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Facebook Partners with Stack Overflow

278 points by ssclafani 15y ago

ary 15y ago
Should I feel better about Facebook trying to crowd-source their developer support? This doesn't address any of the real concerns with usable documentation or proper API deprecation. I get the impression that this is an attempt to spin past bad behavior into acceptable future bad behavior.
paulnelligan 15y ago
I'm not sure I like the way that my personal and professional life are suddenly becoming intertwined ... I want a few online identities dammit, not one!
- DrCatbox 15y ago
  Im sure I dont want that. Does this mean stackoverflow will share their user data with facebook? If so, thats a disaster.
  - JeremyBanks 15y ago
    Of course it doesn't mean that, but even if it did, what user data are you talking about? The only non-public info that Stack Overflow has from (some) users is their email address and real name, which Facebook already knows.
    - true_religion 15y ago
      But facebook can't associate Real Names with questions asked on stackoverflow. If they had data-sharing in place, they could.
      - svnk 15y ago
        Oh my god, Facebook will know that you asked a question on how to write Hello World in lisp!
- JeremyBanks 15y ago
  Did you RTFA? This is just providing a view of Stack Overflow that's limited to Facebook questions, and Facebook staff providing more support there. Facebook has been a login option for Stack Overflow for a long time, but don't even require you to even make an account to ask questions.
pkteison 15y ago
I don't see the stack overflow model as being a great fit for what facebook api developers need. The main problem I saw with facebook api was that the right way to do things kept changing, and the docs and forum didn't keep up well. You basically needed to begin facebook API work by reading the entire blog in chronological order and then keep on scanning the dev blog daily, which may work ok if you're a fulltime facebook API developer but it is not a good fit for contract or part-time or hobby development. I think changing APIs is begging for a wiki much more than a Q&A site. Facebook used to have a wiki for their api, but they went and deleted it, which I considered basically unforgiveable and proceeded to do my best to avoid having to touch the API after that. In short, bringing back http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/ http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/ and focusing on keeping it current would be a much better start than a Q&A site, even a really good Q&A site. You'd still have the need-to-keep-with-changes problem, but at least you'd have somewhere to start from, and wouldn't keep getting referred to out of date information when googling answers. Yes I know Stack Overflow has community editable wiki question styles, but then you just compound the problem and now need to update 100 different 'how do I [x]' questions every time the API changes.
- jgh 15y ago
  Yeah but that takes work, why would they want to do that when they could just let the community-based Q&A site take care of it?
- mrtron 15y ago
  I disagree - I find the stack overflow model much better than a wiki. In practice the search on SO is much better than a wiki because of how the questions are phrased. Using your how do I (x) example that is how the SO title would be phrased and that is how a developer searches for a solution. Facebooks API docs are improving too - so this combination of quality docs and SO could be great.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    The SO model works better is the API never changes - but since it does, a Wiki would probably be best.
reemrevnivek 15y ago
See also the blog.stackoverflow.com side of the partnership here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow... Basically, it's a siloed version of stackoverflow.com containing only the tags relevant to Facebook. They're thinking about creating mini-sites for other major subdomains (see also http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-this-site-not-running-as-well-as-it-deserves/915#915 http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-this-...).
- darklajid 15y ago
  Hate the idea. SO's search is decent. This is just the kind of fragmentation that I already don't like about programmers., unix. etc.. You can easily filter your lists by tags, you can easily search by tag. Where's the benefit?
  - bhudman 15y ago
    Facebook will likely benefit a lot more.. They had a crappy forum, and they can let the rest of the folks actually do their support work I think :) Well, come to think of it, I think google's support forums suck even more. You can post a problem on google support forums, and pray and hope for an answer from their developers.
  - reemrevnivek 15y ago
    Purportedly, this works better than filtering by tags. I'm not sure that this level of filtering is quite necessary, but I think that the community fragmentation is useful: People go to each site (SO, SE, SU, Programmers, etc) with a specific purpose, and the topics on each site are broken up by tags. Trying to filter both purpose and topic on one site would be problematic. (Also, the Unix/AskUbuntu/SuperUser debacle is a special case, IMO)
  - bkaid 15y ago
    The benefit is SO gets more traffic and users. Facebook benefits by off loading the management of their messy forums and rely on free crowd sourced moderation.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mingyeow 15y ago
