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Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it use

Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official docs are usually much better (at least in my experience), and there are a lot more random sites, so you can Google most programming issues without checking SO. SO is still a great resource for its archived content, but not for anything new, and it's no longer a "must-have". But even with better documentation and more sites, old SO hasn't been completely replaced.

yreg 5y ago
>iOS dev >official docs are usually much better What docs are you talking about? I'm a Swift/SwiftUI novice and my experience is that random SO answers always document the APIs in a much more usable way than Apple's documentation. Granted, one needs to scroll to the "[CURRENT YEAR] WORKING SOLUTION" answer first. ----- Also: >SO is still a great resource for its archived content, but not for anything new In the miniscule amount of iOS dev I did I quickly learned to always filter results to "past year". So for me "modern" SO in this area is much better than the "archive". (Not SO's fault, obviously.)
bena 5y ago
The problem with StackOverflow or any "community-driven" effort is that every single community is driven by those who dedicate the most time to driving the community. In the beginning, this isn't largely a problem because the owners of the site can manage the load. Then as the site gets marginally bigger, you can trust on volunteers who have demonstrated expertise or something. But eventually, skilled people will get busy. Owners/developers will need to manage the business/code of the thing. Your expert volunteers will have jobs and obligations to fulfill. Between them, there won't be enough manhours to manage the community. The worst thing to do is to put it in the hands of those who have dedicated the most time to the community. Why? Because there's a reason they have all that time to dedicate to the community. And hardly any of them are good. But that's what most places do. And then they essentially become places of pointless bickering and mindless politicking. Basically digital HOAs (to reference a recent article posted here). The people responsible for managing the community need to be compensated for doing exactly that and they need to be either trained or vetted to do so. Self-selection in this regard is probably one of the worst ways to go about it.
- oezi 5y ago
  I think this is an incorrect assessment. The value doesn't come from those that dedicate most of their time. The value comes from the sites ability to integrate the long tail both for answers and questions. Certainly it is valuable to have the super star posters with a million reputation. But the site was build by random people answering random questions. I also don't believe in the value of "community management" at SO. Moderation is just senseless busywork which discourages people to participate. Closing questions as if there is any value in this instead of letting people play the game of asking and answering questions which matter to them and let Google do the filtering.
  - bena 5y ago
    Who are the most capable of answering random questions? Those who have the most time to do so. Who are the the most likely to answer random questions? Those who have the most time to do so. Who doesn't mind providing free "senseless busywork"? Those whose time has little to no value because they have so much of it. My account on SO is 12 years and 9 months old and even though I haven't asked or answered a question since 2009, I'm still in the top 10% of reputation. Because in those early months/years, it wasn't difficult to garner reputation. I just don't have the time to troll questions to answer on SO. As for asking, either the answer already exists, or I can find out by reading the documentation. And deity-forbid I'd pull the answer-my-own-question-to-document-the-solution that used to be the recommended way of just getting content on the site.
  - DharmaPolice 5y ago
    The first time I posted on SO someone edited my question within a few minutes. I was initially annoyed/embarrassed (on other forums, a mod only edited your post if you had broken some rule) but I realised they were just improving my formatting as I had some dodgy markup in my question. That kind of thing is definitely busy work but it probably does contribute to the overall quality of the site more than you might realise. The question closing thing though I agree is annoying.
digianarchist 5y ago
I actually find myself landing on a Github issue after a Google search to diagnosing an problem these days. >But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse I see a lot of new users digging up 10 year old questions and cloning answers. They've really hit a spam problem that's difficult to solve.
- nosianu 5y ago
  Well, you make it a game - people start playing. The disadvantage of gamification. I'm not sure that people giving good answers and help are well matched by a system designed for people who like "leveling up". I think that system pulls in a mismatched crowd over time, too focused on the game goal. The solution creating a match is supposed to be what you get the points for leveling up for. However, that does not really remove the mismatch, it just covers it up a bit. You _will_ get, at least for a time, a lot of people who focus on quality to get ahead. Over time you will get more and more people focusing on just the points and the levels for their own sake though, who start cheating the system. I think gamification might, over time, slowly erode the target it wanted to achieve, even if/when it starts out doing well. Of course, all of it happens in a context. Why are there so many people chasing after such fake "power" and "fame" in the first place? Are so many at least somewhat qualified people (on the Internet and with more than basic programming knowledge) that bored and dissatisfied with their local situation to chase purely virtual achievements?
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Leveling up is OK. Fake Internet points may drive some people to weird behavior, but it's manageable at this level. They shouldn't have entered the job search space. The moment they offered to help their users find work, suddenly those fake Internet points (and activity behind them) started to carry a real (if probabilistic) monetary value.
