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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 templa

by 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.
icandoitbetter 16y ago
Excellent reply. SO far surpasses any other programming forum when it comes to getting answers for a specific problem, and that matters so much more than how easy it is for a user to get artificial karma.
georgemcbay 16y ago
Re: "But to complain about a system where there are too many people answering questions is, to be perfectly blunt, ridiculous and narcissistic" I've never tried to participate in Stack Overflow as a hyper-active question answerer, but as a sometimes-user of the site who ends up there via Google often when performing coding question searches, the site still suffers from what has been dubbed "The Fastest Gun in the West" problem. I can usually find answers that are at least a useful starting point to solving my core problem on Stack Overflow but they are very often not the top ranked answer and are often way at the bottom sitting with a 0 rating due to having been posted "long" after the question went live (and by "long" after I usually mean like the next day). The top rated stuff is often superficial junk answers that just happened to be the best available when the question was still a hot one. So I'd argue that even from a non-poster's view, the site is broken (because I have to dig through it more than I should have to) though still ultimately useful.
- chc 16y ago
  This happens sometimes, but I don't think it's endemic. I've seen people come in a day late, even in questions where an answer has been accepted, and get tons of votes. It just has to be obviously much better than the others and you have to hope the stars don't align against you (as with so many things in life). The "fastest gun" problem typically occurs when the best answer does not really stand out to people. For example, glancing at my top five answers, one of them was posted the day after the others in the question and got four times as many votes as the next top answer. I remember that at the time I wrote my answer, a very low-quality answer from somebody who didn't know Ruby very well was accepted, but now mine is accepted and the other guy graciously deleted his. And that one's still getting votes. People come across those old questions and vote the good answers up years later. So the site can correct itself as long as people are willing to do that.
  - bbarthel 16y ago
    Unless something has changed, you need a minimum level of reputation to upvote. If you are not a member of the site (I have a vague memory of starting with only 10 rep - I have no idea now) you have no mechanism to actually do as you suggest until after you've posted or asked a question that has gotten at least one vote.
jshen 16y ago
I think the problem with the OPs line of argument is that the goal is to begin commenting right away. When I give a good answer to a question that already has some answers I'll eventually get up votes. It takes time for new people to come looking for the same answer and vote up my answer, but it happens. A few of my answers are now voted higher than the accepted answer. It takes time not effort, but I think that's the point.
barrkel 16y ago
I've generally stopped answering questions on SO, unless they're explicitly related to the Delphi compiler and RTL and nobody else has answered them - and I find these with a combination of Google search alert and RSS feed on SO tags, which are delayed, rather than by visiting the site. Something that would have kept me there is something along the lines of this: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19659/search-filters-by-minimum-rep-maximum-views-maximum-answers-etc http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19659/search-filters... If I could filter questions by minimum rep, I could look for questions that aren't by complete noobs - and the noobs are getting into the 2-5k rep range now owing to repeated asking of simple questions. It would be more stimulating to answer questions that stump expert users; as it is, I fear that the site is driving away these people post haste. A more explicit version of my motivation for asking is in the original version: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/19659/revisions http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/19659/revisions ... but it was downvoted as people seemed to be misreading me.
- ultrasaurus 16y ago
  The reputation might be a sort inverse filter: thousands of people participate in the programming jokes questions whereas even perfect answers to questions like "Under conditions X, Y, Z how can my foo do bar?" are unlikely to get much love. It's those hard questions I love StackOverflow for (and there's no rush of people sniping them).
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lyudmil 16y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it addresses the post. It's certainly true that Stack Overflow is the best place to get answers to programming questions and I won't dispute that. Here, though, is what I think the problem is. I think it mirrors the OP's problem. Stack Overflow became and is the best place to get answers to programming problems because of the community it has been able to build. There are always competent people ready to provide an answer and they do it quickly. However, the problem is that the community is difficult to participate in. You need rep to do anything and you don't get rep until you do something. You also need to compete with a lot of other people in order to contribute usefully, which makes the barrier even higher. Ultimately, this undermines the community, which is what makes Stack Overflow good. You can say that these effects can be ignored because answers are still given and you'd be right. But the difficulties do exist. I have enough rep on SO now to do most things (maybe not down-voting), but it was hard to get, so I can attest to what the OP was saying. I can only imagine it's harder now after the community has grown and rep inflation has kicked in.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Exactly. The OP's point is that it's hard to get over the initial rep hurdle so that you can participate. This prompts the idea: is there some sort of way that new users could quickly and reliably gain a minimum amount of rep by doing a bit of maintenance on the site? Say, flagging spam or suggesting correction which must be approved by someone with lots of rep? If this is possible, why don't more people know about it.
  - ender7 16y ago
    Yes. Ask questions. Asking questions gets you rep (and quite quickly too, if your questions are voted up).
    - lyudmil 16y ago
