8 ms·

Do I live in a different world than everyone here? Stack Overflow is awesome and I don't think I've ever had a bad experience with it (seriously). The response

by nmilo 4y ago

Do I live in a different world than everyone here? Stack Overflow is awesome and I don't think I've ever had a bad experience with it (seriously). The response time is like 10 minutes or less since everyone there is so hungry for karma. The complaints about "closing questions" never really hit me because, when a question is closed, they usually point you towards an answer that helps anyways. They've always answered my stupid questions from years ago like "why does my program crash when I put a 1MB object on the stack" and "please make this CMake setup work for me," and if they didn't, they point me to a duplicate question that does. Just set aside your ego, fuck karma, and you'll be fine. I really don't see how people can find this site toxic.

bombcar 4y ago
It really REALLY depends on how you use SO and what "sub overflows?" you're using. Some of them are quite active and fun to work with, others are brutal. And it also depends on how much effort you put into your questions, also. But any complaining that goes beyond "googling my question doesn't get me my complete answer anymore" should include examples of when it failed, because often people complain who just wanted SO to do their legwork for them.
commandlinefan 4y ago
I kind of wondered about that, too - I've asked a few questions on SO and never had one removed. Not all of them ever got answers, but I don't think any were ever removed or even downvoted.
playingalong 4y ago
Me neither. But I think to ask a good question (on SO or to a more senior colleague at work) is a skill itself. Most people don't have it. Even most developers don't have it, which is somewhat surprising. Also this skill is not taught actively, or at least not widely. So people end up asking these poorly worded or poorly aimed questions. And they receive hardly any help to get it right. Neither before (in their education), nor during/after (when using SO).
- mdaniel 4y ago
  > And they receive hardly any help to get it right. Neither before (in their education), nor during/after (when using SO). I've never asked a question in order to know what the question guidance is like, but _undoubtedly_ there is a well written "how to ask" page <https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask> and (one that I cite in comments so often I have a bookmarklet for it) the "please rubber duck your way to the question before vomiting into SO" that used to be called MCVE <https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example> Now, saying "ain't nobody got time to read all that text, I got bugs to write!" is a reasonable response, but saying "there's no guidance on how to write a question less likely to be closed" is untrue
Quarrelsome 4y ago
25k rep early adopter. I stopped using it when the librarians got out of control and it no longer was about helping people but instead about being a perfect library of provable knowledge where most users started to be categorised as problematic to that goal. Particularly users who were less competent at expressing themselves in English. Other things that irked: librarians removed all the flavour from many of my answers over time (not only swearing but also quirky phrasing or choice of metaphor), librarians would close discussion topics that were useful (e.g. what's a good tech choice for this usecase today?"), or librarians would close new questions I was in the middle of penning a non-trivial answer to because they'd misunderstood what the user was actually asking (e.g. poor English). Since the days of newsgroups I was seeking a place to pay off the knowledge debt I'd obtained through the glorious advice that luminaries such as Jon Skeet and Nicholas Paldino had given me in the past. SO stopped being that place after all the basic questions had already been asked. There was a kindness and endless patience that the newsgroups programming crowd had, that I feel like we lost with the SO librarians. I appreciate that I had a different perspective on what I wanted SO to be than the founders but I really perceived the frustration new users had with the approach to moderation and it made me upset to the point of not wanting to use it anymore.
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  I lucked in to some moderator powers by posting the answer to an extremely simple and common problem in Objective-C. Sometimes I'll go through and undo lots of those trivial "improvements" that people make where they slightly change the wording of the questions and answers.
- kapep 4y ago
  Using quirky metaphors and swearing can be problematic for people who aren't fluent in english though. I think the removal of all greeting lines and thank you comments is a bit over the top, but generally pushing a consistent, impersonal scientific writing style does help a lot to make SO more accessible.
  - Quarrelsome 4y ago
    quirky metaphors and swearing are about top answers I've crafted to existing questions that editors are slowly blandifying until its no longer my contribution anymore. The English is about people phrasing questions poorly and the mods immediately closing them, while muggins here has crafted a detailed three paragraph answer that now has nowhere to go. > but generally pushing a consistent, impersonal scientific writing style does help a lot to make SO more accessible. I mean you can argue that, but I think you can also argue that the dictionary is a difficult read sometimes, in spite of its existing style. Point is the founders made a choice and it was a choice that pissed some people off, so I'm answering the "I don't have a problem with SO" comment to point out that I did because their choices made me dislike contributing.
berjin 4y ago
I agree. SO is great because it doesn't try to please everyone. It's for professionals not to build your whole app for you. There seems to have been a swell in beginners learning to code perhaps due to economic motivations rather than curiosity. These people seem to want SO to do their homework for them without having done any leg work themselves. I can sympathise with people trying their best to find the answers but lacking the domain vocabulary to find the answers; Usually closed questions point them in to the right place anyway. However a lot of the questions are 1) duplicates or 2) high level questions for which there isn't a definite answer it's a matter of taste. That's not what SO is for. It's your job to figure out the high level picture, learn the absolute basics of the tech stack you're working with and SO can fill gaps where information is too esoteric to find easily in docs. The questions are generally unique rather than duplicated and improve over time rather than a constant stream of crap that reddit is.
user- 4y ago
> Do I live in a different world than everyone here? > The response time is like 10 minutes or less I have to say, you do, and I want to live in it. I've asked detailed, well formatted, clear questions and they usually got like 10 views in a month.
stevenhuang 4y ago
I find those who bash SO to be either help vampires or generally using the site wrong (asking an opinion based question, asking newbie questions without searching or not knowing how to form the right search queries, ...) Inevitably when their questions get moderated they'll feel personally slighted without dispassionate consideration of the situation (because why would they; they have a question and they want the answer NOW), thus to them SO is now "toxic". Many just don't have the right mindset for SO, it's unfortunate.
- metabagel 4y ago
  Well, here is my question which was marked as a duplicate. I'll never make the mistake of posting a question to SO again. Total waste of my time. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60824493/how-do-you-cast-a-rust-variant-enum-to-an-underlying-struct https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60824493/how-do-you-cast...
  - shagie 4y ago
    By intentional design, Stack Overflow is a poor site to use if you need to work through multiple questions and answers to solve a problem. There are other sites that work to fill in that approach and do so better. Stack Overflow works best when there is a well defined problem that can be reproduced and you are a specific answer rather than guidance for how to proceed or a tutorial. If someone needs to come back to a question to answer comments and work through it, SO becomes more and more difficult to use in that format. AN important thing to remember is that it isn't the right site for every question (and trying to use it as such will run into those intentional design choices made at the very start to make it difficult to use for certain types of questions).
    - metabagel 4y ago
      I don't understand your response. I asked a single very specific question. Everything else was context and to prove that I did some work on my end before asking for help. I would have to look again, but I believe that SO explicitly asks you to post what you tried. And now you're saying that posting what I tried muddies up the value of my question. Can you see how this seems like a no-win situation? Edit: Also, my question was marked as a duplicate. It doesn't seem to have been rejected for reasons related to asking too many questions or requiring a tutorial answer.
hummus_bae 4y ago
[dead]
patrulek 4y ago
> The response time is like 10 minutes or less since everyone there is so hungry for karma. For trivial questions/broad categories maybe. Ive asked a question 8 months ago for a very specific issue and it has nearly 50 views and no comments other than mine itself when i thought i found solution.

