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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 comm

by 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.

by bena 5y ago

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.