a community which as far as I can tell is thriving. When I started SO I got the right answer and a whole lot more quicker than walking over and asking my officemate.

rhizome 16y ago

"Impossible" seems exaggerated. Somehow, in an article decrying rep-whoring, the OP decided that title-whoring was OK.

AgentConundrum 16y ago

What a terrible article. I'm sorry for the rant, but this really pissed me off. Admittedly, I don't participate in StackOverflow that much right now - I sort of go through an ebb and flow where I get really gung ho about answering questions, then it sort of wears off for a while - but this guy sounds a lot like he wants to game the system, and is only in it for the points. I'm not trying to put words in Jeff/Joel's mouth, but I think the "answer before you comment" system is constructed the way it is so that noise can be reduced. By that, I mean that the system wants you to actually contribute something to the site to get used to how it works before you can "join the discussion". Comments aren't downvotable, presumably because they don't want to silence dissenting opinions in a discussion, and the average comment doesn't get upvoted at all. If anyone could just walk in off the street and leave a comment, you would end up with a bunch of "YouTube comments" being left by random passersby. For a newbie, your only way to contribute to a question is to write an answer. Answering has a different social contract than does commenting. When you answer a question, you are expected to provide, well, an answer! If your answer is incorrect, then it will be downvoted to distinguish good information from misinformation. Downvoting is a way of saying "this content is harmful", and this is a perfectly valid response to a bad answer, but not a valid response to a bad opinion (i.e. a comment you disagree with). If the OP provided answers on StackOverflow and was downvoted, then his answer most likely was simply wrong. I haven't seen many, if any, correct answers with negative scores on StackOverflow. The system tends to be fairly self-correcting in that respect. If someone is downvoted wrongly, there is more often than not another user who will upvote the answer back to zero. If the OP is simply lamenting that he isn't receiving upvotes (in contrast to the idea that he's being downvoted, which is a separate concept), then maybe his answer simply isn't as good as he thinks it is, and the "flawed answer" he wants to comment on simply isn't that flawed. If the flawed answer is indeed flawed, then there is no harm in adding a new answer. Simply write your own detailed answer and include evidence explicitly proving that the current top voted answer is incorrect. When you post an answer, the site will kick the question back to the front page of the site, so you should get the opportunity for your "correct" answer to get exposure, and if it's any good, it should get upvotes. What I take the most issue with in this article, however, is the OP's lament that any question he wants to answer is already answered. That's the whole point of the site! If the question is already answered, then the system is working. The site doesn't exist for answerers to get points; it exists for askers to get answers to their questions. If a question gets a lot of responses, that is a Good Thing. Now, OP used to have a valid point about having a lot of "in progress" answers being posted. This was the so-called "Fastest Gun in the West" problem, and was solved by modifying the site to display same-scored answers in a randomized order. At this point, an "in progress" answer which doesn't yet provide enough value shouldn't have any upvotes, and therefore a new answer would have the same opportunity to be viewed as that answer. If you get your answer into a steady-state first, then you will get upvotes and you will get views. If someone else does, and gets upvoted, then at least the asker will get a proper answer to their question. If you're complaining about other people giving "minimum viable answers" which nonetheless help the asker, then you're probably just "rep whoring". For my part, I tend to answer questions in the same way. I'll quickly add an answer which provides a technically correct answer that at least gives the asker enough to finish the answer on their own (for example, "This can be accomplished using the some_function function" is enough of a hint that it's useful - the asker can look up the some_function documentation and learn for themselves). Once that answer is in place, I'll go back and edit the answer to include links to the documentation (I'll usually save at this point), then add a thorough explanation of how the answer works and how to use it. I've been commended by askers and other users for my in-depth answers to questions, and I've even beaten the "horde of already submitted answers" due to my quality. O a few occasions, I've come to a question that already had 5+ answers with "minimal correct answers", some of which have upvotes, and have written an answer with a lot of detail which ended up either the highest voted, or accepted by the asker (or both). Basically what I'm saying is that if you're only trying to be a "rep whore" then yes, the system is against you, but that's a Good Thing. If you're in it to actually help people, then taking the time to write a detailed, quality answer is the best way to go, and it'll often net you points to boot.

spinlock 16y ago

Or you could just ask questions. I don't write too many answers on Stack Overflow either but I usually do get a good answer to my programming/Ubuntu issues. I would actually argue that Stack Overflow works great. This article is an excellent example of how their badge system creates a strong desire in their user-base to contribute answers to and participate in the site. Maybe I'm just weird because I could care less about karma and just want to get my questions answered (by the karma obsessed trolling the new questions list :).

