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Yeah, whenever I ask a question on SO, I literally have to write paragraphs of text exhorting people to answer my question instead of a different question they

by tivert 3y ago

Yeah, whenever I ask a question on SO, I literally have to write paragraphs of text exhorting people to answer my question instead of a different question they find easier, or why my question is not the same as some vaguely similar one. Then I have to constantly remind people about the same stuff in the comments. That culture problem has been getting worse and worse at SO over time. I only go there as a last resort.

falserum 3y ago
Sources? (Edit: Let’s add /s just in case)
ryandrake 3y ago
StackOverflow is a great resource if you want to know how you would have done some programming task in 2009. Their cultural aversion to new/updated content has frozen them in time.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  Agreed. Certain categories should probably be purged every 5 years or so. In many areas there is no value in learning how things got done years ago. Obviously, there are other areas where the fundamentals haven't changed since the last decades.
magicalhippo 3y ago
I found SO very frustrating until one of the moderators explained it rather clearly: SO isn't about me (or you). They don't want to help me (or you). They want to help everyone else. In that light all the weirdness made sense. Of course, I am very interested in getting my problems solved, so I simply stopped asking on SO to avoid the frustration.
- tivert 3y ago
  > I found SO very frustrating until one of the moderators explained it rather clearly: SO isn't about me (or you). They don't want to help me (or you). They want to help everyone else. I know that's what they say. The thing they have trouble understanding is that "helping everyone else" does not mean bending every question into some 101 level software design advice thing. "Helping everyone else" very much can mean being a repository of answers to hard questions or solutions when non-typical constraints are at play. Every software engineer worth his salt must have had an experience where the answer he was looking for was in some old, weird forum post that was the single hit to his search query, but a lot of SO doesn't seem to get that.

by tivert 3y ago

falserum 3y ago

Sources? (Edit: Let’s add /s just in case)

ryandrake 3y ago

StackOverflow is a great resource if you want to know how you would have done some programming task in 2009. Their cultural aversion to new/updated content has frozen them in time.

rqtwteye 3y ago
Agreed. Certain categories should probably be purged every 5 years or so. In many areas there is no value in learning how things got done years ago. Obviously, there are other areas where the fundamentals haven't changed since the last decades.

magicalhippo 3y ago

I found SO very frustrating until one of the moderators explained it rather clearly: SO isn't about me (or you). They don't want to help me (or you). They want to help everyone else. In that light all the weirdness made sense. Of course, I am very interested in getting my problems solved, so I simply stopped asking on SO to avoid the frustration.

tivert 3y ago
> I found SO very frustrating until one of the moderators explained it rather clearly: SO isn't about me (or you). They don't want to help me (or you). They want to help everyone else. I know that's what they say. The thing they have trouble understanding is that "helping everyone else" does not mean bending every question into some 101 level software design advice thing. "Helping everyone else" very much can mean being a repository of answers to hard questions or solutions when non-typical constraints are at play. Every software engineer worth his salt must have had an experience where the answer he was looking for was in some old, weird forum post that was the single hit to his search query, but a lot of SO doesn't seem to get that.