      Valid, but asking questions is hard to do consistently. I've only ever asked questions if I've been unable to deal with a problem. Answering questions is something I can do on my own time because it's fun. Answering questions is what draws me to the Stack Overflow community. The way I view it it's just a particularity of the way Stack Overflow has been set up. I think cletus is correct - rep cannot be your goal or you're bound to get frustrated as the OP found out.
jdp23 16y ago
Do I understand correctly that as a relatively high-ranked you don't think it sucks, you just don't go there much any more because you don't think the questions are interesting?
baddox 16y ago
The situation you're describing is probably great for the askers of questions, but it's certainly not good for those of us wanting to contribute answers. edit: That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't think that "StackOverflow sucks," but it does means that it sucks for new users trying to become useful contributors.
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  If there are already enough people who are contributing, what is the problem then? Why do you want to contribute to something if it not useless?
gnosis 16y ago
"SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers." You want an even faster answer? Ask on IRC. As far as programming questions go, freenode is usually the best place to go (with a minority or apps and projects off on some other irc networks, sometimes). That said, HN, forums, mailing lists, usenet, and SO are usually better for preserving answers for others to learn from once the question has already been asked by someone else. The quality and depth of the answers can sometimes be better in these other media that are more well suited to longer, uninterrupted, essay-like answers. On the other hand, that's not always the case, since on IRC there is a much higher level of interaction and you also have the ability to interrupt the speaker and ask for clarification on any point, with immediate feedback. As a very rough analogy, I generally find IRC to be more like having a real-time spoken conversation with a teacher (or teachers). Whereas those other media are something more akin to correspondence via letters and email. Of course, you don't get upvotes or points for answering questions on IRC. But the system works very well anyway. And, honestly, who really cares about these silly tokens anyway?
- khafra 16y ago
  I've asked a question in freenode channels then idled for the better part of a day, or even a few days, with little traffic and no answers. SO is faster, often much faster.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    It could have just been the case that more experts for the particular area you're interested in were on SO at the time you asked that question. Had you asked a different question on a different topic, perhaps there would have been more experts ready to answer it on IRC than on SO. Having spent a long time on IRC, I can attest to seeing many people's questions getting answered there constantly, and usually (on the active channels, at least) very quickly (ie. often within seconds or a minute or two). Fifteen minutes is usually considered a long time to wait in an active channel for an answer to a question that isn't really obscure. Of course the likelihood of an answer decreases with the obscurity of the question, the lack of popularity/appropriateness of whatever it is you're asking about, and depends on when and how you ask the question. The same goes for any other medium of communication. I'm happy that you've had a positive experience on SO, and sorry that you haven't had much luck with IRC. But that doesn't mean that your experience is a typical one.
tzs 16y ago
I mostly use SO when an answer shows up in Google. I've only answers a very small number of questions. Occasionally I see an answer there that is mostly right, but has one or two things that are not quite right. My first impulse is to add a comment--except I am not allowed to add comments.
kevinelliott 16y ago
You criticize the OP for not liking the incentive system, but then openly admit that you don't visit the SO site much anymore because you have other priorities and don't want to play the waiting game. You're nearly saying the same thing in different ways, but you're still criticizing him. Next, you criticize him for being narcissistic but forget to detail that the SO site is built around reputation, which is an INCENTIVE system for encouraging/discouraging participation, and thus actually encourages narcissism. After all, most people on that site are essentially working for a form of virtual currency to their personal brand. How much more narcissistic can you get? It's all about yourself, with an illusion that you're there to help others. Whenever reputation systems are in play, it's likely impossible to leave narcissism completely out of it. It would have to be anonymous, but even then, some people are still narcissistic privately. Then, you go on to mention that the questions are less interesting to yourself (how is that not more about yourself than the posters on the site?)... I mean, the hypocrisy is thick here. Sure, the OP is being critical of SO, but he brings up some good points. He's not really whining about not getting 1000 points after 2 posts. It's evident that he's used the site for a reasonable amount of time and then made some observations that he just can't deal with anymore. You're obviously smart, perhaps more than most. Perhaps a more constructive reply to the OP of the article makes more sense than simply tearing him down? He makes good points, from his perspective. I personally see the degradation of SO due to these problems. Less experienced developers can only earn reputation by knowing more than they do, because they are unable to ask repeat questions on simpler topics. Newbies still continue to do it, and thus the site is flooded with repeat questions, and more experienced users get annoyed and condescending. There is no warm culture there, and it's purely self-administrating, other than by some reputation filters. Contrast this to HN where PG and others help to continually curate the community personally and not just with software implementations. Writing a thoughtful response takes time, and when 7-10 other people are writing thoughtful responses, don't you think that's a bit discouraging? Especially when you think the subject matter is less interesting as you have progressed? If SO wants to grow a good community, they're going to have to make some serious changes.
albertzeyer 16y ago
* [On forums] 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) * Actually, I have made similar experience also on SO when a question becomes a bit more special. I hate it to justify why I want to do it this way. But I was told that it's just the way it is on SO.

