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I always feel a bit sad and wistful when thinking about Stack Overflow. It was a great idea and at the beginning it worked well but the moderation culture destr

I always feel a bit sad and wistful when thinking about Stack Overflow. It was a great idea and at the beginning it worked well but the moderation culture destroyed the site. There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not, and technology changes so a duplicate question asked 2 years later is going to get different responses), closing questions because they are too open ended (but those tend to give the most interesting answers) and moderation is both too heavy handed and opaque (no records of deleted comments). Also, often enough the accepted answer for a question is not the best answer and instead the best answer can be found by looking at other answers or the comments (which I agree with the author should not be seen as ephemeral but are instead critical) So, all in all, Stack overflow was great when it came out, the concept is good and it could be great but falls well short of that.

FreeKill 6y ago
I wonder if something more like a wiki format would be better long term. Say you take a question like "How to loop through a list of key,value pairs in JavaScript. Through the last 10 years, this has changed a lot through vanilla to libraries like jquery to new iterations like ES5/6. What I would love to see is just a page with this question asked, maintained over time with an emphasis on when the previous solution was relevant, and highlighting the most recent, preferred options for solving the problem. So, rather than a score based social network style system, turn the questions into living, and evolving documents. Also, sometimes a person gets stuck having to work on code that's a decade old, so it would be nice to have a history as well, and not just the most recent solution that may not work in their environment.
- to11mtm 6y ago
  This doesn't sound bad on the surface, but my worry would be that we would wind up with Wiki-style moderation instead of SO style moderation. i.e. 'guarded articles', edit wars and power-mods overriding outside consensus.
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
    Instead of SO style moderation, with closed questions being treated as canonical, corrected information buried in comments, and power-mods overriding outside consensus?
- jakecopp 6y ago
  A wiki curated from stack overflow answers would be amazing! StackOverflow powered GPT-3 haha.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Have you done much editing on Wikipedia? That seems like an optimistic view of what the experience would be.
  - notriddle 6y ago
    Wikipedia isn't perfect, but they get one thing right that Stack Overflow gets horribly wrong: they make it obvious who the audience is. A lot of people visiting Stack Overflow think that the purpose of a Stack Overflow question is to solve the OP's problem. They write "Dear Libby" style letter templates into the question box, and often provide very opinionated answers that try to give way more advice than was strictly asked for by trying to infer what's "really going on" based on the subtext of the question. And there's a lot of UI in there that encourages seeing it as an advice column. But the Stack Overflow people themselves don't want it to be a place to seek general advice. They want it to form a general resource, with Stack Overflow being less of a bulletin board and more of a reference guide. The problem is that their UI doesn't telegraph this very well (I blame the way they leave the original asker's name and avatar visible on the question), and neither do their marketing materials. They're kinda trying to have it both ways, baiting people with the chance to get their own question getting answered and then switching to editing their question into something more generally useful than something just for them. It is not a surprise that people feel cheated.
- saurik 6y ago
  The irony is that that is actually what StackOverflow is: you can edit any question to make it clearer... and you end up leaving the original person's name on it (which I frankly find kind of evil).
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The irony of all of this is that stackoverflow works just fine 95% of the time.
ravenstine 6y ago
I agree with all of that, but the worst part to me(which I guess relates to your point about the accepted answers) is that there's no path to deprecating old answer and old questions. I've been lambasted here in the past for saying this, but I'll say it again now and see if I get a different response; it's no longer helpful to search for "javascript" related questions and get mostly answers for jQuery. These days I'm able to solve a lot of problems just reading MDN, but sometimes I click on a Stack Overflow article and it turns out to be 12 answers that are all jQuery-specific even when the question itself doesn't call for it. jQuery isn't bad, but the world has changed around it and we can't keep pretending like everyone is using it for the same reasons we did back in 2011. This not only does new developers a general disservice, but it can do a disservice to projects that have less-than-average momentum. For instance, I use Ember JS every day, and it's a framework that has really changed a lot since its inception, but you'd never know it if you looked up questions for it on Stack Overflow. The Ember questions on there are so woefully outdated that I believe it gives potential new users the complete wrong impression of it. There are outdated React questions on there as well, but at least there's enough inertia behind React that new activity helps overcome this to a degree. On the other hand, people almost certainly have given up on Ember because none of the Stack Overflow answers work at all. Sure, we could all submit updated answers, but they'll be below the fold and they will never be reselected as the accepted answer. There are other reasons why Ember has been in decline, but I do blame the mechanics of SO as a big detractor. Preventing duplicate questions is fine, the overzealousness not withstanding, but if there's no mechanism to correct existing information as time goes on in a meaningful way, the only result can be rot.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > it's no longer helpful to search for "javascript" related questions and get mostly answers for jQuery jQuery is used on 83% of all websites; React is used on 4% [1]. You’re right that people are probably using it differently than they were a decade ago, but even in 2021 your average jQuery question is probably useful to many more people than your average React one. [1] https://css-tricks.com/how-the-web-is-really-built/ https://css-tricks.com/how-the-web-is-really-built/
