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I see this as further evidence that Stack Overflow is dead. Questions have grown old; answers refer to libraries and language features that are deprecated; it

I see this as further evidence that Stack Overflow is dead. Questions have grown old; answers refer to libraries and language features that are deprecated; it is almost impossible to remedy the situation, because new related questions are closed as duplicates, and new answers to old questions will never bubble to the top. The best you can do is add cautionary comments to outdated answers.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
There are further ways to liven things up. A good one would be to decay scores over time, in an exponential fashion. It's a far more complicated way to rank results, because you have to keep track of a distribution of upvotes in time, but it would stop skewing things so heavily toward "incumbent" answers.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Yes, there are good ways to do it from the administrators' side, and your idea is excellent. I meant that from the users' perspective, cautionary comments are about the best you can do.
- psychometry 5y ago
  This is probably like what reddit does with its "best" sort option or other sites do with "popular"/"hot"/etc.
dragontamer 5y ago
Communities grow and shrink over time. Stack Overflow hasn't figured out a good way to deal with this. There are two conflicting purposes going on here: the need for archival, and the need for discussion. Over the course of 10 years, its clear that some information should be archived, while other material should be rediscussed and reupped. I'll plug my "idea" again (just an idea guy, lol). Which is that question/answer sites need to have an "epoch period" of sorts. Back in the 90s, I used to play a browser-based MMO game called Utopia (and its sister game: Earth 2025). Every 6 months, the scoreboard would be archived and the game reset. The idea is: players come and go. You need a time for players to "leave" (ex: retire for a season, or permanently). But you also want to keep connected players together (ex: a kingdom of 20 players may have become friends, so you want to keep those social connections). Resetting the game from scratch every few months meant that all players were nominally on equal grounds. It also allowed the game to change its rules and rebalance from update to update (maybe some strategies were too strong, or too weak). Q&A sites would benefit from this. If a question is renewed in a later epoch / season, maybe its truly different than the historical answer from 5 years ago. ------ StackOverflow also treated its upvotes/downvotes like a game. I am convinced that this causes long-term issues in the community. Resetting these points back from scratch (with maybe historical notes on former points) would go a long way towards determining who is or isn't active and at which times. (Ex: someone may have been highly active from 2014 to 2016, and the archives would indicate it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're well-versed in 2020-2021 "season" rules or culture)
- amrox 5y ago
  Many online games have a season model now, and SO at least partially gamifies developer Q&A, so this tracks.
- kreddor 5y ago
  Completely off-topic, but I would love a modern version of Utopia that doesn't suck :)
tarr11 5y ago
This kind of comment reminds me of “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...
Arnavion 5y ago
>and new answers to old questions will never bubble to the top. The best you can do is add cautionary comments to outdated answers. I always check answers for such cautionary comments. And if they point to another answer, I upvote it and downvote the original. So I'm not sure "never" is accurate such that SO should be considered "dead".
Epskampie 5y ago
I use SO every single day. It’s alive and thriving, and I’m happy for that.

kspacewalk2 5y ago

There are further ways to liven things up. A good one would be to decay scores over time, in an exponential fashion. It's a far more complicated way to rank results, because you have to keep track of a distribution of upvotes in time, but it would stop skewing things so heavily toward "incumbent" answers.

JasonFruit 5y ago
Yes, there are good ways to do it from the administrators' side, and your idea is excellent. I meant that from the users' perspective, cautionary comments are about the best you can do.
psychometry 5y ago
This is probably like what reddit does with its "best" sort option or other sites do with "popular"/"hot"/etc.

dragontamer 5y ago

Communities grow and shrink over time. Stack Overflow hasn't figured out a good way to deal with this. There are two conflicting purposes going on here: the need for archival, and the need for discussion. Over the course of 10 years, its clear that some information should be archived, while other material should be rediscussed and reupped. I'll plug my "idea" again (just an idea guy, lol). Which is that question/answer sites need to have an "epoch period" of sorts. Back in the 90s, I used to play a browser-based MMO game called Utopia (and its sister game: Earth 2025). Every 6 months, the scoreboard would be archived and the game reset. The idea is: players come and go. You need a time for players to "leave" (ex: retire for a season, or permanently). But you also want to keep connected players together (ex: a kingdom of 20 players may have become friends, so you want to keep those social connections). Resetting the game from scratch every few months meant that all players were nominally on equal grounds. It also allowed the game to change its rules and rebalance from update to update (maybe some strategies were too strong, or too weak). Q&A sites would benefit from this. If a question is renewed in a later epoch / season, maybe its truly different than the historical answer from 5 years ago. ------ StackOverflow also treated its upvotes/downvotes like a game. I am convinced that this causes long-term issues in the community. Resetting these points back from scratch (with maybe historical notes on former points) would go a long way towards determining who is or isn't active and at which times. (Ex: someone may have been highly active from 2014 to 2016, and the archives would indicate it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're well-versed in 2020-2021 "season" rules or culture)

amrox 5y ago
Many online games have a season model now, and SO at least partially gamifies developer Q&A, so this tracks.
kreddor 5y ago
Completely off-topic, but I would love a modern version of Utopia that doesn't suck :)

tarr11 5y ago

This kind of comment reminds me of “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...

Arnavion 5y ago

>and new answers to old questions will never bubble to the top. The best you can do is add cautionary comments to outdated answers. I always check answers for such cautionary comments. And if they point to another answer, I upvote it and downvote the original. So I'm not sure "never" is accurate such that SO should be considered "dead".

Epskampie 5y ago

I use SO every single day. It’s alive and thriving, and I’m happy for that.