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You know guys, I love Stack Overflow. It's always been an enormous help whenever I had a question that someone had an answer for. But because I earned more tha

by pestaa 16y ago

You know guys, I love Stack Overflow. It's always been an enormous help whenever I had a question that someone had an answer for. But because I earned more than 1.500 reputation scores ( http://stackoverflow.com/users/69424/pestaa http://stackoverflow.com/users/69424/pestaa ), I feel I have the right to say, the atmosphere does not just feel right as the author states. Here's how I feel (see the comments): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4131707/mysql-i-have-two-large-fields-which-when-records-are-looped-and-displayed-make/4131753#4131753 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4131707/mysql-i-have-two-... If someone's astounded by seeing a sensible answer on SO, something's wrong. Hacker News works so much better by putting far less emphasis on karma, and that's why I decided to contribute to HN, and not SO anymore.

wilhil 16y ago
One person out of almost half a million, I am sure it was in jest, anyway, you were up voted the most showing that anyone coming to that topic will see that you have the best answer. It obviously, in that specific example, is just not what the asker was wanting. Come back to SO! :)
- pestaa 16y ago
  This person has 13k rep, my hunch is he saw at least a fair amount of corners of SO. But bringing up that specific page was not the basis of my generalization. It was rather a direct case to my observation. It felt like racing, and not fun. I'll definitely improve the stuff I find useful on SO, but I won't hunt unanswered questions anymore.
Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Yours is actually fairly typical of many SO answers. Jeff used to say on the podcast that a load of the time you get people answering basically saying "that's not even the right question" which I actually think is one of the great things about it. But this is actually why the SO voting mechanism works. Someone coming to this question now has two useful answers sat at the top of the pile - one which directly answers the question in an exact, literal fashion, and one which says "hold on, is that the real problem? Maybe you should think about this." The rep / karma thing is only as much of an issue as you let it be as are comments from people you disagree with. There are always people who have another view (be it right or wrong) but your rep said that you were helping a whole bunch people so I'm surprised that you take one negative comment as something which should override 150+ up votes. I'd certainly say that in terms a level of grief (150:1) to me that feels more amicable and agreeable than HN can be when it gets feisty.
- pestaa 16y ago
  There were no negative comments to override the pleasure contribution used to be. But it started to decline because I had to go harder and harder against the flow of reputation-hunting to do what I find enjoying -- learning from and talking with smart engineers. HN does get feisty at times, but the conversation is way, way more mature than I found anywhere else.

by pestaa 16y ago

wilhil 16y ago

One person out of almost half a million, I am sure it was in jest, anyway, you were up voted the most showing that anyone coming to that topic will see that you have the best answer. It obviously, in that specific example, is just not what the asker was wanting. Come back to SO! :)

pestaa 16y ago
This person has 13k rep, my hunch is he saw at least a fair amount of corners of SO. But bringing up that specific page was not the basis of my generalization. It was rather a direct case to my observation. It felt like racing, and not fun. I'll definitely improve the stuff I find useful on SO, but I won't hunt unanswered questions anymore.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago

Yours is actually fairly typical of many SO answers. Jeff used to say on the podcast that a load of the time you get people answering basically saying "that's not even the right question" which I actually think is one of the great things about it. But this is actually why the SO voting mechanism works. Someone coming to this question now has two useful answers sat at the top of the pile - one which directly answers the question in an exact, literal fashion, and one which says "hold on, is that the real problem? Maybe you should think about this." The rep / karma thing is only as much of an issue as you let it be as are comments from people you disagree with. There are always people who have another view (be it right or wrong) but your rep said that you were helping a whole bunch people so I'm surprised that you take one negative comment as something which should override 150+ up votes. I'd certainly say that in terms a level of grief (150:1) to me that feels more amicable and agreeable than HN can be when it gets feisty.

pestaa 16y ago
There were no negative comments to override the pleasure contribution used to be. But it started to decline because I had to go harder and harder against the flow of reputation-hunting to do what I find enjoying -- learning from and talking with smart engineers. HN does get feisty at times, but the conversation is way, way more mature than I found anywhere else.