randrews 16y ago

I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked. But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea of good style: http://stackoverflow.com/posts/2669817/revisions http://stackoverflow.com/posts/2669817/revisions It's that last one that really gets me. Someone with more karma gets to put words in my mouth? And my name gets left on the edited post? Wow. Done. I get why they allow it, they want the site to be more searchable. And in a way I'm glad, because I get a lot from reading answers to things other people ask, but I will never again write anything there myself.

frou_dh 16y ago
Not worth quitting over. Editing of others' posts is part of the culture and almost never an attack.
- randrews 16y ago
  That's exactly why it is worth quitting over: I don't want to be part of a culture where that's normal.
  - chrisaycock 16y ago
    I edit articles on Wikipedia just to correct grammar and spelling. Are you offended by that, too?
AgentConundrum 16y ago
Clarity is a good thing, and uniformity and standards definitely help with that. Looking at the revision page you linked, I don't see anything there that's offensive. I may have made similar edits myself had I seen it (at least, if it were a question in an area I'm familiar with). Keep in mind that StackOverflow isn't just about answering your question; it's about providing a large searchable knowledge-base so others with similar questions can easily find ready-made answers. Like it or not, collaborative editing of this kind is a cornerstone of the site, and is explicitly addressed as part of the FAQ[1]. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing http://stackoverflow.com/faq#editing

rexreed 16y ago

Am I the only person that doesn't get this whole Stack / Quora thing? Why does anyone care about points? Don't get me wrong - I love the fact that there's a place I can go to ask a question and get it answered by knowledgeable people. But what does that have to do with points? If people want to help each other, then great. If not, then don't. Newsgroups used to fill this role quite well without points, but came with all sorts of negatives (as detailed above). The benefit of the Stack / Quora stuff is that you don't have to wade through irrelevant stuff to find what you need. but points?

ddkrone 16y ago
The voting is a crude proxy for correctness. I say crude because sometimes the first few answers get way too many votes for simply being the first but over time the correct answers float to the top.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

alanh 16y ago

To me, the #1 problem with Stack Overflow is the number of plain bad answers that are given and often accepted. CSS question? Here’s someone’s un-researched and invalid first guess, that doen’t work in practice. +10 karma and accepted. Hard question? Here’s some loser’s gut feeling of “can’t be done” in exchange for +2 karma, and then a knowledgeable follow-up a day later from someone who has actually been there, done that, and figured it out. Example: Someone with 82k karma posts a non-answer rudely telling me I should be using another technology altogether, a cheap and worthless move that earned +2 karma: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4696128/bash-script-determine-if-file-modified/4696145#4696145 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4696128/bash-script-deter... So often it’s apparent people are just throwing best-guess answers out there for karma, and this is hugely unhelpful. There should be a large penalty for stating incorrect guesses as fact. It’s to the point where I instantly mistrust any answer from someone with over 10k reputation as I learned there is a good chance they are just shooting from the hip for karma.

cruise02 16y ago
You pointed out yourself in the comments to that answer that rsync was helpful, but that you didn't like the rude tone. The answer you accepted also agreed that you should use rsync until you edited the question to add more details. Now it's cheap and worthless? The system seems to work. The top-voted answer is the one you accepted.
- alanh 16y ago
  I was being generous, as rsync could be a useful suggestion to other visitors to the page, but it absolutely doesn’t answer the question that was asked. The top-voted answer, to the contrary, was edited to be genuinely helpful and an accurate answer, and deserves those upvotes. Also keep in mind that the page is getting activity because it’s linked from this discussion, so some karma changes have been triggered just now.
bosie 16y ago
care to explain how he was rude and his tone off-putting? and i hope my question isn't rude ;)

toephu 16y ago

stackoverflow rocks, you just suck at using it cuz ur an idiot.

mcantor 16y ago

This post appears to be written from the perspective that the goal of Stack Overflow is to gain points, when I believe the goal of Stack Overflow is to answer questions.