by nmilo 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

It really REALLY depends on how you use SO and what "sub overflows?" you're using. Some of them are quite active and fun to work with, others are brutal. And it also depends on how much effort you put into your questions, also. But any complaining that goes beyond "googling my question doesn't get me my complete answer anymore" should include examples of when it failed, because often people complain who just wanted SO to do their legwork for them.

commandlinefan 4y ago

I kind of wondered about that, too - I've asked a few questions on SO and never had one removed. Not all of them ever got answers, but I don't think any were ever removed or even downvoted.

playingalong 4y ago

Me neither. But I think to ask a good question (on SO or to a more senior colleague at work) is a skill itself. Most people don't have it. Even most developers don't have it, which is somewhat surprising. Also this skill is not taught actively, or at least not widely. So people end up asking these poorly worded or poorly aimed questions. And they receive hardly any help to get it right. Neither before (in their education), nor during/after (when using SO).

mdaniel 4y ago
> And they receive hardly any help to get it right. Neither before (in their education), nor during/after (when using SO). I've never asked a question in order to know what the question guidance is like, but _undoubtedly_ there is a well written "how to ask" page <https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask> and (one that I cite in comments so often I have a bookmarklet for it) the "please rubber duck your way to the question before vomiting into SO" that used to be called MCVE <https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example> Now, saying "ain't nobody got time to read all that text, I got bugs to write!" is a reasonable response, but saying "there's no guidance on how to write a question less likely to be closed" is untrue

Quarrelsome 4y ago

25k rep early adopter. I stopped using it when the librarians got out of control and it no longer was about helping people but instead about being a perfect library of provable knowledge where most users started to be categorised as problematic to that goal. Particularly users who were less competent at expressing themselves in English. Other things that irked: librarians removed all the flavour from many of my answers over time (not only swearing but also quirky phrasing or choice of metaphor), librarians would close discussion topics that were useful (e.g. what's a good tech choice for this usecase today?"), or librarians would close new questions I was in the middle of penning a non-trivial answer to because they'd misunderstood what the user was actually asking (e.g. poor English). Since the days of newsgroups I was seeking a place to pay off the knowledge debt I'd obtained through the glorious advice that luminaries such as Jon Skeet and Nicholas Paldino had given me in the past. SO stopped being that place after all the basic questions had already been asked. There was a kindness and endless patience that the newsgroups programming crowd had, that I feel like we lost with the SO librarians. I appreciate that I had a different perspective on what I wanted SO to be than the founders but I really perceived the frustration new users had with the approach to moderation and it made me upset to the point of not wanting to use it anymore.