This is awesome. I develop quite a bit on facebook, but turn to SO for most of my needs. The forum is terrible, but it really does not make sense for them to build a new system from scratch.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Sidnicious 15y ago
I don't love that facebook.stackoverflow.com looks exactly like stackoverflow.com — there’s no easy way to tell where you are, or to get back to the main stack overflow. Even more confusing, you can get to un-Facebook-related questions on facebook.stackoverflow.com (e.g. from your inbox, or from a user page). Since there are no redirects between regular and Facebook SO, this means that every question on Stack Overflow now has two URLs, and you might see links to both.
- Simucal 15y ago
  At first I figured they just created a separate SE site specific to Facebook development but it appears to just be a filter on all questions which have a tag that contains "facebook" while hiding all others.
  - joelhaasnoot 15y ago
    More and more this is just a patch for the problem, while what they need is a 180 degree turn and commit to actual developers. Facebook treats its developers just like its users and throws out updates, new features and changes very very often. With so many users they can afford it for their users, but they need to see they can't just do that for their developers. As a user there are so many little bugs and quirks in Facebook, especially in the News Feed, that popup and a few days later disappear. Facebook needs to realise they need developers too, and that many advertisers run campaigns on their facebook pages, meaning that the API is not just a fun addon for users, but a money maker too.
  - andypants 15y ago
    Yeah, that's what I thought. Why not just create another stack exchange just for facebook? I mean, they've already got that system working for other topics. Putting a filter on all SO questions and slapping a subdomain on it feels like it's a solution they created in 30 seconds.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Well, first off Facebook API questions are still on-topic on SO, so they will have more eyeballs and therefore a greater probability of being answered. Second, programmers can keep their existing reputation, while a new SE site would put everyone back to 100. Since the topic is a subset, keeping it makes sense. I don't really see what problems this solution brings that can't be solved with a custom logo.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mwsherman 15y ago
It’s really just a view into Stack O. A set of filters and customizations under a subdomain. (It took quite a bit of work under the covers, natch.) If you’re already a Stack O user, this will hopefully provide a focused experience if you’re also a Facebook dev. Or not. In which case it’s ignorable. If you’re a Facebook dev who isn’t involved with Stack O, it’s a curated experience and hopefully better than what existed previous.
aneth 15y ago
This is a huge improvement over their developer forums, which are a mess of unanswered duplicate questions, terrible search, and didn't even support Facebook login.
kirillzubovsky 15y ago
Omg, this is pretty awesome. Facebook API is terrible, and having one, unified and usable channel to bounce questions would be great. Given that we are all used to Stack model, this should really help at speeding things up.
mgrouchy 15y ago
I would imagine that facebook actually writing non-terrible documentation for their API would be a better strategy then integrating with stack overflow. This can't hurt, but hopefully they don't see it as an replacement for real documentation.
unohoo 15y ago
I dont think there was anything missing from the existing FB developer forums except for the main missing ingredient - active participation from FB itself. If they are going to be unresponsive on SO as well, migrating to the SO platform doesnt make sense at all.
alanh 15y ago
"We have been ignoring you developers a bit much on the existing forums, so, how about a do-over where you guys help yourselves?" Accurate or no?
- dreamdu5t 15y ago
  Very accurate. Facebook makes it clear that they don't give two shits about developers because they're top dog and they don't have to. This just solidifies that impression. They should improve the clarity of their the documentation and add more examples, in addition to keeping them updated... or pay a couple people to answer questions. God knows they have the money.
ianterrell 15y ago
I would love to see companies with APIs and active developer communities provide rewards to high reputation developers. e.g. Facebook offers devs with over X reputation access to alpha APIs, devs with over Y reputation direct email support, devs with over Z reputation are recommended on the Facebook.com site as developers to hire for freelance work, etc.
- d0m 15y ago
  Yeah, right. But still, better to have help from ourselves than no help at all.
SalmanPK 15y ago
So basically the Fb.SO sub-domain is just for showing questions tagged with 'facebook'. lame!
nvictor 15y ago
damn.. Joel and friends, Google+? ;(
smackfu 15y ago
I like the documentation model of API pages with comments allowed, plus a semi-protected wiki model to edit the API pages. This allows the API maintainer to easily update, provides change history, plus allows the community to step in and provide corrections or code examples without the burden of rewriting the article.