  - 6y ago
m463 6y ago
I stopped because... and I wrote it down... "This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion" I think there should be a place for this kind of stuff, some place hackers can do these "prohibited" sorts of things...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jtdev 6y ago
  > “... or extended discussion“ Oh my, not the dreaded extended discussion!! When will people learn that our tech overlords have found the most optimized means of communicating? We mustn’t revert to the dark times when conversing was openly practiced by the barbarians.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
- chrisdirkis 6y ago
  But does this place have to be StackOverflow? I think it has space for discussion in comments, chat rooms, etc., but the main artifact is intended to be an easily searchable Q&A archive. I think they need to work on communicating that much more clearly, but ultimately they don't want to (primarily) be a place of extended discussion, debate, and so on, and I'm not sure it's fair to say "no, they're wrong" to that.
  - m463 6y ago
    > But does this place have to be StackOverflow? I was kind of referring to the very nice platform I'm typing on right now... :)
camjohnson26 6y ago
Disagree, stack overflow is still the best place to get answers to common programming questions. If you need to sort a list in Python it’s much better to find the answer on a short stackoverflow post than to sift through dozens of blogs, each with their own style, or to try to parse pages of documentation that goes into way more detail than you need. No other site has as much content as easy to find as stackoverflow, even if it’s not perfect.
- erikbye 6y ago
  It is much better to read the official documentation.
  - dmortin 6y ago
    People want quick answers, not browsing documentation. SO is useful in the sense that it provides answers to specific questions which a google search finds instantly.
    - bb88 6y ago
      True, but I've seen lots of answers that are "hacks" when there's usually a better, supported way that was spelled out in the docs, e.g. won't fail when you upgrade the library say. Or they don't want to understand the issue at hand, so they put in a hack, when obtaining a complete understanding of the issue which might take 5 minutes of their time reading the docs, would provide a better solution.
      - sofixa 6y ago
        If the docs have examples that cover your use case, which is far from certain.
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      Exactly. I code in half a dozen different languages that all have their own ways to split a string. When I can't remember the syntax to do this in, say, Python, being able to just say "python split string" and it goes to a reasonable SO answer is a big win for me. I love reading docs too, so I can get a deeper understanding. But sometimes I just need an answer in a hurry.
blondin 6y ago
same goes for all question-answer type platforms. they all fall into the traps you describe above. unfortunately, i don't see any of them doing anything about these issues.
pcthrowaway 6y ago
I think the rules about self-promotion are well-intended. If you ever get quora results to common programming or technology searches, you'll see what I mean; people responding with only loosely related comments which link to their own product, which "solves the problem for you". I get it, without any moderation, SO would be just as useless. I think there should be some nuance in how those rules are applied. The author of this post appears to be one of the authorities on webgl. If they've written helpful posts on the topic, and those can be referenced from SO answers, they should be able to do that. Heck, even if they sell something on their blog, it's still highly relevant. It's same the problem Google, Youtube, Apple, and basically every other service right now is having with attempting to moderate what can be shared on their platforms, without losing the quality content. Incredibly often, they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't have a solution; the problem is in promoting quality content while preventing spam. It's not all-or-nothing, we need to strike the right balance with moderation.
wpietri 6y ago
This is my take, too. I really like answering questions; it's nice to know that the thing I'm writing will be immediately useful to somebody, and maybe a bunch of somebodies. I'm a little uneasy doing free work for for-profit companies, but I set that aside for both StackOverflow (~3k points) and Quora (awarded Top Writer two years running). In both cases, it was bad moderation that pushed me into quitting. A trick I learned from working on Wikipedia is that you can think of these systems as MMORPGs where you get a useful product out the end. I think all of these platforms have game-design problems, where people with power can find satisfaction in moves that end up harming the reader experience and frustrating contributors. Both companies seem to be doing fine without my help, so I guess they can afford to burn contributors out after a while. But like you, I think it's sad how much these things fall short of their potential. I'll never do anything for SO or Quora again, but I do miss the chance to help people.
- gregmac 6y ago
  > I really like answering questions; it's nice to know that the thing I'm writing will be immediately useful to somebody, and maybe a bunch of somebodies Totally agree. Explaining something to somebody else is a great way to learn, too. That was my experience on early SO, and it was great. I'd just browse a tag I knew, and pick questions where I knew most of the answer, and the act of explaining it would be useful to me, too. Now I find doing so neither fun nor fulfilling. First there's lots of garbage questions that are impossible to answer. When you do finally find something good, it's hard to get it before it gets closed as dupe or someone else answers. And if it's from a new user, there's still a good chance they'll never come back to accept the answer and awards your fake internet points. I'd love to see a SO that encourages more new users to actually answer those "dupe" questions (instead: hide them from search and older users)