by cletus 16y ago

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.

icandoitbetter 16y ago

Excellent reply. SO far surpasses any other programming forum when it comes to getting answers for a specific problem, and that matters so much more than how easy it is for a user to get artificial karma.

georgemcbay 16y ago

Re: "But to complain about a system where there are too many people answering questions is, to be perfectly blunt, ridiculous and narcissistic" I've never tried to participate in Stack Overflow as a hyper-active question answerer, but as a sometimes-user of the site who ends up there via Google often when performing coding question searches, the site still suffers from what has been dubbed "The Fastest Gun in the West" problem. I can usually find answers that are at least a useful starting point to solving my core problem on Stack Overflow but they are very often not the top ranked answer and are often way at the bottom sitting with a 0 rating due to having been posted "long" after the question went live (and by "long" after I usually mean like the next day). The top rated stuff is often superficial junk answers that just happened to be the best available when the question was still a hot one. So I'd argue that even from a non-poster's view, the site is broken (because I have to dig through it more than I should have to) though still ultimately useful.

chc 16y ago
This happens sometimes, but I don't think it's endemic. I've seen people come in a day late, even in questions where an answer has been accepted, and get tons of votes. It just has to be obviously much better than the others and you have to hope the stars don't align against you (as with so many things in life). The "fastest gun" problem typically occurs when the best answer does not really stand out to people. For example, glancing at my top five answers, one of them was posted the day after the others in the question and got four times as many votes as the next top answer. I remember that at the time I wrote my answer, a very low-quality answer from somebody who didn't know Ruby very well was accepted, but now mine is accepted and the other guy graciously deleted his. And that one's still getting votes. People come across those old questions and vote the good answers up years later. So the site can correct itself as long as people are willing to do that.
- bbarthel 16y ago
  Unless something has changed, you need a minimum level of reputation to upvote. If you are not a member of the site (I have a vague memory of starting with only 10 rep - I have no idea now) you have no mechanism to actually do as you suggest until after you've posted or asked a question that has gotten at least one vote.