278 points by ssclafani 15y ago

ary 15y ago

Should I feel better about Facebook trying to crowd-source their developer support? This doesn't address any of the real concerns with usable documentation or proper API deprecation. I get the impression that this is an attempt to spin past bad behavior into acceptable future bad behavior.

paulnelligan 15y ago

I'm not sure I like the way that my personal and professional life are suddenly becoming intertwined ... I want a few online identities dammit, not one!

DrCatbox 15y ago
Im sure I dont want that. Does this mean stackoverflow will share their user data with facebook? If so, thats a disaster.
- JeremyBanks 15y ago
  Of course it doesn't mean that, but even if it did, what user data are you talking about? The only non-public info that Stack Overflow has from (some) users is their email address and real name, which Facebook already knows.
  - true_religion 15y ago
    But facebook can't associate Real Names with questions asked on stackoverflow. If they had data-sharing in place, they could.
    - svnk 15y ago
      Oh my god, Facebook will know that you asked a question on how to write Hello World in lisp!
JeremyBanks 15y ago
Did you RTFA? This is just providing a view of Stack Overflow that's limited to Facebook questions, and Facebook staff providing more support there. Facebook has been a login option for Stack Overflow for a long time, but don't even require you to even make an account to ask questions.

pkteison 15y ago

I don't see the stack overflow model as being a great fit for what facebook api developers need. The main problem I saw with facebook api was that the right way to do things kept changing, and the docs and forum didn't keep up well. You basically needed to begin facebook API work by reading the entire blog in chronological order and then keep on scanning the dev blog daily, which may work ok if you're a fulltime facebook API developer but it is not a good fit for contract or part-time or hobby development. I think changing APIs is begging for a wiki much more than a Q&A site. Facebook used to have a wiki for their api, but they went and deleted it, which I considered basically unforgiveable and proceeded to do my best to avoid having to touch the API after that. In short, bringing back http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/ http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/ and focusing on keeping it current would be a much better start than a Q&A site, even a really good Q&A site. You'd still have the need-to-keep-with-changes problem, but at least you'd have somewhere to start from, and wouldn't keep getting referred to out of date information when googling answers. Yes I know Stack Overflow has community editable wiki question styles, but then you just compound the problem and now need to update 100 different 'how do I [x]' questions every time the API changes.

jgh 15y ago
Yeah but that takes work, why would they want to do that when they could just let the community-based Q&A site take care of it?
mrtron 15y ago
I disagree - I find the stack overflow model much better than a wiki. In practice the search on SO is much better than a wiki because of how the questions are phrased. Using your how do I (x) example that is how the SO title would be phrased and that is how a developer searches for a solution. Facebooks API docs are improving too - so this combination of quality docs and SO could be great.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  The SO model works better is the API never changes - but since it does, a Wiki would probably be best.

reemrevnivek 15y ago

See also the blog.stackoverflow.com side of the partnership here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow... Basically, it's a siloed version of stackoverflow.com containing only the tags relevant to Facebook. They're thinking about creating mini-sites for other major subdomains (see also http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-this-site-not-running-as-well-as-it-deserves/915#915 http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-this-...).

darklajid 15y ago
Hate the idea. SO's search is decent. This is just the kind of fragmentation that I already don't like about programmers., unix. etc.. You can easily filter your lists by tags, you can easily search by tag. Where's the benefit?
- bhudman 15y ago
  Facebook will likely benefit a lot more.. They had a crappy forum, and they can let the rest of the folks actually do their support work I think :) Well, come to think of it, I think google's support forums suck even more. You can post a problem on google support forums, and pray and hope for an answer from their developers.
- reemrevnivek 15y ago
  Purportedly, this works better than filtering by tags. I'm not sure that this level of filtering is quite necessary, but I think that the community fragmentation is useful: People go to each site (SO, SE, SU, Programmers, etc) with a specific purpose, and the topics on each site are broken up by tags. Trying to filter both purpose and topic on one site would be problematic. (Also, the Unix/AskUbuntu/SuperUser debacle is a special case, IMO)
- bkaid 15y ago
  The benefit is SO gets more traffic and users. Facebook benefits by off loading the management of their messy forums and rely on free crowd sourced moderation.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mingyeow 15y ago

This is awesome. I develop quite a bit on facebook, but turn to SO for most of my needs. The forum is terrible, but it really does not make sense for them to build a new system from scratch.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Sidnicious 15y ago

I don't love that facebook.stackoverflow.com looks exactly like stackoverflow.com — there’s no easy way to tell where you are, or to get back to the main stack overflow. Even more confusing, you can get to un-Facebook-related questions on facebook.stackoverflow.com (e.g. from your inbox, or from a user page). Since there are no redirects between regular and Facebook SO, this means that every question on Stack Overflow now has two URLs, and you might see links to both.