RuadhanMc 16y ago

I would encourage anyone who is interested about the thinking behind Stack Overflow, reputation, money, question and answer sites, badges, commenting, wiki, etc, to go back and listen to the early Stack Overflow podcasts. You will get an hour by hour insight into their thinking behind certain features of the site and will see that there are some very good reasons (and to be honest, some not) for some things being the way they are. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/

quinndupont 16y ago

The information on Stack Overflow is fantastic, but I just don't want to be a leach. And contributing something useful is challenging. Maybe I just don't have anything wonderful enough to say.

olalonde 16y ago

That's why I try to avoid StackOverflow as much as possible when I can ask my question on a smaller StackExchange site such as http://askubuntu.com http://askubuntu.com or http://programmers.stackexchange.com http://programmers.stackexchange.com. The quality of answers on smaller SE sites is usually 10x higher.

kaffeinecoma 16y ago

I totally disagree with this blog posting, but here's a situation that I feel SO could do better. I wish there were a feature whereby as a question-asker, you could say "I've dutifully read all the provided responses, and none of them answers my question. Marking this as 'unsolved'". And then the "unsolved" questions would not count against your percentage in "accept rate". When new answers come in, you'd need to go back and re-evaluate whether or not the new responses answer your question or not. The original idea of publishing askers' accept ratio is to encourage people to "give credit where credit is due". But it also has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging people to accept sub-par answers at times. Apart from that I love the site, and hope Jeff makes a bundle (or at least a happy existence) from it.

basha 16y ago

Why not to try a new site for programmers http://tagmask.com http://tagmask.com. It provides the ability to filter out content according your preferences and looks really good. Have you checked it out?

flipside 16y ago

Any Q&A site that discourages potentially useful answers is doing it wrong. As it happens, I've come up with an algorithm that would solve the most common problems with Q&A sites (included the ones cited in this article) and am in the process of building a prototype.

ben1040 16y ago

I thought the same thing when I joined SO a few months ago, and agreed with a lot of what was written in the blog post. But, then I decided to give SO another chance just now. I posted two answers and in ten minutes got enough upvotes to get me out of the 15-rep new-user jail. So consider my mind changed and I don't see what the big problem is, now.

ForumRatt 16y ago

I frequent the sister site Super User, I had no problem in getting rep points, so far I am at over 8K in less than 8 months. No these are not forums and you will be berated for not following the proper order of things. If you can't compete stay off the site, its not for everybody like a forum is.

infocaptor 16y ago

No matter what others say, but SO is awesome. I have got nearly instant responses. Only once I had to pay someone on freelancer to solve my jquery issue. It is like having SO community helping me in my development. I know it is tempting to gain reputation points by answering simple questions. Simple questions will have tons of responses. Instead try to pick the tough ones and answer them.

petercooper 16y ago

I agree 100%. I was in SO early (the beta) and still encountered this. Not only that, but a quick/early bad answer would tend to do better long-term than a later but correct answer. Given this (and I'm no stranger to accumulating high levels of karma/followers/whatever by natural participation on sites) I only use Stack Overflow as a user now and rarely answer anything. It works great for that and I can sift through the answers and pick the one that works best while ignoring the score. It's clearly not for me in terms of participating fully but I can live with that.

nlawalker 16y ago

Headline is misleading - the real complaint isn't that participating is impossible, it's that reputation is hard to earn. In SO's nascent days, you could earn rep simply by showing up and answering questions. Now that it's popular, if you want to gain rep, you have to muscle your way in using methods like the author describes. I find it amusing that SO's creators chose the term "reputation" for their participation points, as opposed to "karma" or something else, because in this aspect it's pretty similar to real-life reputation. When supply is high, it's hard to gain reputation without gaming the system. That's not SO, that's life.

tmachinecharmer 16y ago

In this article you say that you are <strike>a pretty and smart</strike> "a pretty smart guy". Then you are definitely welcome at SO. NOT participating in SO is neither a solution to your problem nor a decision that a pretty smart guy would take. Give it a shot buddy! and I am sure you will NOT write an article about how awesome SO is because you won't find the words to describe SO awesomeness.

RobertKohr 16y ago

Who cares? If I hit a wall while working on a problem, I toss into the gladiator pit known as Stack Overflow, and after it has been mawed to pieces by a bunch of brilliant people, I stop by and get my answer and can continue whatever I was doing. Usually this all happens in the time it takes for me to get some coffee and maybe take a short walk. It is a beacon of hope and joy to someone who has wasted too much time in the past trying to find the answers to hard problems. So they are at each-others' throats trying to out answer other users so they can increment up a point counter. Gamefication is a great motivator, and I am happy that I don't have to use the typical motivators of begging, pleading, or -ugh- paying for quality technical support. Emotional reactions to the competitiveness is the success of a very well designed game that has the outcome of great answers to problems that are typically hard to find.