  - zem 5y ago
    they aren't "purely virtual achievements", they're, as you say, points in a game. i can (and have) spent hours at a time playing scrabble or civilisations, and they aren't for "fake scrabble points" or "fake civ points"; similarly here, for the people who do get more into the gamified aspect of stackoverflow, they aren't chasing fake internet points, they're accumulating real stackoverflow points.
nickserv 5y ago
The problem for me is that generally the highest ranked answers are the oldest, and in a fast moving tech stack this leads to really outdated advice. I do a lot of Python programming and some of the answers only work in 2.7 for example. Same as you, these days I'll just look at the official docs.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  Yeah I see that too. Back when python 2.7 was out, the top-rated answer was a really great, python 2.7-specific solution. Now that python 3.9 is out, the top-rated answer is still a really great, python 2.7-specific solution.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    The painful thing is there seems to be a large body of people on SO who are trying their hardest to fit any question into the scope of a previously asked question and then marking it duplicate/downvoting it. Some tags are worse than others on this about this, but I have one or two which are painfully policed by people who seem to want no question to be answered at all, ever.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Just take the extra 20 seconds and read through all the positive answers and commentary. Its not like you need to only look at the top ranked answer.
- codegeek 5y ago
  That depends. If it is a popular answer, people sometimes edit with latest version answer. For example, I answered something about Python/Flask many years ago which became a very popular answer at the time (simple stuff). Now in Flask's latest version, you don't need to do it that way necessarily and the answer was edited accordingly.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Git is the poster child for this. Ignore any accepted answer to a Git question on Stack Overflow if it is older than two years old. This may also be a testament to Git's terrific development, or to Git's obtuse early versions.
jonahx 5y ago
Codidact is a community-controlled, open-source alternative to SO: https://meta.codidact.com/policy/codidact-faq https://meta.codidact.com/policy/codidact-faq
rossdavidh 5y ago
There are very few official docs for software that I find to be as useful as SO. If there's another site that is as good, I'm not aware of it.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
For many years, SO has been an invaluable resource for me. At one time, I used it daily. I have about twice as many questions as I have answers. Been on the site for a long time; maybe close to ten years. I've learned to ask very good questions, but lately, I've mostly been answering my own questions. I visit it maybe once a week (or less), these days. It used to be multiple times per day. I would hope that this will help SO to have a renaissance. We'll see.
blisterpeanuts 5y ago
For me, SO has been an outstanding resource; I probably use it 2-3 times a day during the working week, and often on weekends for experimenting/self-learning/crunch time. It's amazing how many people have asked the exact question I am asking, and the responses and comments are usually high quality. W3schools has also been helpful. I hear dismissive comments about it; maybe it's weak and dated for "advanced" full-stack types, but when I need to remember something about style sheets, javascript, HTML, etc., it's just very quick and easy, especially with the "try it" interactive widget. Back in the day, usenet comp.lang.* and comp.os.* were like this -- terse, to the point, contributed by seasoned professionals. It's like a crowd-sourced interactive user manual. I just hope this acquisition doesn't mess it up :)
JohnWhigham 5y ago
there are a lot more random sites, so you can Google most programming issues without checking SO That's because programming has exploded in popularity in the past decade, there's now a myriad of ways to host a blog, and a lot of people find blogging about their issues a way to solidify understanding and to help others. Doesn't mean SO is declining in quality.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
While its less useful for future people with problems, I have better luck on discord communities when they're available. As an infrequent stack overflow user, I find the platform very user hostile, especially to new users. If you write a question that's not great, it's just locked, and you're not really told what to do, often with a vague suggestion like "lack of clarity or detail" which are orthogonal concepts. Are you supposed to just leave a comment in a dead question thread and hope that someone responds? You're mostly just left for dead.
- mdaniel 5y ago
  > you're not really told what to do, I know, right, every stack exchange site should really write down a comprehensive how-to-ask page, and they should have a dedicated section just for what used to be called "MCVE" but has since been renamed to "Minimal, Reproducible Example" ... err I mean one day when they write up these guidelines they will eventually rename it Then people wouldn't have all those "it don't work, what do" questions closed and instead moderators can put in just as much effort as the asker did In seriousness, I believe some of the miscommunication stems from the difference between "I had my question closed for not following the published site guidelines" versus an actively hostile "get bent, n00b" interaction
ant6n 5y ago
I find Stackoverflow has gotten much worse, you don't get any answers either (i.e. I guess the good people have moved on?), but also Google has gotten worse, and documentation sites aren't helping either. Coding has just gotten harder when you rely on some complicated technology. The internet simply doesn't work as well as it did 5-10 years ago...