  - EricE 6y ago
    >"Explaining something to somebody else is a great way to learn, too." Indeed - I've become an expert at several systems by hanging out in support forums and answering other peoples questions. the harder, the better! Who needs video games when you can still solve problems, help others and increase your value/skill set too?
jtdev 6y ago
I scroll directly past the accepted answer on many SO questions as I often find that the second or third highest ranked answer is often actually the best answer.
arp242 6y ago
> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not, and technology changes so a duplicate question asked 2 years later is going to get different responses) Note you can still post answers to older questions; this is actually encouraged! Closing of duplicates is the least of Stack Overflow's problems IMHO; it's done for a very real reason: if I search "how to do foo in bar?" then it's really great to have one question with all answers, instead of having to trawl through several questions. Also, as someone who spent quite a lot of time writing in-depth answers over the years, I'd rather not repeat that every month. I have a lot of criticism of Stack Overflow, and I mostly stopped answering because I got fed up as well, but this isn't a problem IMO. > Also, often enough the accepted answer for a question is not the best answer and instead the best answer can be found by looking at other answers or the comments (which I agree with the author should not be seen as ephemeral but are instead critical) Generally those comments should be integrated in the answer; usually if I come upon an answer with helpful comments I will edit the answer to include that information. I do wish the entire "accepted answer" feature would be removed though, or at the very least stop pinning them to the top.
- vtail 6y ago
  Shouldn’t a proper sorting (based on activity, karma, number of answers) take care of this (= duplicate questions)?
  - arp242 6y ago
    Not necessarily; and Stack Overflow doesn't control Google's sorting. It would also mean people would have to keep answering the same questions over and over again, which would be a waste of everyone's time.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Note you can still post answers to older questions; this is actually encouraged! Although, this can lead to its own weird problems. I've been learning Objective C, and I've come across a lot of Stack Overflow questions which ask how to do a thing in Objective C, but where all the top answers are in Swift. Sometimes an older Objective C answer is just buried; sometimes it isn't there at all. I realize that Swift is the newer language, but it's not the one I'm using, and the question was about Objective C.
max_ 6y ago
I often have questions closed down and then, later get a badge from stack overflow for having a popular question.
aeturnum 6y ago
> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not, and technology changes so a duplicate question asked 2 years later is going to get different responses) I've always been a little surprised that that they don't have a formal system of 'recycling' popular questions where they have a new 'edition' every 1/2/3/whatever years and they just prune the ones that don't get new answers. It's valuable to get the latest answer to questions, but lots of us operate in past technological climates, so it's good to keep old answers accessible.
wiseleo 6y ago
Content needs to be clustered by technology. Python 2 answers are different from Python 3. One way would be to archive older definitively answered questions and allow new questions to be flagged for the newer release, such as Python 3. Wherever there were breaking changes, answers become invalid for the newer technology. Flagging every question by year would be the easy way. Any question prior to ES6 release would be legacy JavaScript, for example.
tinus_hn 6y ago
It’s slowly dying, everyone knows that in technology standing still means you’re moving backwards and StackOverflow trends towards standing still. Once every question has been asked and answered every new question is a duplicate and no new information can appear in StackOverflow. I am seeing more and more often that you look for a solution to an issue in StackOverflow and all you get is fixes that only work on obsolete software. For instance for operating systems a lot is for Windows 7 and before and doesn’t work on Windows 10 anymore.
Arech 6y ago
> the moderation culture destroyed the site There's a term in Russian "синдром вахтёра" which I think should be translated as "a doorkeeper/janitor syndrome". It's a phenomena when a not very smart person who doesn't understand the big picture of things gains a little bit of power against his fellow mates. While generally not intending to bring a harm, they begin to implement some weird but strict policies that reflects their very poor understanding of how things should work (metaphorically they think that every line should either be parallel or perpendicular to each other and no deviations should ever exist). Given that at least some of them might just enjoy having and exercising that little bit of power they have, the result could be just ugly and destructive. Unfortunately, in many cases I've ever seen over the Internet communities (that's not to stretch the idea further), those who want to become a moderator are very prone to this syndrome. I think to create a healthy community some extra special measures should be implemented to prevent this phenomena. Unfortunately StackOverflow is not doing it enough (if doing anything at all).
knighthack 6y ago
> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not) This is a great point. And it also relates to abuse of power. Recently I raised a question without precedent on Stack Overflow. A person had given a detailed answer, which pointed to issues not available in documentation. His answer was in fact an expanded analysis of the overall language specs - without it, I had no idea how to debug my code. One megalomaniacal moderator marked my question as 'duplicate', and then pointed to another question -- where he claimed to have answered the question 'definitively' (he had not) and wanted me to upvote his answer. There was no way for me to challenge his 'duplicate' mark, which is a real loss for anyone else encountering the same issue as I did.

