3 ms·

This sounds interesting please could you share a link if you find it?

kccqzy 3y ago
The "population change" effect mentioned above is called Eternal September. Wikipedia is a good source here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September I didn't quite find the quote mentioned by GP but for stack overflow itself, an explicit design goal is to minimize discussions and make the site focus on Q&A, since the kind of argumentative jerks mentioned by GP tend to be involved in long discussions. I quote from Jeff Atwood: > At Stack Exchange, one of the tricky things we learned about Q&A is that if your goal is to have an excellent signal to noise ratio, you must suppress discussion. Stack Exchange only supports the absolute minimum amount of discussion necessary to produce great questions and great answers. That's why answers get constantly re-ordered by votes, that's why comments have limited formatting and length and only a few display, and so forth. Almost every design decision we made was informed by our desire to push discussion down, to inhibit it in every way we could. Spare us the long-winded diatribe, just answer the damn question already.
gwd 3y ago
Memory is so weird... I feel like I saw it in person. But given that the site was started in 2008, and some other details I remember about the talk would indicate that I must have heard it at least a year after it launched, I can't figure out a venue where I would have seen it in person -- the most likely venue being a talk at uni, and I was long out of university at that point. Why at least a year after? I also remember the speaker relating a conversation he had with someone from whom it seems like he was asking for money: maybe a VC? The VC told the speaker, "I sat on a plane next to somebody who told me he doesn't answer anything on stackoverflow any more because all the questions are answered too quickly." And the speaker responded, "So wait. You talked to a random person on a plane. This person had heard of my website. And his main complaint was that questions were answered too quickly?" Wikipedia says SO did get VC funding in 2010, so that sort of matches; and quote from sibling comment is along the same lines. So I don't think I'm imagining things, but I also don't think I'm going to be able to give much more information. :-)

The "population change" effect mentioned above is called Eternal September. Wikipedia is a good source here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September I didn't quite find the quote mentioned by GP but for stack overflow itself, an explicit design goal is to minimize discussions and make the site focus on Q&A, since the kind of argumentative jerks mentioned by GP tend to be involved in long discussions. I quote from Jeff Atwood: > At Stack Exchange, one of the tricky things we learned about Q&A is that if your goal is to have an excellent signal to noise ratio, you must suppress discussion. Stack Exchange only supports the absolute minimum amount of discussion necessary to produce great questions and great answers. That's why answers get constantly re-ordered by votes, that's why comments have limited formatting and length and only a few display, and so forth. Almost every design decision we made was informed by our desire to push discussion down, to inhibit it in every way we could. Spare us the long-winded diatribe, just answer the damn question already.

gwd 3y ago

Memory is so weird... I feel like I saw it in person. But given that the site was started in 2008, and some other details I remember about the talk would indicate that I must have heard it at least a year after it launched, I can't figure out a venue where I would have seen it in person -- the most likely venue being a talk at uni, and I was long out of university at that point. Why at least a year after? I also remember the speaker relating a conversation he had with someone from whom it seems like he was asking for money: maybe a VC? The VC told the speaker, "I sat on a plane next to somebody who told me he doesn't answer anything on stackoverflow any more because all the questions are answered too quickly." And the speaker responded, "So wait. You talked to a random person on a plane. This person had heard of my website. And his main complaint was that questions were answered too quickly?" Wikipedia says SO did get VC funding in 2010, so that sort of matches; and quote from sibling comment is along the same lines. So I don't think I'm imagining things, but I also don't think I'm going to be able to give much more information. :-)