2 ms·

> I hear this strawman all the time. Is it a strawman if it appears (among other places) in the 2008 launch blog post of one of the two cofounders[1]? > Every

> I hear this strawman all the time. Is it a strawman if it appears (among other places) in the 2008 launch blog post of one of the two cofounders[1]? > Every question in Stack Overflow is like the Wikipedia article for some extremely narrow, specific programming question. How do I enlarge a fizzbar without overwriting the user’s snibbit? This question should only appear once in the site. Duplicates should be cleaned up quickly and redirected to the original question. Or here’s the other cofounder’s 2018 retrospective[2]: > Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in common with Wikipedia than a discussion forum. By this I mean questions and answers on Stack Overflow are not primarily judged by their usefulness to a specific individual, but by how many other programmers that question or answer can potentially help over time. Reasonable people may disagree on how well SO accomplishes that goal, but I think it’s well established that it converged on having it as a goal fairly quickly and has had it in sight for basically all of its existence—unlike other initial positions which are known to have changed[3,4]. In no way is this meant as an endorsement of gatekeeping[5]; it’s just that it’s never been not about giving you the perfect answer to your question, for any value of you including me. (SO calling itself a Q&A site is perhaps a little tautological, given it more or less defined the term. But Q&A as envisioned there is, in particular, not[6] a forum, which would be about answering or discussing a specific poster’s question.) [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/09/15/stack-overflow-launches/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/09/15/stack-overflow-lau... [2] https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-does-stack-overflow-want-to-be-when-it-grows-up/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-does-stack-overflow-want-... [3] https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/ [4] https://blog.codinghorror.com/listen-to-your-community-but-dont-let-them-tell-you-what-to-do/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/listen-to-your-community-but-d... [5] https://blog.codinghorror.com/stack-overflow-none-of-us-is-as-dumb-as-all-of-us/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/stack-overflow-none-of-us-is-a... [6] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/are-stack-exchange-sites-forums https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/are-stack-exc...

shagie 4y ago
Jeff's announcement can be seen at https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ > Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal. Some formatting that isn't quite clear there. First sentence is bold. "good" is italicized in the original too.
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  Right, but you can see it’s a bit fuzzy on what the thing actually is, very possibly because they themselves weren’t quite clear about that. The feel-good wording could sort of be made to fit a forum if they wished, but ultimately they didn’t. (Or possibly the homepage of SO at the time was the place that contained the actual description.)
  - shagie 4y ago
    Part of the difficulty is that Jeff and Joel weren't in agreement for what it should be. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the-turtle-in-logo https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th... Note the first revision and its author https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/1003841/1 https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/1003841/1 Then look at https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions (both pages, but the key part is on the most recent one) with the closed, locked, and deleted actions and who did them. The (for lack of better terms) Atwoodian and Spoloskian philosophies of how the site should be run and that fracture continue to this day with (excessively simplified caricatures) some looking to delete everything that isn't good so that they could concentrate on what was left and others trying to fix everything even though it isn't good to start with and a "we'll get around to it" for most of the content. That the fracture hasn't been resolved and Stack Overflow corporate still hasn't really come down and said what they want it to be (though they want more "engagement" so it feels like it will be more Spoloskian - but they don't want the Atwoodians to leave).
    - RugnirViking 4y ago
      wow, that question really exemplifies the debate here I think. It's a simple and answerable question, which will be an exremely common question from beginners. And yet it was almost instantly closed despite being posted by one of the founders of the site.
_gabe_ 4y ago
> Is it a strawman if it appears (among other places) in the 2008 launch blog post of one of the two cofounders[1]? Yes. As you mentioned the blog post is from 2008, that's 15 years ago now. Jeff hasn't had any input on the direction of stack overflow for more than a decade. From Jeff's blog post that you linked: > I have not worked at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I've had zero day to day operational input since that date, more or less by choice. So I don't see how his blog post from 2018 has any place in the company's current mission. He says in the blog post that you linked that he had plenty of opinions, but he has chosen to not have any direct influence in the company for over a decade. And Joel stepped down as CEO in 2019. And Joel's vision has clearly changed. This is from a blog post in 2019, which probably reflects what the current vision of SO has become after seeing what SO has turned into: > In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0] So, yes. People are building a strawman by trying to say the rude, snarky, meaningless cruel remarks are necessary to maintain "quality" answers. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-st...
- shagie 4y ago
  > > > In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0] I would contend that the rudeness and snark are a symptom of failed moderation tools. On USENET, if there was a user who was bothersome to you - you could kill file them. Plonk and they're gone from what you can see. On Reddit, you can block a user and you won't see their comments again. Similarly on Twitter you can mute or block a user. And again on GitHub. On HN you can click hide and collapse threads from people you don't want to see. With all of these, you can make an annoying person not annoy you. On Stack Overflow, you can't block questions from a user showing up when you look at a tag. You can't ignore answers that they have given on posts that otherwise invoke Duty Calls https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ . You can't prevent a user from commenting on your posts. You can't filter questions to those who have had some criteria. The combination of all of this means that on Stack Overflow, there are only three ways to handle a user. You can flag their comments or posts and have a diamond mod step in (note that asking poor questions again and again isn't diamond mod worthy) and note that that sometimes can take days or weeks to get resolved. You can take your ball and go home. Quit stack overflow and go cold turkey. There are more than a few who have decided that the hassle of dealing with users there isn't worth the headaches. You can make it uncomfortable for them to stay. Snark, veiled (and unveiled) rudeness, and similar comments. Not that this is an excuse for rudeness - but rather an explanation. One of the things to lower the temperature and reduce the amount of rudeness is to increase the ability for a user to see what they want and be able to avoid interactions with people who they don't want to interact with. If the python tag is getting too many new programmer questions in September asking to make a circle with a for loop, the experienced programmer can either close questions (note that some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of close votes, down vote (again, some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of regular votes, and then either ask "have you read the documentation for for loop" or leave. Rudeness is often an established user running out of moderation tools.