FreeKill 6y ago

I wonder if something more like a wiki format would be better long term. Say you take a question like "How to loop through a list of key,value pairs in JavaScript. Through the last 10 years, this has changed a lot through vanilla to libraries like jquery to new iterations like ES5/6. What I would love to see is just a page with this question asked, maintained over time with an emphasis on when the previous solution was relevant, and highlighting the most recent, preferred options for solving the problem. So, rather than a score based social network style system, turn the questions into living, and evolving documents. Also, sometimes a person gets stuck having to work on code that's a decade old, so it would be nice to have a history as well, and not just the most recent solution that may not work in their environment.

to11mtm 6y ago
This doesn't sound bad on the surface, but my worry would be that we would wind up with Wiki-style moderation instead of SO style moderation. i.e. 'guarded articles', edit wars and power-mods overriding outside consensus.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  Instead of SO style moderation, with closed questions being treated as canonical, corrected information buried in comments, and power-mods overriding outside consensus?
jakecopp 6y ago
A wiki curated from stack overflow answers would be amazing! StackOverflow powered GPT-3 haha.
wpietri 6y ago
Have you done much editing on Wikipedia? That seems like an optimistic view of what the experience would be.
- notriddle 6y ago
  Wikipedia isn't perfect, but they get one thing right that Stack Overflow gets horribly wrong: they make it obvious who the audience is. A lot of people visiting Stack Overflow think that the purpose of a Stack Overflow question is to solve the OP's problem. They write "Dear Libby" style letter templates into the question box, and often provide very opinionated answers that try to give way more advice than was strictly asked for by trying to infer what's "really going on" based on the subtext of the question. And there's a lot of UI in there that encourages seeing it as an advice column. But the Stack Overflow people themselves don't want it to be a place to seek general advice. They want it to form a general resource, with Stack Overflow being less of a bulletin board and more of a reference guide. The problem is that their UI doesn't telegraph this very well (I blame the way they leave the original asker's name and avatar visible on the question), and neither do their marketing materials. They're kinda trying to have it both ways, baiting people with the chance to get their own question getting answered and then switching to editing their question into something more generally useful than something just for them. It is not a surprise that people feel cheated.
saurik 6y ago
The irony is that that is actually what StackOverflow is: you can edit any question to make it clearer... and you end up leaving the original person's name on it (which I frankly find kind of evil).
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The irony of all of this is that stackoverflow works just fine 95% of the time.