Simucal 15y ago
At first I figured they just created a separate SE site specific to Facebook development but it appears to just be a filter on all questions which have a tag that contains "facebook" while hiding all others.
- joelhaasnoot 15y ago
  More and more this is just a patch for the problem, while what they need is a 180 degree turn and commit to actual developers. Facebook treats its developers just like its users and throws out updates, new features and changes very very often. With so many users they can afford it for their users, but they need to see they can't just do that for their developers. As a user there are so many little bugs and quirks in Facebook, especially in the News Feed, that popup and a few days later disappear. Facebook needs to realise they need developers too, and that many advertisers run campaigns on their facebook pages, meaning that the API is not just a fun addon for users, but a money maker too.
- andypants 15y ago
  Yeah, that's what I thought. Why not just create another stack exchange just for facebook? I mean, they've already got that system working for other topics. Putting a filter on all SO questions and slapping a subdomain on it feels like it's a solution they created in 30 seconds.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Well, first off Facebook API questions are still on-topic on SO, so they will have more eyeballs and therefore a greater probability of being answered. Second, programmers can keep their existing reputation, while a new SE site would put everyone back to 100. Since the topic is a subset, keeping it makes sense. I don't really see what problems this solution brings that can't be solved with a custom logo.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mwsherman 15y ago

It’s really just a view into Stack O. A set of filters and customizations under a subdomain. (It took quite a bit of work under the covers, natch.) If you’re already a Stack O user, this will hopefully provide a focused experience if you’re also a Facebook dev. Or not. In which case it’s ignorable. If you’re a Facebook dev who isn’t involved with Stack O, it’s a curated experience and hopefully better than what existed previous.

aneth 15y ago

This is a huge improvement over their developer forums, which are a mess of unanswered duplicate questions, terrible search, and didn't even support Facebook login.

kirillzubovsky 15y ago

Omg, this is pretty awesome. Facebook API is terrible, and having one, unified and usable channel to bounce questions would be great. Given that we are all used to Stack model, this should really help at speeding things up.

mgrouchy 15y ago

I would imagine that facebook actually writing non-terrible documentation for their API would be a better strategy then integrating with stack overflow. This can't hurt, but hopefully they don't see it as an replacement for real documentation.

unohoo 15y ago

I dont think there was anything missing from the existing FB developer forums except for the main missing ingredient - active participation from FB itself. If they are going to be unresponsive on SO as well, migrating to the SO platform doesnt make sense at all.

alanh 15y ago

"We have been ignoring you developers a bit much on the existing forums, so, how about a do-over where you guys help yourselves?" Accurate or no?

dreamdu5t 15y ago
Very accurate. Facebook makes it clear that they don't give two shits about developers because they're top dog and they don't have to. This just solidifies that impression. They should improve the clarity of their the documentation and add more examples, in addition to keeping them updated... or pay a couple people to answer questions. God knows they have the money.

ianterrell 15y ago

I would love to see companies with APIs and active developer communities provide rewards to high reputation developers. e.g. Facebook offers devs with over X reputation access to alpha APIs, devs with over Y reputation direct email support, devs with over Z reputation are recommended on the Facebook.com site as developers to hire for freelance work, etc.

d0m 15y ago
Yeah, right. But still, better to have help from ourselves than no help at all.

SalmanPK 15y ago

So basically the Fb.SO sub-domain is just for showing questions tagged with 'facebook'. lame!

nvictor 15y ago

damn.. Joel and friends, Google+? ;(

smackfu 15y ago

I like the documentation model of API pages with comments allowed, plus a semi-protected wiki model to edit the API pages. This allows the API maintainer to easily update, provides change history, plus allows the community to step in and provide corrections or code examples without the burden of rewriting the article.