shagie 4y ago

Jeff's announcement can be seen at https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/ > Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal. Some formatting that isn't quite clear there. First sentence is bold. "good" is italicized in the original too.

mananaysiempre 4y ago
Right, but you can see it’s a bit fuzzy on what the thing actually is, very possibly because they themselves weren’t quite clear about that. The feel-good wording could sort of be made to fit a forum if they wished, but ultimately they didn’t. (Or possibly the homepage of SO at the time was the place that contained the actual description.)
- shagie 4y ago
  Part of the difficulty is that Jeff and Joel weren't in agreement for what it should be. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the-turtle-in-logo https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th... Note the first revision and its author https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/1003841/1 https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/1003841/1 Then look at https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions (both pages, but the key part is on the most recent one) with the closed, locked, and deleted actions and who did them. The (for lack of better terms) Atwoodian and Spoloskian philosophies of how the site should be run and that fracture continue to this day with (excessively simplified caricatures) some looking to delete everything that isn't good so that they could concentrate on what was left and others trying to fix everything even though it isn't good to start with and a "we'll get around to it" for most of the content. That the fracture hasn't been resolved and Stack Overflow corporate still hasn't really come down and said what they want it to be (though they want more "engagement" so it feels like it will be more Spoloskian - but they don't want the Atwoodians to leave).
  - RugnirViking 4y ago
    wow, that question really exemplifies the debate here I think. It's a simple and answerable question, which will be an exremely common question from beginners. And yet it was almost instantly closed despite being posted by one of the founders of the site.

_gabe_ 4y ago

> Is it a strawman if it appears (among other places) in the 2008 launch blog post of one of the two cofounders[1]? Yes. As you mentioned the blog post is from 2008, that's 15 years ago now. Jeff hasn't had any input on the direction of stack overflow for more than a decade. From Jeff's blog post that you linked: > I have not worked at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I've had zero day to day operational input since that date, more or less by choice. So I don't see how his blog post from 2018 has any place in the company's current mission. He says in the blog post that you linked that he had plenty of opinions, but he has chosen to not have any direct influence in the company for over a decade. And Joel stepped down as CEO in 2019. And Joel's vision has clearly changed. This is from a blog post in 2019, which probably reflects what the current vision of SO has become after seeing what SO has turned into: > In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0] So, yes. People are building a strawman by trying to say the rude, snarky, meaningless cruel remarks are necessary to maintain "quality" answers. [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-st...

shagie 4y ago
> > > In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0] I would contend that the rudeness and snark are a symptom of failed moderation tools. On USENET, if there was a user who was bothersome to you - you could kill file them. Plonk and they're gone from what you can see. On Reddit, you can block a user and you won't see their comments again. Similarly on Twitter you can mute or block a user. And again on GitHub. On HN you can click hide and collapse threads from people you don't want to see. With all of these, you can make an annoying person not annoy you. On Stack Overflow, you can't block questions from a user showing up when you look at a tag. You can't ignore answers that they have given on posts that otherwise invoke Duty Calls https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ . You can't prevent a user from commenting on your posts. You can't filter questions to those who have had some criteria. The combination of all of this means that on Stack Overflow, there are only three ways to handle a user. You can flag their comments or posts and have a diamond mod step in (note that asking poor questions again and again isn't diamond mod worthy) and note that that sometimes can take days or weeks to get resolved. You can take your ball and go home. Quit stack overflow and go cold turkey. There are more than a few who have decided that the hassle of dealing with users there isn't worth the headaches. You can make it uncomfortable for them to stay. Snark, veiled (and unveiled) rudeness, and similar comments. Not that this is an excuse for rudeness - but rather an explanation. One of the things to lower the temperature and reduce the amount of rudeness is to increase the ability for a user to see what they want and be able to avoid interactions with people who they don't want to interact with. If the python tag is getting too many new programmer questions in September asking to make a circle with a for loop, the experienced programmer can either close questions (note that some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of close votes, down vote (again, some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of regular votes, and then either ask "have you read the documentation for for loop" or leave. Rudeness is often an established user running out of moderation tools.