5 ms·

Why is anybody moderating on Stack Overflow at all? What is the incentive?

hammyhavoc 3y ago
To have a useful and functional community for a niche topic. The same reason someone would moderate a forum or sub-Reddit. What's the incentive for dang to moderate HN? If it's garbage and uncurated, people probably won't use it because the filtering tools to parse the data are non-existent. People come for an answer to their question, perhaps they answer the questions of others. Just like how any "community" works. "Their treasure was knowledge."
- MrThoughtful 3y ago
  Looking at the questions, they seem not very niche to me: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ Just that typical questions about popular technologies. Isn't Dang being paid to moderate HN?
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    They're niche relative to "where else are you going to ask them successfully?". If you go on Twitter, whilst it may have way more people, you're probably not going to reach the same demographics in as meaningful a way. I would assume so, yes, but the point still stands: he needs to moderate it or people won't find value in it, thus he'll be out of a position. What's the value in Wikipedia? The curated knowledge. You only have to go on the average Talk tab for an article on Wikipedia to realize how hard-won most content is, and no, the best outcome doesn't always happen, and plenty of genuine nonsense still makes its way into articles and stays there for years on end.
  - JdeBP 3y ago
    There are 180 other Stack Exchange sites, with subjects ranging from Latin through Woodworking to Biblical Hermeneutics. This is a General Strike.
- quantumwoke 3y ago
  dang is paid to moderate HN.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    I addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193137
  - anticensor 3y ago
    In addition, pg himself holds an account for emergency intervention.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
I'm a top 5% moderator on AskUbuntu and have answers on half a dozen SE sites. I used to use LinuxQuestions, a forum site, but found that SE provided better answers for me (better format, less searching), so in return I answered questions there if I could. I also used to blog tricky problems I'd solved on my *nix boxen; SE was marginally easier than making a blog post and would get better responses/corrections. That was the initial motivation: community participation, quid pro quo. Keeping SE sites like U&L and AU useful is my on-going motivation, in part I enjoy helping others, in part I enjoy using my Linux knowledge acquired over many years as a user. Yes, the company get value but all answers are "open source" and it serves the public good too.

To have a useful and functional community for a niche topic. The same reason someone would moderate a forum or sub-Reddit. What's the incentive for dang to moderate HN? If it's garbage and uncurated, people probably won't use it because the filtering tools to parse the data are non-existent. People come for an answer to their question, perhaps they answer the questions of others. Just like how any "community" works. "Their treasure was knowledge."

MrThoughtful 3y ago
Looking at the questions, they seem not very niche to me: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ Just that typical questions about popular technologies. Isn't Dang being paid to moderate HN?
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  They're niche relative to "where else are you going to ask them successfully?". If you go on Twitter, whilst it may have way more people, you're probably not going to reach the same demographics in as meaningful a way. I would assume so, yes, but the point still stands: he needs to moderate it or people won't find value in it, thus he'll be out of a position. What's the value in Wikipedia? The curated knowledge. You only have to go on the average Talk tab for an article on Wikipedia to realize how hard-won most content is, and no, the best outcome doesn't always happen, and plenty of genuine nonsense still makes its way into articles and stays there for years on end.
- JdeBP 3y ago
  There are 180 other Stack Exchange sites, with subjects ranging from Latin through Woodworking to Biblical Hermeneutics. This is a General Strike.
quantumwoke 3y ago
dang is paid to moderate HN.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  I addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193137
- anticensor 3y ago
  In addition, pg himself holds an account for emergency intervention.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago

I'm a top 5% moderator on AskUbuntu and have answers on half a dozen SE sites. I used to use LinuxQuestions, a forum site, but found that SE provided better answers for me (better format, less searching), so in return I answered questions there if I could. I also used to blog tricky problems I'd solved on my *nix boxen; SE was marginally easier than making a blog post and would get better responses/corrections. That was the initial motivation: community participation, quid pro quo. Keeping SE sites like U&L and AU useful is my on-going motivation, in part I enjoy helping others, in part I enjoy using my Linux knowledge acquired over many years as a user. Yes, the company get value but all answers are "open source" and it serves the public good too.