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IMHO, the popularity of Stackoverflow is powered by search engine results rather than their community. If they fail to create such a community, it’s probably ha
by emrehan 6y ago
IMHO, the popularity of Stackoverflow is powered by search engine results rather than their community. If they fail to create such a community, it’s probably hard to establish one around a Q&A app.
In a competition like this where network effects play a huge role, your app must be orders of magnitude better for some niche. It could be about revenue sharing, decentralization or something better.
- xupybd 6y agoStackoverflow can be a bit off putting if your question is considered off topic. Some people zealously close questions without really reading the content.
- politician 6y agoAll questions are off topic on SO. At least, that's been my experience.
- asiachick 6y agoSince I answer 10-20 questions a week I happen to know that all questions are not off topic. It's more likely you asked an of topic question. The 3 most common off topic questions 1. Asking for a library recommendation I want to do X? What library should I use? 2. Asking for debugging help without putting the code in the question My code doesn't work. Here's a link to my github repo 3. Asking an overly general question How do I 3d in Python?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- politician 6y agoWhen I used to use the site several years ago, I would spend easily a hour or two crafting a question to avoid the train of mods and trolls questioning why I wasn’t doing it using their preferred framework or tool. I would write a clear question with context, and include the things I tried but didn’t work. It got to a point where writing a question that would pass the gauntlet of mods and people looking for easy rep would result in no answers. My takeaway was that SO only works for superficial questions where folks could maximize their rep/hour. These days I go directly to the maintainers on GitHub or through commercial support. If those channels aren’t available, I avoid the dependency. Crowdsourced answers to technical issues worked for the first few years on SO, but game theory has ruined it.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoAgain the they're-so-mean-to-me moan. Post a link to your questions so we can judge.
- politician 6y agoNo thanks. I’m not interested in helping you get rep on a site that’s irrelevant.
- ghufran_syed 6y agoI agree it’s hard to judge a particular case without seeing the specific example. But you might want to consider the following: “ No subtle put-downs or unfriendly language. Even if you don’t intend it, this can have a negative impact on others.” https://meta.stackexchange.com/conduct https://meta.stackexchange.com/conduct “Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.“ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I’d be curious if you feel that your comment meets these guidelines? If not, do you think the relevant sites would be better served by changing the guidelines?
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoYou're right, the first sentence was wrong. I should not have. Thank you for pointing it out, and upvoted. I hold the second part is reasonable though.
- xupybd 6y agoI can't say that's been my experience. But some very precise questions are sometimes mistaken for general questions when they can be mistaken for general questions when only skimmed over.