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>At some point that “helpful” vibe changed. Stack Overflow ceased being a question and answer site, and begun calcifying into a documentation site. Questions ar

by jasode 3y ago

>At some point that “helpful” vibe changed. Stack Overflow ceased being a question and answer site, and begun calcifying into a documentation site. Questions are answered with “see this other answer”. >Maybe it’s the fate of all Q&A sites to eventually become documentation sites. If you answer the question “correctly” once, why bother repeating yourself? You have misunderstood the editorial intent of Stack Overflow because it was always meant to be "documentation" more than a service to answer any questions including repeated/duplicated questions. This misunderstanding isn't your fault because most people visiting that site misunderstand it. I wrote a previous comment citing co-founder Jeff Atwood's reasoning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115438 StackOverflow seemed to be "more helpful" in the beginning because the volume of content (aka "documentation") was still being seeded and built out by the new questions. Being helpful was a side effect of the site not having much content. But now that there's a ton of content, a new question is more likely to be cross-referenced to a previous answer and therefore "Closed as duplicate" or some other reason. Yes, that seems a little rude and "unhelpful". And people don't realize that's the way Stack Overflow is designed to work. EDIT to also add comment from co-founder Spolsky: "In our equation, we are a community of people writing answers that will be read by hundreds or thousands of people. Ours is a project more like wikipedia" from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656581

JohnFen 3y ago
This is correct. It's also a problem. SO is still useful, but its utility has seriously diminished over time because of this approach. Too much of what's there is incorrect, outdated, or questions that aren't addressed elsewhere are unanswered because someone mistakenly thought it was already answered. So would be much more useful if there were some effective mechanism to get rid of or correct entries that were answered incorrectly in the first place or have become incorrect or no longer relevant with time.
- jasode 3y ago
  >So would be much more useful if there were some effective mechanism to get rid of or correct entries that were answered incorrectly in the first place or have become incorrect or no longer relevant with time. Sometimes, the community will "fix" that by having a newer answer get upvoted beyond the "accepted" answer. E.g. a Python 3.2 answer with more modern syntax in 2014 gets upvoted above the Python 3.1 accepted answer in 2010: - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331592/why-does-datetime-datetime-utcnow-not-contain-timezone-information/24666683 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331592/why-does-datetim... But that type of "correction" only happens on popular questions. The more obscure questions and answers that are wrong will remain wrong because there are not enough eyeballs and/or widespread expertise to fix them.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I answered a popular-ish Ruby on Rails question in 2014 and it's still 3 votes shy from overtaking the outdated top answer from 2009. I don't even know if my answer is the best today because I haven't done Rails in years. I definitely think this is a major pain point in the platform. I don't think that doing away with duplicates is the answer – instead there should be a way to downrank outdated stuff. Or something. I think they were experimenting with some approaches, but I haven't really been active in the last few years.
lifefeed 3y ago
I've read that, but I disagree. Stack Overflow would be better for the community if it allowed repetition. Repetition isn't harmful, and it lets the next generation learn how to answer questions, which is a legitimately hard skill, and I'm arguing is more useful than creating a static repository of documentation.
- jasode 3y ago
  >would be better for the community if it allowed repetition. Repetition isn't harmful, The "community" also includes the people who volunteer to answer the questions. The answerers don't want repetition. Jeff Atwood wanted to prioritize the SO experience for the answerers. To paraphrase JA's reasoning: - asking questions is easy which can lead to an increasing volume of bad questions that degrades the site for the answerers - answering questions is hard and more valuable for StackOverflow so optimize the site for them. (JA wrote, ">We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&A; system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers."[1]) I do understand how you would want SO to work differently and I'm not debating your opinion. I'm just relaying how the cofounders wanted StackOverflow to work. [1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/#:~:text=We%20feel%20that%20the%20world%20is%20awash%20in%20questions%2C%20but%20not%20answers.%20Answers%20are%20the%20real%20unit%20of%20work%20in%20any%20Q%26A%3B%20system.%20Therefore%2C%20the%20only%20logical%20thing%20to%20do%20is%20to%20maximize%20the%20happiness%20and%20enjoyment%20of%20answerers https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-....
  - DowagerDave 3y ago
    Also note that all products, especially successful ones, change (anyone used Excel lately?) and the cofounders are all long gone. They built something that was temporally valuable, (rightfully) cashed in and moved on.
  - Mathnerd314 3y ago
    > answering questions is hard I think this assumption is not true anymore - ChatGPT can give an answer in less time and (human) effort than it takes to formulate and devise a question. So it really is about creating a set of curated question-answer pairs, where both the questions and the answers can be auto-generated. In this context, asking the same question different ways is really helpful to an AI. And there is no such thing as a bad question, there are just Q-A pairs that do not contribute significantly to training the model ("boring" questions). I've noticed Quora is experimenting with ChatGPT but they aren't at the point where you can flag the AI's answer as incorrect or misleading and fix it.
AlbertCory 3y ago
[flagged]
bachmeier 3y ago
> This misunderstanding isn't your fault because most people visiting that site misunderstand it. And the reason few people understand it is because it's not logical. If you want documentation, read the documentation, and in most cases, that's what they did before asking the question. Anything more than cut and paste of the official documentation is discussion. "Well what is usually done to make this work in practice..." Nope. That's discussion, and to 99.9% of people asking for help, it's why such a site exists. Do I have evidence? Sure, look at all the questions that have moved to Reddit, Discord, etc.

