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StackOverflow set out to be a place for Q&A without "debate", to varying success. It's a fundamental part of its mission that questions that are really prompts

by the_af 3y ago

StackOverflow set out to be a place for Q&A without "debate", to varying success. It's a fundamental part of its mission that questions that are really prompts for debate ("what is your favorite...?", "what do you recommend for...?") are not accepted. I agree with this decision. It's not as if there's any shortage of other places to ask for opinions and debate. StackOverflow tries to be the site where "the answer to X is Y". Again, with varying success and not always consistently, but it'd be even harder to accomplish if it accepted "what are the best things about X?". edit: example, from the article: > If you try to post a comment.. wait, you can’t! Because you don’t have enough karma. This is by design. Comments in SO are meant for correcting minor details or asking for clarification. They are not a form of "engagement" or debate; extended discussions are a symptom of impending flamewars and usually get promptly moved to the chat section of SO, where they belong. If you lack karma to comment, focus on asking & answering questions instead -- the primary active use of SO (other than just looking for answers, that is).

hn8305823 3y ago
> StackOverflow tries to be the site where "the answer to X is Y" StackOverflow is widely known as the place to get insulted for asking how to do X with Y. It doesn't matter what X or Y is, the answer is always "you shouldn't be doing it that way, why would you even ask that?"
- the_af 3y ago
  Sometimes. Not always. I do know I almost always find the answer I need, and someone has already asked it, so no need for me to write anything. I also don't care if it's closed as a dupe, since all I care about is whether it answers my question, not about reputation or status. I even contributed some useful answers! Did I get into pointless back and forths with aggressive users (and of course, sometimes I was the one in the wrong)? Sure! But so have I here on HN. I'd say of the last 5 years or so, the worst, most aggressive, and draining flamewars I've been involved in were here, in HN. Much worse than StackOverflow. Would you say HN is useless or failing because of this? I wouldn't!
- glenstein 3y ago
  >StackOverflow is widely known as the place to get insulted for asking how to do X with Y. It doesn't matter what X or Y is, the answer is always "you shouldn't be doing it that way, why would you even ask that?" I think that's true, but lateral to the point being made above. Stack Overflow banning opinion based questions was done for good reason and not part of the reason for its loss in traffic.
  - sedatk 3y ago
    The problem is, by removing humane parts of interpersonal communication (remember, even thanking or greeting was forbidden on SO), you essentially encourage inhumane communication. When you treat users as Q&A bots, people will treat them as bots too, forgetting that they're people. I observe this on Wikipedia too. Your contributions are merely regarded as automatically materialized prose instead of work of a human because Wikipedia's format also forbids "staining" the content with your individuality.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      > you essentially encourage inhumane communication Yes, because StackOverflow—like Wikipedia—is not about interpersonal communication. Neither is intended to be a forum. They're intended to be repositories of reference information. Nobody wants their encyclopedia or dictionary to engage in idle chit chat with them.
      - sedatk 3y ago
        This kind of perspective ("but <web site whose content is created by humans> isn't about <essential notion of humanity>") is the bane of such platforms. I think it stems from an engineer mindset that considers users as abstract entities rather than people. Almost as if people are like sun's rays that energize your web site, rather than actual beings who experience it, have emotions and all kinds of complexities and individual differences. Any web site that relies on humans for its content must accept humanity, and commit to serve the needs of the humane sides of its users. Otherwise, you'll end up with all kinds of toxicity, abuse, and finally abandonment that is observed with SO.
- pwagland 3y ago
  I have never had this experience though. It does appear to be incredibly unfriendly to a lot of people, but honestly when I look at some of the questions that get downvoted, it seems that a lot of the questions that do get downvoted are "help me, I've done no research!" That said, it's pretty hard to get a good answer on the site these days. And, as a volunteer, most of the questions on the site, I don't have the inclination to answer. Most of the rest I don't have the requisite skills to answer. Which ends up meaning that I don't spend much time answering questions anymore either.
j45 3y ago
Nice comment, resonates. There should be other was to get karma. Maybe through writing a post about how something existing helped you.
willsmith72 3y ago
The comments thing can be annoying. When an answer isn't really clear, becomes outdated, or anything else, there's no way to follow-up
- the_af 3y ago
  In my experience, if the question is really old the original author won't respond even if you comment (or they'll say something like "yes, things are different now, this was written in 2015"). And if it's really outdated you'll sometimes see someone else replying with the more up to date answer anyway. Commenting on old answers is seldom helpful, in my experience. About the only use I see for comments is asking for clarifications or pointing out an obvious mistake in relatively recent answers.
magicalhippo 3y ago
> It's not as if there's any shortage of other places to ask for opinions and debate. Clearly I'm becoming a dinosaur. Back in the days there were newsgroups and IRC. What do the non-dinos use these days? Like, not long ago I was looking for a library to X in language Y. Most of my questions are like that, so SO is almost never a fit for me. And I'd love to get some input from people who have tried the alternatives. So yeah, where's the plethora of places to ask for such things?
- TillE 3y ago
  I guess there's Reddit, but I've generally found poor results (ie, few responses) for such questions. These days I'd generally start with "awesome" lists on GitHub, use number of stars as a coarse filter to exclude obscure stuff, then dig into the documentation of each of the alternatives. It works ok, but I really would like to have a better way of finding opinions about libraries or whatever.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Silly question, but have you tried ChatGPT?
  - dagw 3y ago
    I have, and the results are more misses than hits. Up to including recommending libraries that don't actually exist.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    I have not, because most often I don't have the experience to evaluate the response. That is, I don't trust it to know what's what, so I'd have to do an in-depth evaluation anyway. For discovering the options it's probably ok, but the value I got from newsgroups and IRC were the experiences behind the opinions, potentially saving me from doing in-depth evaluations.
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      Sure, but it's still surprisingly good for most programming type questions. Even if the answer isn't exactly right or ideal it often gives you enough to go on to figure it out yourself.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
Every useful question I have as I became more experienced doesn't have a clear answer and should be a discussion. Yes I use stackoverflow at times as documentation, which is good. The other situation where it's good is when there are enough different answers to a question that help you attempt different approaches. I never ask a question on Stackoverflow like I did before, anything useful I'd ask can't be asked.