ravenstine 6y ago

I agree with all of that, but the worst part to me(which I guess relates to your point about the accepted answers) is that there's no path to deprecating old answer and old questions. I've been lambasted here in the past for saying this, but I'll say it again now and see if I get a different response; it's no longer helpful to search for "javascript" related questions and get mostly answers for jQuery. These days I'm able to solve a lot of problems just reading MDN, but sometimes I click on a Stack Overflow article and it turns out to be 12 answers that are all jQuery-specific even when the question itself doesn't call for it. jQuery isn't bad, but the world has changed around it and we can't keep pretending like everyone is using it for the same reasons we did back in 2011. This not only does new developers a general disservice, but it can do a disservice to projects that have less-than-average momentum. For instance, I use Ember JS every day, and it's a framework that has really changed a lot since its inception, but you'd never know it if you looked up questions for it on Stack Overflow. The Ember questions on there are so woefully outdated that I believe it gives potential new users the complete wrong impression of it. There are outdated React questions on there as well, but at least there's enough inertia behind React that new activity helps overcome this to a degree. On the other hand, people almost certainly have given up on Ember because none of the Stack Overflow answers work at all. Sure, we could all submit updated answers, but they'll be below the fold and they will never be reselected as the accepted answer. There are other reasons why Ember has been in decline, but I do blame the mechanics of SO as a big detractor. Preventing duplicate questions is fine, the overzealousness not withstanding, but if there's no mechanism to correct existing information as time goes on in a meaningful way, the only result can be rot.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
> it's no longer helpful to search for "javascript" related questions and get mostly answers for jQuery jQuery is used on 83% of all websites; React is used on 4% [1]. You’re right that people are probably using it differently than they were a decade ago, but even in 2021 your average jQuery question is probably useful to many more people than your average React one. [1] https://css-tricks.com/how-the-web-is-really-built/ https://css-tricks.com/how-the-web-is-really-built/
- 6y ago

m463 6y ago

I stopped because... and I wrote it down... "This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion" I think there should be a place for this kind of stuff, some place hackers can do these "prohibited" sorts of things...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jtdev 6y ago
> “... or extended discussion“ Oh my, not the dreaded extended discussion!! When will people learn that our tech overlords have found the most optimized means of communicating? We mustn’t revert to the dark times when conversing was openly practiced by the barbarians.
Stratoscope 6y ago
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
chrisdirkis 6y ago
But does this place have to be StackOverflow? I think it has space for discussion in comments, chat rooms, etc., but the main artifact is intended to be an easily searchable Q&A archive. I think they need to work on communicating that much more clearly, but ultimately they don't want to (primarily) be a place of extended discussion, debate, and so on, and I'm not sure it's fair to say "no, they're wrong" to that.
- m463 6y ago
  > But does this place have to be StackOverflow? I was kind of referring to the very nice platform I'm typing on right now... :)

camjohnson26 6y ago

Disagree, stack overflow is still the best place to get answers to common programming questions. If you need to sort a list in Python it’s much better to find the answer on a short stackoverflow post than to sift through dozens of blogs, each with their own style, or to try to parse pages of documentation that goes into way more detail than you need. No other site has as much content as easy to find as stackoverflow, even if it’s not perfect.