jshen 16y ago

I think the problem with the OPs line of argument is that the goal is to begin commenting right away. When I give a good answer to a question that already has some answers I'll eventually get up votes. It takes time for new people to come looking for the same answer and vote up my answer, but it happens. A few of my answers are now voted higher than the accepted answer. It takes time not effort, but I think that's the point.

barrkel 16y ago

I've generally stopped answering questions on SO, unless they're explicitly related to the Delphi compiler and RTL and nobody else has answered them - and I find these with a combination of Google search alert and RSS feed on SO tags, which are delayed, rather than by visiting the site. Something that would have kept me there is something along the lines of this: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19659/search-filters-by-minimum-rep-maximum-views-maximum-answers-etc http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19659/search-filters... If I could filter questions by minimum rep, I could look for questions that aren't by complete noobs - and the noobs are getting into the 2-5k rep range now owing to repeated asking of simple questions. It would be more stimulating to answer questions that stump expert users; as it is, I fear that the site is driving away these people post haste. A more explicit version of my motivation for asking is in the original version: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/19659/revisions http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/19659/revisions ... but it was downvoted as people seemed to be misreading me.

ultrasaurus 16y ago
The reputation might be a sort inverse filter: thousands of people participate in the programming jokes questions whereas even perfect answers to questions like "Under conditions X, Y, Z how can my foo do bar?" are unlikely to get much love. It's those hard questions I love StackOverflow for (and there's no rush of people sniping them).

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

lyudmil 16y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it addresses the post. It's certainly true that Stack Overflow is the best place to get answers to programming questions and I won't dispute that. Here, though, is what I think the problem is. I think it mirrors the OP's problem. Stack Overflow became and is the best place to get answers to programming problems because of the community it has been able to build. There are always competent people ready to provide an answer and they do it quickly. However, the problem is that the community is difficult to participate in. You need rep to do anything and you don't get rep until you do something. You also need to compete with a lot of other people in order to contribute usefully, which makes the barrier even higher. Ultimately, this undermines the community, which is what makes Stack Overflow good. You can say that these effects can be ignored because answers are still given and you'd be right. But the difficulties do exist. I have enough rep on SO now to do most things (maybe not down-voting), but it was hard to get, so I can attest to what the OP was saying. I can only imagine it's harder now after the community has grown and rep inflation has kicked in.

jessriedel 16y ago
Exactly. The OP's point is that it's hard to get over the initial rep hurdle so that you can participate. This prompts the idea: is there some sort of way that new users could quickly and reliably gain a minimum amount of rep by doing a bit of maintenance on the site? Say, flagging spam or suggesting correction which must be approved by someone with lots of rep? If this is possible, why don't more people know about it.
- ender7 16y ago
  Yes. Ask questions. Asking questions gets you rep (and quite quickly too, if your questions are voted up).
  - lyudmil 16y ago
    Valid, but asking questions is hard to do consistently. I've only ever asked questions if I've been unable to deal with a problem. Answering questions is something I can do on my own time because it's fun. Answering questions is what draws me to the Stack Overflow community. The way I view it it's just a particularity of the way Stack Overflow has been set up. I think cletus is correct - rep cannot be your goal or you're bound to get frustrated as the OP found out.

jdp23 16y ago

Do I understand correctly that as a relatively high-ranked you don't think it sucks, you just don't go there much any more because you don't think the questions are interesting?

baddox 16y ago

The situation you're describing is probably great for the askers of questions, but it's certainly not good for those of us wanting to contribute answers. edit: That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't think that "StackOverflow sucks," but it does means that it sucks for new users trying to become useful contributors.

albertzeyer 16y ago
If there are already enough people who are contributing, what is the problem then? Why do you want to contribute to something if it not useless?