by the_af 3y ago

hn8305823 3y ago

> StackOverflow tries to be the site where "the answer to X is Y" StackOverflow is widely known as the place to get insulted for asking how to do X with Y. It doesn't matter what X or Y is, the answer is always "you shouldn't be doing it that way, why would you even ask that?"

the_af 3y ago
Sometimes. Not always. I do know I almost always find the answer I need, and someone has already asked it, so no need for me to write anything. I also don't care if it's closed as a dupe, since all I care about is whether it answers my question, not about reputation or status. I even contributed some useful answers! Did I get into pointless back and forths with aggressive users (and of course, sometimes I was the one in the wrong)? Sure! But so have I here on HN. I'd say of the last 5 years or so, the worst, most aggressive, and draining flamewars I've been involved in were here, in HN. Much worse than StackOverflow. Would you say HN is useless or failing because of this? I wouldn't!
glenstein 3y ago
>StackOverflow is widely known as the place to get insulted for asking how to do X with Y. It doesn't matter what X or Y is, the answer is always "you shouldn't be doing it that way, why would you even ask that?" I think that's true, but lateral to the point being made above. Stack Overflow banning opinion based questions was done for good reason and not part of the reason for its loss in traffic.
- sedatk 3y ago
  The problem is, by removing humane parts of interpersonal communication (remember, even thanking or greeting was forbidden on SO), you essentially encourage inhumane communication. When you treat users as Q&A bots, people will treat them as bots too, forgetting that they're people. I observe this on Wikipedia too. Your contributions are merely regarded as automatically materialized prose instead of work of a human because Wikipedia's format also forbids "staining" the content with your individuality.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    > you essentially encourage inhumane communication Yes, because StackOverflow—like Wikipedia—is not about interpersonal communication. Neither is intended to be a forum. They're intended to be repositories of reference information. Nobody wants their encyclopedia or dictionary to engage in idle chit chat with them.
    - sedatk 3y ago
      This kind of perspective ("but <web site whose content is created by humans> isn't about <essential notion of humanity>") is the bane of such platforms. I think it stems from an engineer mindset that considers users as abstract entities rather than people. Almost as if people are like sun's rays that energize your web site, rather than actual beings who experience it, have emotions and all kinds of complexities and individual differences. Any web site that relies on humans for its content must accept humanity, and commit to serve the needs of the humane sides of its users. Otherwise, you'll end up with all kinds of toxicity, abuse, and finally abandonment that is observed with SO.
pwagland 3y ago
I have never had this experience though. It does appear to be incredibly unfriendly to a lot of people, but honestly when I look at some of the questions that get downvoted, it seems that a lot of the questions that do get downvoted are "help me, I've done no research!" That said, it's pretty hard to get a good answer on the site these days. And, as a volunteer, most of the questions on the site, I don't have the inclination to answer. Most of the rest I don't have the requisite skills to answer. Which ends up meaning that I don't spend much time answering questions anymore either.

j45 3y ago

Nice comment, resonates. There should be other was to get karma. Maybe through writing a post about how something existing helped you.

willsmith72 3y ago

The comments thing can be annoying. When an answer isn't really clear, becomes outdated, or anything else, there's no way to follow-up

the_af 3y ago
In my experience, if the question is really old the original author won't respond even if you comment (or they'll say something like "yes, things are different now, this was written in 2015"). And if it's really outdated you'll sometimes see someone else replying with the more up to date answer anyway. Commenting on old answers is seldom helpful, in my experience. About the only use I see for comments is asking for clarifications or pointing out an obvious mistake in relatively recent answers.

magicalhippo 3y ago

> It's not as if there's any shortage of other places to ask for opinions and debate. Clearly I'm becoming a dinosaur. Back in the days there were newsgroups and IRC. What do the non-dinos use these days? Like, not long ago I was looking for a library to X in language Y. Most of my questions are like that, so SO is almost never a fit for me. And I'd love to get some input from people who have tried the alternatives. So yeah, where's the plethora of places to ask for such things?

TillE 3y ago
I guess there's Reddit, but I've generally found poor results (ie, few responses) for such questions. These days I'd generally start with "awesome" lists on GitHub, use number of stars as a coarse filter to exclude obscure stuff, then dig into the documentation of each of the alternatives. It works ok, but I really would like to have a better way of finding opinions about libraries or whatever.
wizofaus 3y ago
Silly question, but have you tried ChatGPT?
- dagw 3y ago
  I have, and the results are more misses than hits. Up to including recommending libraries that don't actually exist.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  I have not, because most often I don't have the experience to evaluate the response. That is, I don't trust it to know what's what, so I'd have to do an in-depth evaluation anyway. For discovering the options it's probably ok, but the value I got from newsgroups and IRC were the experiences behind the opinions, potentially saving me from doing in-depth evaluations.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Sure, but it's still surprisingly good for most programming type questions. Even if the answer isn't exactly right or ideal it often gives you enough to go on to figure it out yourself.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

Every useful question I have as I became more experienced doesn't have a clear answer and should be a discussion. Yes I use stackoverflow at times as documentation, which is good. The other situation where it's good is when there are enough different answers to a question that help you attempt different approaches. I never ask a question on Stackoverflow like I did before, anything useful I'd ask can't be asked.