yreg 5y ago

>iOS dev >official docs are usually much better What docs are you talking about? I'm a Swift/SwiftUI novice and my experience is that random SO answers always document the APIs in a much more usable way than Apple's documentation. Granted, one needs to scroll to the "[CURRENT YEAR] WORKING SOLUTION" answer first. ----- Also: >SO is still a great resource for its archived content, but not for anything new In the miniscule amount of iOS dev I did I quickly learned to always filter results to "past year". So for me "modern" SO in this area is much better than the "archive". (Not SO's fault, obviously.)

bena 5y ago

The problem with StackOverflow or any "community-driven" effort is that every single community is driven by those who dedicate the most time to driving the community. In the beginning, this isn't largely a problem because the owners of the site can manage the load. Then as the site gets marginally bigger, you can trust on volunteers who have demonstrated expertise or something. But eventually, skilled people will get busy. Owners/developers will need to manage the business/code of the thing. Your expert volunteers will have jobs and obligations to fulfill. Between them, there won't be enough manhours to manage the community. The worst thing to do is to put it in the hands of those who have dedicated the most time to the community. Why? Because there's a reason they have all that time to dedicate to the community. And hardly any of them are good. But that's what most places do. And then they essentially become places of pointless bickering and mindless politicking. Basically digital HOAs (to reference a recent article posted here). The people responsible for managing the community need to be compensated for doing exactly that and they need to be either trained or vetted to do so. Self-selection in this regard is probably one of the worst ways to go about it.

oezi 5y ago
I think this is an incorrect assessment. The value doesn't come from those that dedicate most of their time. The value comes from the sites ability to integrate the long tail both for answers and questions. Certainly it is valuable to have the super star posters with a million reputation. But the site was build by random people answering random questions. I also don't believe in the value of "community management" at SO. Moderation is just senseless busywork which discourages people to participate. Closing questions as if there is any value in this instead of letting people play the game of asking and answering questions which matter to them and let Google do the filtering.
- bena 5y ago
  Who are the most capable of answering random questions? Those who have the most time to do so. Who are the the most likely to answer random questions? Those who have the most time to do so. Who doesn't mind providing free "senseless busywork"? Those whose time has little to no value because they have so much of it. My account on SO is 12 years and 9 months old and even though I haven't asked or answered a question since 2009, I'm still in the top 10% of reputation. Because in those early months/years, it wasn't difficult to garner reputation. I just don't have the time to troll questions to answer on SO. As for asking, either the answer already exists, or I can find out by reading the documentation. And deity-forbid I'd pull the answer-my-own-question-to-document-the-solution that used to be the recommended way of just getting content on the site.
- DharmaPolice 5y ago
  The first time I posted on SO someone edited my question within a few minutes. I was initially annoyed/embarrassed (on other forums, a mod only edited your post if you had broken some rule) but I realised they were just improving my formatting as I had some dodgy markup in my question. That kind of thing is definitely busy work but it probably does contribute to the overall quality of the site more than you might realise. The question closing thing though I agree is annoying.

digianarchist 5y ago

I actually find myself landing on a Github issue after a Google search to diagnosing an problem these days. >But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse I see a lot of new users digging up 10 year old questions and cloning answers. They've really hit a spam problem that's difficult to solve.

nosianu 5y ago
Well, you make it a game - people start playing. The disadvantage of gamification. I'm not sure that people giving good answers and help are well matched by a system designed for people who like "leveling up". I think that system pulls in a mismatched crowd over time, too focused on the game goal. The solution creating a match is supposed to be what you get the points for leveling up for. However, that does not really remove the mismatch, it just covers it up a bit. You _will_ get, at least for a time, a lot of people who focus on quality to get ahead. Over time you will get more and more people focusing on just the points and the levels for their own sake though, who start cheating the system. I think gamification might, over time, slowly erode the target it wanted to achieve, even if/when it starts out doing well. Of course, all of it happens in a context. Why are there so many people chasing after such fake "power" and "fame" in the first place? Are so many at least somewhat qualified people (on the Internet and with more than basic programming knowledge) that bored and dissatisfied with their local situation to chase purely virtual achievements?
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Leveling up is OK. Fake Internet points may drive some people to weird behavior, but it's manageable at this level. They shouldn't have entered the job search space. The moment they offered to help their users find work, suddenly those fake Internet points (and activity behind them) started to carry a real (if probabilistic) monetary value.
- zem 5y ago
  they aren't "purely virtual achievements", they're, as you say, points in a game. i can (and have) spent hours at a time playing scrabble or civilisations, and they aren't for "fake scrabble points" or "fake civ points"; similarly here, for the people who do get more into the gamified aspect of stackoverflow, they aren't chasing fake internet points, they're accumulating real stackoverflow points.