erikbye 6y ago
It is much better to read the official documentation.
- dmortin 6y ago
  People want quick answers, not browsing documentation. SO is useful in the sense that it provides answers to specific questions which a google search finds instantly.
  - bb88 6y ago
    True, but I've seen lots of answers that are "hacks" when there's usually a better, supported way that was spelled out in the docs, e.g. won't fail when you upgrade the library say. Or they don't want to understand the issue at hand, so they put in a hack, when obtaining a complete understanding of the issue which might take 5 minutes of their time reading the docs, would provide a better solution.
    - sofixa 6y ago
      If the docs have examples that cover your use case, which is far from certain.
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    Exactly. I code in half a dozen different languages that all have their own ways to split a string. When I can't remember the syntax to do this in, say, Python, being able to just say "python split string" and it goes to a reasonable SO answer is a big win for me. I love reading docs too, so I can get a deeper understanding. But sometimes I just need an answer in a hurry.

blondin 6y ago

same goes for all question-answer type platforms. they all fall into the traps you describe above. unfortunately, i don't see any of them doing anything about these issues.

pcthrowaway 6y ago

I think the rules about self-promotion are well-intended. If you ever get quora results to common programming or technology searches, you'll see what I mean; people responding with only loosely related comments which link to their own product, which "solves the problem for you". I get it, without any moderation, SO would be just as useless. I think there should be some nuance in how those rules are applied. The author of this post appears to be one of the authorities on webgl. If they've written helpful posts on the topic, and those can be referenced from SO answers, they should be able to do that. Heck, even if they sell something on their blog, it's still highly relevant. It's same the problem Google, Youtube, Apple, and basically every other service right now is having with attempting to moderate what can be shared on their platforms, without losing the quality content. Incredibly often, they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't have a solution; the problem is in promoting quality content while preventing spam. It's not all-or-nothing, we need to strike the right balance with moderation.

wpietri 6y ago

This is my take, too. I really like answering questions; it's nice to know that the thing I'm writing will be immediately useful to somebody, and maybe a bunch of somebodies. I'm a little uneasy doing free work for for-profit companies, but I set that aside for both StackOverflow (~3k points) and Quora (awarded Top Writer two years running). In both cases, it was bad moderation that pushed me into quitting. A trick I learned from working on Wikipedia is that you can think of these systems as MMORPGs where you get a useful product out the end. I think all of these platforms have game-design problems, where people with power can find satisfaction in moves that end up harming the reader experience and frustrating contributors. Both companies seem to be doing fine without my help, so I guess they can afford to burn contributors out after a while. But like you, I think it's sad how much these things fall short of their potential. I'll never do anything for SO or Quora again, but I do miss the chance to help people.

gregmac 6y ago
> I really like answering questions; it's nice to know that the thing I'm writing will be immediately useful to somebody, and maybe a bunch of somebodies Totally agree. Explaining something to somebody else is a great way to learn, too. That was my experience on early SO, and it was great. I'd just browse a tag I knew, and pick questions where I knew most of the answer, and the act of explaining it would be useful to me, too. Now I find doing so neither fun nor fulfilling. First there's lots of garbage questions that are impossible to answer. When you do finally find something good, it's hard to get it before it gets closed as dupe or someone else answers. And if it's from a new user, there's still a good chance they'll never come back to accept the answer and awards your fake internet points. I'd love to see a SO that encourages more new users to actually answer those "dupe" questions (instead: hide them from search and older users)
- EricE 6y ago
  >"Explaining something to somebody else is a great way to learn, too." Indeed - I've become an expert at several systems by hanging out in support forums and answering other peoples questions. the harder, the better! Who needs video games when you can still solve problems, help others and increase your value/skill set too?

jtdev 6y ago

I scroll directly past the accepted answer on many SO questions as I often find that the second or third highest ranked answer is often actually the best answer.