by jasode 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

This is correct. It's also a problem. SO is still useful, but its utility has seriously diminished over time because of this approach. Too much of what's there is incorrect, outdated, or questions that aren't addressed elsewhere are unanswered because someone mistakenly thought it was already answered. So would be much more useful if there were some effective mechanism to get rid of or correct entries that were answered incorrectly in the first place or have become incorrect or no longer relevant with time.

jasode 3y ago
>So would be much more useful if there were some effective mechanism to get rid of or correct entries that were answered incorrectly in the first place or have become incorrect or no longer relevant with time. Sometimes, the community will "fix" that by having a newer answer get upvoted beyond the "accepted" answer. E.g. a Python 3.2 answer with more modern syntax in 2014 gets upvoted above the Python 3.1 accepted answer in 2010: - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331592/why-does-datetime-datetime-utcnow-not-contain-timezone-information/24666683 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331592/why-does-datetim... But that type of "correction" only happens on popular questions. The more obscure questions and answers that are wrong will remain wrong because there are not enough eyeballs and/or widespread expertise to fix them.
- arp242 3y ago
  I answered a popular-ish Ruby on Rails question in 2014 and it's still 3 votes shy from overtaking the outdated top answer from 2009. I don't even know if my answer is the best today because I haven't done Rails in years. I definitely think this is a major pain point in the platform. I don't think that doing away with duplicates is the answer – instead there should be a way to downrank outdated stuff. Or something. I think they were experimenting with some approaches, but I haven't really been active in the last few years.

lifefeed 3y ago

I've read that, but I disagree. Stack Overflow would be better for the community if it allowed repetition. Repetition isn't harmful, and it lets the next generation learn how to answer questions, which is a legitimately hard skill, and I'm arguing is more useful than creating a static repository of documentation.

jasode 3y ago
>would be better for the community if it allowed repetition. Repetition isn't harmful, The "community" also includes the people who volunteer to answer the questions. The answerers don't want repetition. Jeff Atwood wanted to prioritize the SO experience for the answerers. To paraphrase JA's reasoning: - asking questions is easy which can lead to an increasing volume of bad questions that degrades the site for the answerers - answering questions is hard and more valuable for StackOverflow so optimize the site for them. (JA wrote, ">We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&A; system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers."[1]) I do understand how you would want SO to work differently and I'm not debating your opinion. I'm just relaying how the cofounders wanted StackOverflow to work. [1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/#:~:text=We%20feel%20that%20the%20world%20is%20awash%20in%20questions%2C%20but%20not%20answers.%20Answers%20are%20the%20real%20unit%20of%20work%20in%20any%20Q%26A%3B%20system.%20Therefore%2C%20the%20only%20logical%20thing%20to%20do%20is%20to%20maximize%20the%20happiness%20and%20enjoyment%20of%20answerers https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-....
- DowagerDave 3y ago
  Also note that all products, especially successful ones, change (anyone used Excel lately?) and the cofounders are all long gone. They built something that was temporally valuable, (rightfully) cashed in and moved on.
- Mathnerd314 3y ago
  > answering questions is hard I think this assumption is not true anymore - ChatGPT can give an answer in less time and (human) effort than it takes to formulate and devise a question. So it really is about creating a set of curated question-answer pairs, where both the questions and the answers can be auto-generated. In this context, asking the same question different ways is really helpful to an AI. And there is no such thing as a bad question, there are just Q-A pairs that do not contribute significantly to training the model ("boring" questions). I've noticed Quora is experimenting with ChatGPT but they aren't at the point where you can flag the AI's answer as incorrect or misleading and fix it.

AlbertCory 3y ago

[flagged]

bachmeier 3y ago

> This misunderstanding isn't your fault because most people visiting that site misunderstand it. And the reason few people understand it is because it's not logical. If you want documentation, read the documentation, and in most cases, that's what they did before asking the question. Anything more than cut and paste of the official documentation is discussion. "Well what is usually done to make this work in practice..." Nope. That's discussion, and to 99.9% of people asking for help, it's why such a site exists. Do I have evidence? Sure, look at all the questions that have moved to Reddit, Discord, etc.