gnosis 16y ago

"SO is a superb solution for the person asking the question because they do get fast answers." You want an even faster answer? Ask on IRC. As far as programming questions go, freenode is usually the best place to go (with a minority or apps and projects off on some other irc networks, sometimes). That said, HN, forums, mailing lists, usenet, and SO are usually better for preserving answers for others to learn from once the question has already been asked by someone else. The quality and depth of the answers can sometimes be better in these other media that are more well suited to longer, uninterrupted, essay-like answers. On the other hand, that's not always the case, since on IRC there is a much higher level of interaction and you also have the ability to interrupt the speaker and ask for clarification on any point, with immediate feedback. As a very rough analogy, I generally find IRC to be more like having a real-time spoken conversation with a teacher (or teachers). Whereas those other media are something more akin to correspondence via letters and email. Of course, you don't get upvotes or points for answering questions on IRC. But the system works very well anyway. And, honestly, who really cares about these silly tokens anyway?

khafra 16y ago
I've asked a question in freenode channels then idled for the better part of a day, or even a few days, with little traffic and no answers. SO is faster, often much faster.
- gnosis 16y ago
  It could have just been the case that more experts for the particular area you're interested in were on SO at the time you asked that question. Had you asked a different question on a different topic, perhaps there would have been more experts ready to answer it on IRC than on SO. Having spent a long time on IRC, I can attest to seeing many people's questions getting answered there constantly, and usually (on the active channels, at least) very quickly (ie. often within seconds or a minute or two). Fifteen minutes is usually considered a long time to wait in an active channel for an answer to a question that isn't really obscure. Of course the likelihood of an answer decreases with the obscurity of the question, the lack of popularity/appropriateness of whatever it is you're asking about, and depends on when and how you ask the question. The same goes for any other medium of communication. I'm happy that you've had a positive experience on SO, and sorry that you haven't had much luck with IRC. But that doesn't mean that your experience is a typical one.

tzs 16y ago

I mostly use SO when an answer shows up in Google. I've only answers a very small number of questions. Occasionally I see an answer there that is mostly right, but has one or two things that are not quite right. My first impulse is to add a comment--except I am not allowed to add comments.

kevinelliott 16y ago

You criticize the OP for not liking the incentive system, but then openly admit that you don't visit the SO site much anymore because you have other priorities and don't want to play the waiting game. You're nearly saying the same thing in different ways, but you're still criticizing him. Next, you criticize him for being narcissistic but forget to detail that the SO site is built around reputation, which is an INCENTIVE system for encouraging/discouraging participation, and thus actually encourages narcissism. After all, most people on that site are essentially working for a form of virtual currency to their personal brand. How much more narcissistic can you get? It's all about yourself, with an illusion that you're there to help others. Whenever reputation systems are in play, it's likely impossible to leave narcissism completely out of it. It would have to be anonymous, but even then, some people are still narcissistic privately. Then, you go on to mention that the questions are less interesting to yourself (how is that not more about yourself than the posters on the site?)... I mean, the hypocrisy is thick here. Sure, the OP is being critical of SO, but he brings up some good points. He's not really whining about not getting 1000 points after 2 posts. It's evident that he's used the site for a reasonable amount of time and then made some observations that he just can't deal with anymore. You're obviously smart, perhaps more than most. Perhaps a more constructive reply to the OP of the article makes more sense than simply tearing him down? He makes good points, from his perspective. I personally see the degradation of SO due to these problems. Less experienced developers can only earn reputation by knowing more than they do, because they are unable to ask repeat questions on simpler topics. Newbies still continue to do it, and thus the site is flooded with repeat questions, and more experienced users get annoyed and condescending. There is no warm culture there, and it's purely self-administrating, other than by some reputation filters. Contrast this to HN where PG and others help to continually curate the community personally and not just with software implementations. Writing a thoughtful response takes time, and when 7-10 other people are writing thoughtful responses, don't you think that's a bit discouraging? Especially when you think the subject matter is less interesting as you have progressed? If SO wants to grow a good community, they're going to have to make some serious changes.

albertzeyer 16y ago

* [On forums] 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) * Actually, I have made similar experience also on SO when a question becomes a bit more special. I hate it to justify why I want to do it this way. But I was told that it's just the way it is on SO.