arp242 6y ago

> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not, and technology changes so a duplicate question asked 2 years later is going to get different responses) Note you can still post answers to older questions; this is actually encouraged! Closing of duplicates is the least of Stack Overflow's problems IMHO; it's done for a very real reason: if I search "how to do foo in bar?" then it's really great to have one question with all answers, instead of having to trawl through several questions. Also, as someone who spent quite a lot of time writing in-depth answers over the years, I'd rather not repeat that every month. I have a lot of criticism of Stack Overflow, and I mostly stopped answering because I got fed up as well, but this isn't a problem IMO. > Also, often enough the accepted answer for a question is not the best answer and instead the best answer can be found by looking at other answers or the comments (which I agree with the author should not be seen as ephemeral but are instead critical) Generally those comments should be integrated in the answer; usually if I come upon an answer with helpful comments I will edit the answer to include that information. I do wish the entire "accepted answer" feature would be removed though, or at the very least stop pinning them to the top.

vtail 6y ago
Shouldn’t a proper sorting (based on activity, karma, number of answers) take care of this (= duplicate questions)?
- arp242 6y ago
  Not necessarily; and Stack Overflow doesn't control Google's sorting. It would also mean people would have to keep answering the same questions over and over again, which would be a waste of everyone's time.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Note you can still post answers to older questions; this is actually encouraged! Although, this can lead to its own weird problems. I've been learning Objective C, and I've come across a lot of Stack Overflow questions which ask how to do a thing in Objective C, but where all the top answers are in Swift. Sometimes an older Objective C answer is just buried; sometimes it isn't there at all. I realize that Swift is the newer language, but it's not the one I'm using, and the question was about Objective C.

max_ 6y ago

I often have questions closed down and then, later get a badge from stack overflow for having a popular question.

aeturnum 6y ago

> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not, and technology changes so a duplicate question asked 2 years later is going to get different responses) I've always been a little surprised that that they don't have a formal system of 'recycling' popular questions where they have a new 'edition' every 1/2/3/whatever years and they just prune the ones that don't get new answers. It's valuable to get the latest answer to questions, but lots of us operate in past technological climates, so it's good to keep old answers accessible.

wiseleo 6y ago

Content needs to be clustered by technology. Python 2 answers are different from Python 3. One way would be to archive older definitively answered questions and allow new questions to be flagged for the newer release, such as Python 3. Wherever there were breaking changes, answers become invalid for the newer technology. Flagging every question by year would be the easy way. Any question prior to ES6 release would be legacy JavaScript, for example.

tinus_hn 6y ago

It’s slowly dying, everyone knows that in technology standing still means you’re moving backwards and StackOverflow trends towards standing still. Once every question has been asked and answered every new question is a duplicate and no new information can appear in StackOverflow. I am seeing more and more often that you look for a solution to an issue in StackOverflow and all you get is fixes that only work on obsolete software. For instance for operating systems a lot is for Windows 7 and before and doesn’t work on Windows 10 anymore.

Arech 6y ago

> the moderation culture destroyed the site There's a term in Russian "синдром вахтёра" which I think should be translated as "a doorkeeper/janitor syndrome". It's a phenomena when a not very smart person who doesn't understand the big picture of things gains a little bit of power against his fellow mates. While generally not intending to bring a harm, they begin to implement some weird but strict policies that reflects their very poor understanding of how things should work (metaphorically they think that every line should either be parallel or perpendicular to each other and no deviations should ever exist). Given that at least some of them might just enjoy having and exercising that little bit of power they have, the result could be just ugly and destructive. Unfortunately, in many cases I've ever seen over the Internet communities (that's not to stretch the idea further), those who want to become a moderator are very prone to this syndrome. I think to create a healthy community some extra special measures should be implemented to prevent this phenomena. Unfortunately StackOverflow is not doing it enough (if doing anything at all).

knighthack 6y ago

> There's too much emphasis on closing questions that are duplicates (when in fact they are not) This is a great point. And it also relates to abuse of power. Recently I raised a question without precedent on Stack Overflow. A person had given a detailed answer, which pointed to issues not available in documentation. His answer was in fact an expanded analysis of the overall language specs - without it, I had no idea how to debug my code. One megalomaniacal moderator marked my question as 'duplicate', and then pointed to another question -- where he claimed to have answered the question 'definitively' (he had not) and wanted me to upvote his answer. There was no way for me to challenge his 'duplicate' mark, which is a real loss for anyone else encountering the same issue as I did.