vannevar 16y ago

I think the poster makes a good point. In the early days of SO, as in any QA site, there were a surplus of questions and a dearth of answers. It would've been suicidal to obstruct people from providing answers, so the bar was set low there. Comments on the other hand are less valuable early on, so there was no reason to encourage them. Fast forward to today, and now there are a critical mass of people willing---even eager---to answer questions, so that every new question has a surplus of answers, many of them wrong. SO might well improve their signal/noise ratio by reversing their policy and requiring higher karma for answers than they do for commenting. As the poster points out, a newb is unlikely to come up with an answer not already posted, but nonetheless might have some unique experience or insight on that answer that could be helpful.

jodrellblank 16y ago

Do programming language designers look for repetetive questions on SO and improve their languages so those questions wont come up in future?

devin 16y ago

"The point system is all wrong!" Epic fail at life.

lhnn 16y ago

Why <noun> sucks, and <false hyperbole>

eliben 16y ago

SO is optimized for askers, not for answerers and intentionally so! The whole goal of the website is to make asking questions simple, finding related questions (reasonably) simple, and getting good answers quickly. As you can see from profiles of some users, some people exchanged their books for SO (why look it up - just ask). True, the rep game is a tough one, but so is life, so get over it.

david_shaw 16y ago

Please stop saying that StackOverflow is 'broke.' The word you're looking for is broken. StackOverflow's overflowing stack of cash is doing quite well, actually. Other than that admittedly nitpicky detail, the article is accurate and provides insight on a problem that I, too, have experienced. However, I don't think that StackOverflow is broken, I just think it's overcrowded. And for a question-and-answer style website, isn't that a good thing?

marcusEting 16y ago

The other bad thing about SO is that when a question has some answers, even if they are not really right, nobody really pays attention to the question anymore. So it feels like questions that move down in the queue with a few proposed answers are basically dead.

cfontes 16y ago

I Disagree badly... It's a wonderful environment for developers. I personnaly love it and I only have 101 points. that doesn't keep me from doing a thing there. Really bad, bad article.

d0mine 16y ago

> Edit: closing comments since I’m tired of moderating (and I didn’t delete any but the obvious spam). Thanks for letting me vent. It is ironic to hear it from a guy who complains that he can't comment without enough reputation points on a site visited by millions.

messel 16y ago

I believe SO is designed so that new users ask questions. Then after getting a few rep points from questions they can contribute back with answers or comments (my preferred input).

kstenerud 16y ago

I've never liked karma systems. On the surface it seems to make sense: People who are helpful/insightful get lots of karma. In practice, it fails on two fronts: First, karma systems in and of themselves work based on popularity, under the mistaken idea that popularity = correctness/insightfulness/suitability. Quite often, the most insightful or thought provoking ideas are unpopular (or speaking the truth is unpopular). What you get is a system that automatically filters out the ideas that the majority are unconfortable with, and so you end up with an echo chamber which doesn't admit new ideas. Second, the policies formed around the karma system grow biased AGAINST new users over time, which leads to community stagnation: The initial couple of years are great. The early adopters are all eager to participate in meaningful ways, and build a thriving, vibrant community. Then the gamers join in. They learn how to game the system to gain points. They do this just to show that they can. Closely related, the karma whores move in. Their sole goal is to gain points for self-worth. The community is meaningless; points are everything. As the gamer's techniques become more widly known, the spammers move in, automating the techniques to promote their spam, and the cat-and-mouse game begins, usually at the expense of making things more difficult for the users. These measures are almost always done with consideration of the already established user base, using them to determine what a "normal, real" user is like. Once you hit this point, it starts to become prohibitively expensive for a new user to join in, thanks to the biased notion of a "normal user". Stack Overflow is a prime example of this, where you have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops just to be able to even comment or gasp edit your own question because upon re-reading, you decide it's not as clear as it could be. And so you complain. But people don't like complainers, so they all jump on you and say "It's not so bad! I went through the red tape and so should you!" and "If you don't like the red tape, there's no place for you here!" There's a word for this: Bureaucracy. As a service provider, you should be doing everything in your power to make things MORE accessible to new users, not LESS accessible. You should be ENCOURAGING participation, not throwing hurdles in their way. New users are fickle. Their first experience on your site will largely shape their perception of it forever. Start them off with a bad experience and they'll refuse to participate. Rampant bureaucracy is a sign of severe failure in the system.