nickserv 5y ago

The problem for me is that generally the highest ranked answers are the oldest, and in a fast moving tech stack this leads to really outdated advice. I do a lot of Python programming and some of the answers only work in 2.7 for example. Same as you, these days I'll just look at the official docs.

armchairhacker 5y ago
Yeah I see that too. Back when python 2.7 was out, the top-rated answer was a really great, python 2.7-specific solution. Now that python 3.9 is out, the top-rated answer is still a really great, python 2.7-specific solution.
- LanceH 5y ago
  The painful thing is there seems to be a large body of people on SO who are trying their hardest to fit any question into the scope of a previously asked question and then marking it duplicate/downvoting it. Some tags are worse than others on this about this, but I have one or two which are painfully policed by people who seem to want no question to be answered at all, ever.
jayd16 5y ago
Just take the extra 20 seconds and read through all the positive answers and commentary. Its not like you need to only look at the top ranked answer.
codegeek 5y ago
That depends. If it is a popular answer, people sometimes edit with latest version answer. For example, I answered something about Python/Flask many years ago which became a very popular answer at the time (simple stuff). Now in Flask's latest version, you don't need to do it that way necessarily and the answer was edited accordingly.
dotancohen 5y ago
Git is the poster child for this. Ignore any accepted answer to a Git question on Stack Overflow if it is older than two years old. This may also be a testament to Git's terrific development, or to Git's obtuse early versions.

jonahx 5y ago

Codidact is a community-controlled, open-source alternative to SO: https://meta.codidact.com/policy/codidact-faq https://meta.codidact.com/policy/codidact-faq

rossdavidh 5y ago

There are very few official docs for software that I find to be as useful as SO. If there's another site that is as good, I'm not aware of it.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

For many years, SO has been an invaluable resource for me. At one time, I used it daily. I have about twice as many questions as I have answers. Been on the site for a long time; maybe close to ten years. I've learned to ask very good questions, but lately, I've mostly been answering my own questions. I visit it maybe once a week (or less), these days. It used to be multiple times per day. I would hope that this will help SO to have a renaissance. We'll see.

blisterpeanuts 5y ago

For me, SO has been an outstanding resource; I probably use it 2-3 times a day during the working week, and often on weekends for experimenting/self-learning/crunch time. It's amazing how many people have asked the exact question I am asking, and the responses and comments are usually high quality. W3schools has also been helpful. I hear dismissive comments about it; maybe it's weak and dated for "advanced" full-stack types, but when I need to remember something about style sheets, javascript, HTML, etc., it's just very quick and easy, especially with the "try it" interactive widget. Back in the day, usenet comp.lang.* and comp.os.* were like this -- terse, to the point, contributed by seasoned professionals. It's like a crowd-sourced interactive user manual. I just hope this acquisition doesn't mess it up :)

JohnWhigham 5y ago

there are a lot more random sites, so you can Google most programming issues without checking SO That's because programming has exploded in popularity in the past decade, there's now a myriad of ways to host a blog, and a lot of people find blogging about their issues a way to solidify understanding and to help others. Doesn't mean SO is declining in quality.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

While its less useful for future people with problems, I have better luck on discord communities when they're available. As an infrequent stack overflow user, I find the platform very user hostile, especially to new users. If you write a question that's not great, it's just locked, and you're not really told what to do, often with a vague suggestion like "lack of clarity or detail" which are orthogonal concepts. Are you supposed to just leave a comment in a dead question thread and hope that someone responds? You're mostly just left for dead.

mdaniel 5y ago
> you're not really told what to do, I know, right, every stack exchange site should really write down a comprehensive how-to-ask page, and they should have a dedicated section just for what used to be called "MCVE" but has since been renamed to "Minimal, Reproducible Example" ... err I mean one day when they write up these guidelines they will eventually rename it Then people wouldn't have all those "it don't work, what do" questions closed and instead moderators can put in just as much effort as the asker did In seriousness, I believe some of the miscommunication stems from the difference between "I had my question closed for not following the published site guidelines" versus an actively hostile "get bent, n00b" interaction

ant6n 5y ago

I find Stackoverflow has gotten much worse, you don't get any answers either (i.e. I guess the good people have moved on?), but also Google has gotten worse, and documentation sites aren't helping either. Coding has just gotten harder when you rely on some complicated technology. The internet simply doesn't work as well as it did 5-10 years ago...