RandallBrown 4y ago
I lucked in to some moderator powers by posting the answer to an extremely simple and common problem in Objective-C. Sometimes I'll go through and undo lots of those trivial "improvements" that people make where they slightly change the wording of the questions and answers.
kapep 4y ago
Using quirky metaphors and swearing can be problematic for people who aren't fluent in english though. I think the removal of all greeting lines and thank you comments is a bit over the top, but generally pushing a consistent, impersonal scientific writing style does help a lot to make SO more accessible.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  quirky metaphors and swearing are about top answers I've crafted to existing questions that editors are slowly blandifying until its no longer my contribution anymore. The English is about people phrasing questions poorly and the mods immediately closing them, while muggins here has crafted a detailed three paragraph answer that now has nowhere to go. > but generally pushing a consistent, impersonal scientific writing style does help a lot to make SO more accessible. I mean you can argue that, but I think you can also argue that the dictionary is a difficult read sometimes, in spite of its existing style. Point is the founders made a choice and it was a choice that pissed some people off, so I'm answering the "I don't have a problem with SO" comment to point out that I did because their choices made me dislike contributing.

berjin 4y ago

I agree. SO is great because it doesn't try to please everyone. It's for professionals not to build your whole app for you. There seems to have been a swell in beginners learning to code perhaps due to economic motivations rather than curiosity. These people seem to want SO to do their homework for them without having done any leg work themselves. I can sympathise with people trying their best to find the answers but lacking the domain vocabulary to find the answers; Usually closed questions point them in to the right place anyway. However a lot of the questions are 1) duplicates or 2) high level questions for which there isn't a definite answer it's a matter of taste. That's not what SO is for. It's your job to figure out the high level picture, learn the absolute basics of the tech stack you're working with and SO can fill gaps where information is too esoteric to find easily in docs. The questions are generally unique rather than duplicated and improve over time rather than a constant stream of crap that reddit is.

user- 4y ago

> Do I live in a different world than everyone here? > The response time is like 10 minutes or less I have to say, you do, and I want to live in it. I've asked detailed, well formatted, clear questions and they usually got like 10 views in a month.

stevenhuang 4y ago

I find those who bash SO to be either help vampires or generally using the site wrong (asking an opinion based question, asking newbie questions without searching or not knowing how to form the right search queries, ...) Inevitably when their questions get moderated they'll feel personally slighted without dispassionate consideration of the situation (because why would they; they have a question and they want the answer NOW), thus to them SO is now "toxic". Many just don't have the right mindset for SO, it's unfortunate.

metabagel 4y ago
Well, here is my question which was marked as a duplicate. I'll never make the mistake of posting a question to SO again. Total waste of my time. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60824493/how-do-you-cast-a-rust-variant-enum-to-an-underlying-struct https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60824493/how-do-you-cast...
- shagie 4y ago
  By intentional design, Stack Overflow is a poor site to use if you need to work through multiple questions and answers to solve a problem. There are other sites that work to fill in that approach and do so better. Stack Overflow works best when there is a well defined problem that can be reproduced and you are a specific answer rather than guidance for how to proceed or a tutorial. If someone needs to come back to a question to answer comments and work through it, SO becomes more and more difficult to use in that format. AN important thing to remember is that it isn't the right site for every question (and trying to use it as such will run into those intentional design choices made at the very start to make it difficult to use for certain types of questions).
  - metabagel 4y ago
    I don't understand your response. I asked a single very specific question. Everything else was context and to prove that I did some work on my end before asking for help. I would have to look again, but I believe that SO explicitly asks you to post what you tried. And now you're saying that posting what I tried muddies up the value of my question. Can you see how this seems like a no-win situation? Edit: Also, my question was marked as a duplicate. It doesn't seem to have been rejected for reasons related to asking too many questions or requiring a tutorial answer.

hummus_bae 4y ago

[dead]

patrulek 4y ago

> The response time is like 10 minutes or less since everyone there is so hungry for karma. For trivial questions/broad categories maybe. Ive asked a question 8 months ago for a very specific issue and it has nearly 50 views and no comments other than mine itself when i thought i found solution.