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In Mathematics SE, you can ask the community which are the best books on Point Set Topology or Linear Algebra. But you can't ask about the best Algorithms book

by rg111 3y ago

In Mathematics SE, you can ask the community which are the best books on Point Set Topology or Linear Algebra. But you can't ask about the best Algorithms book in SO. This was a bummer. You got a bunch of smart people with proven expertise in topics, and yet, I cannot ask about their opinion. This is stupid. Math SE is a much nicer community and I have enjoyed contributing there and also got a ton of help there.

shagie 3y ago
Math.se gets 1/10th the questions per day and 1/100th the visits per day of Stack Overflow. ( https://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday https://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday ) It is able to handle the wider scope more easily. The fewer questions per day and the more people there to help guide a not-quite-right question to become more useful the more that variation in scope can be handled. Stack Overflow has the difficulty that as they scaled up in activity, the number of people willing to spend the time to curate and the corresponding tooling didn't scale with it. This resulted in a reduction of time that can be spent on a question to help it be a good question and so people do the least friction fastest action as they can. If, for every person in https://math.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats https://math.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats you got 10 people to show up in https://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats https://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats it might be feasible to have a more similar level of topic deviation. Note that Math, a small fraction of the size of Stack Overflow has done as many close vote reviews today as Stack Overflow.
- nickpsecurity 3y ago
  You keep saying that about effect of moderation on fact- vs opinion-based questions. You haven’t proven it, though. Let’s look at an alternative. They could’ve created different categories of questions where some are fact-based and some are opinion-based. Then, focused moderation on the precise questions that need higher quality. Their search engines can also put them ahead of opinion-based questions. In that way, they keep the questions they prefer at a high, quality level while others are hit and miss. The latter are still there to benefit people. Users will then go where they prefer to go. StackOverflow would have both types of traffic.
  - shagie 3y ago
    They tried that. Stack Overflow, when it was much smaller, allowed such questions. Once they realized that it was going poorly, Jeff and Joel created "Not Programming Related" and had all of those questions asked there instead... and it went poorly. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... The thing is that the site is poorly designed to handle opinion based questions and extra work is required by people who do moderation and curation to avoid problems ( https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/01/31/the-trouble-with-popularity/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/01/31/the-trouble-with-popul... ). In order to support the opinion based questions, a more active curator group is needed than Stack Overflow users seem to be able to support... and the Q&A format that Stack Overflow is designed around is poorly designed to handle these questions. While I was active there I saw half a dozen attempts to create that site for "primary opinion" that all failed - No one wanted to spend the time to manage it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876 is one such example. Yes, the other type of questions are useful... it's just that Stack Overflow isn't necessarily the best place to ask those questions. It was designed with a very specific type of format in mind and in doing so makes it difficult to handle other types of questions. The way to have those other questions be admitted is to reduce the individual burden on the people who are maintaining the site or make it easier for people to moderate the site so that less time is needed in order to help people use the site well (this requires improvements of tooling from corporate). But Stack Overflow... it doesn't need to be able to handle every type of question. It wasn't designed to be able to handle every type of question. If you believe that the discussions are useful... create the site. Honestly, when you get done with it, it will look a lot like Reddit or Discourse. They are better able to handle questions of that nature. The Q&A format for SO and the comments were designed to make discussions difficult and impractical - which are the exact things those discussion style questions need. --- (from GP) > You got a bunch of smart people with proven expertise in topics, and yet, I cannot ask about their opinion. This is stupid. You should go to the place where those people with proven expertise answer those questions instead. Eric Lippert answers questions on Reddit from time to time - https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am... - and he's there because wants to answer those questions then. But he's on SO because he doesn't always want to answer reddit type questions.
Tao3300 3y ago
> You got a bunch of smart people with proven expertise in topics, and yet, I cannot ask about their opinion. This is stupid. That's the best way I've seen it worded. Any rationalizing about policies and manpower is a distraction from the fact that it's a stupid situation. None of that changes the fact that for a while you'd search "recommendations for x" and the first thing you'd get in your Google search results was a closed SO thread from someone asking for that thing.

by rg111 3y ago

shagie 3y ago

Math.se gets 1/10th the questions per day and 1/100th the visits per day of Stack Overflow. ( https://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday https://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday ) It is able to handle the wider scope more easily. The fewer questions per day and the more people there to help guide a not-quite-right question to become more useful the more that variation in scope can be handled. Stack Overflow has the difficulty that as they scaled up in activity, the number of people willing to spend the time to curate and the corresponding tooling didn't scale with it. This resulted in a reduction of time that can be spent on a question to help it be a good question and so people do the least friction fastest action as they can. If, for every person in https://math.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats https://math.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats you got 10 people to show up in https://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats https://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats it might be feasible to have a more similar level of topic deviation. Note that Math, a small fraction of the size of Stack Overflow has done as many close vote reviews today as Stack Overflow.

nickpsecurity 3y ago
You keep saying that about effect of moderation on fact- vs opinion-based questions. You haven’t proven it, though. Let’s look at an alternative. They could’ve created different categories of questions where some are fact-based and some are opinion-based. Then, focused moderation on the precise questions that need higher quality. Their search engines can also put them ahead of opinion-based questions. In that way, they keep the questions they prefer at a high, quality level while others are hit and miss. The latter are still there to benefit people. Users will then go where they prefer to go. StackOverflow would have both types of traffic.
- shagie 3y ago
  They tried that. Stack Overflow, when it was much smaller, allowed such questions. Once they realized that it was going poorly, Jeff and Joel created "Not Programming Related" and had all of those questions asked there instead... and it went poorly. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions... The thing is that the site is poorly designed to handle opinion based questions and extra work is required by people who do moderation and curation to avoid problems ( https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/01/31/the-trouble-with-popularity/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/01/31/the-trouble-with-popul... ). In order to support the opinion based questions, a more active curator group is needed than Stack Overflow users seem to be able to support... and the Q&A format that Stack Overflow is designed around is poorly designed to handle these questions. While I was active there I saw half a dozen attempts to create that site for "primary opinion" that all failed - No one wanted to spend the time to manage it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876 is one such example. Yes, the other type of questions are useful... it's just that Stack Overflow isn't necessarily the best place to ask those questions. It was designed with a very specific type of format in mind and in doing so makes it difficult to handle other types of questions. The way to have those other questions be admitted is to reduce the individual burden on the people who are maintaining the site or make it easier for people to moderate the site so that less time is needed in order to help people use the site well (this requires improvements of tooling from corporate). But Stack Overflow... it doesn't need to be able to handle every type of question. It wasn't designed to be able to handle every type of question. If you believe that the discussions are useful... create the site. Honestly, when you get done with it, it will look a lot like Reddit or Discourse. They are better able to handle questions of that nature. The Q&A format for SO and the comments were designed to make discussions difficult and impractical - which are the exact things those discussion style questions need. --- (from GP) > You got a bunch of smart people with proven expertise in topics, and yet, I cannot ask about their opinion. This is stupid. You should go to the place where those people with proven expertise answer those questions instead. Eric Lippert answers questions on Reddit from time to time - https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am... - and he's there because wants to answer those questions then. But he's on SO because he doesn't always want to answer reddit type questions.

Tao3300 3y ago

> You got a bunch of smart people with proven expertise in topics, and yet, I cannot ask about their opinion. This is stupid. That's the best way I've seen it worded. Any rationalizing about policies and manpower is a distraction from the fact that it's a stupid situation. None of that changes the fact that for a while you'd search "recommendations for x" and the first thing you'd get in your Google search results was a closed SO thread from someone asking for that thing.