4 ms·

> Misusing someone else's site, in a way the creators and existing users don't want it used, in a way you agreed not to use it when you signed up, is not "impro

> Misusing someone else's site, in a way the creators and existing users don't want it used, in a way you agreed not to use it when you signed up, is not "improving the neighborhood". No one cares about "the creators", and MOST ESPECIALLY NOT what Jeff Atwood thinks about their questions, answers and comments on stackexchange sites. Atwood is gone anyway, he cashed-out and moved on. The existing users are many and varied (I am one) but for whatever reason the gamification attracts a high level of zeal from certain personalities that tend towards petty authoritarianism and persnickety behaviors. As useful as these sites are (at least up to now), this is a serious problem.

jodrellblank 3y ago
Seriously, though, respond to the point - would you be happy with people turning Wikipedia into AskReddit where every page was "what's the sexiest sex you ever sexed?" and all the page content was memes about narwhals, bacon, broken arms, and poop knives? I wouldn't be happy with that. Most open ended questions are vague and bad. Most answers to them are bad. The existence of a few good ones does not justify "all sites should become Quora". Open ended questions are very easy to write, have no clear criterion for "answer is useful" and if they were just allowed, they would drown out everything else on the stackoverflows while being a bad interface - witness the Meta overflows which are really really poor attempts to have a chat forum in the QA interface, tons and tons of comments all over, people replying to other people with answers which get voted out of order. You can tell because you don't want to go to Quora or Reddit for your open ended questions; allowing unfettered open ended questions generally makes sites become overrun with low quality memes which drives the more hardcore users away. You recognise somehting about high quality at StackOverflow which is why you want to go there, but then you want to bring the low quality stuff with you. And when that's ruined StackOverflow you'll chase the next site which has narrowly scoped content and demand to ruin that too. Stop. > "No one cares about "the creators", and MOST ESPECIALLY NOT what Jeff Atwood thinks about their questions, answers and comments on stackexchange sites. Atwood is gone anyway, he cashed-out and moved on." OK, not the creators, the /owners/. Y'know, "my house, my rules", that kind of owner.

jodrellblank 3y ago

Seriously, though, respond to the point - would you be happy with people turning Wikipedia into AskReddit where every page was "what's the sexiest sex you ever sexed?" and all the page content was memes about narwhals, bacon, broken arms, and poop knives? I wouldn't be happy with that. Most open ended questions are vague and bad. Most answers to them are bad. The existence of a few good ones does not justify "all sites should become Quora". Open ended questions are very easy to write, have no clear criterion for "answer is useful" and if they were just allowed, they would drown out everything else on the stackoverflows while being a bad interface - witness the Meta overflows which are really really poor attempts to have a chat forum in the QA interface, tons and tons of comments all over, people replying to other people with answers which get voted out of order. You can tell because you don't want to go to Quora or Reddit for your open ended questions; allowing unfettered open ended questions generally makes sites become overrun with low quality memes which drives the more hardcore users away. You recognise somehting about high quality at StackOverflow which is why you want to go there, but then you want to bring the low quality stuff with you. And when that's ruined StackOverflow you'll chase the next site which has narrowly scoped content and demand to ruin that too. Stop. > "No one cares about "the creators", and MOST ESPECIALLY NOT what Jeff Atwood thinks about their questions, answers and comments on stackexchange sites. Atwood is gone anyway, he cashed-out and moved on." OK, not the creators, the /owners/. Y'know, "my house, my rules", that kind of owner.