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Suppose you we're in charge of a q&a site whose quality was going downhill. How would you go about fixing it if not for locking and deleting questions?

by overcyn 14y ago

dionidium 14y ago
I don't think there's any evidence that these extremely popular, "fun" questions have any effect on the day-to-day programming queries submitted to StackOverflow. I haven't seen any presented. Some people have an intuition that the presence of these historical bits contributes to a reduction in quality. I think that intuition is mistaken. Who knows who is right or even if that's a meaningful thing to ask. We're just discussing preferences.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  /r/programming should be enough of a cautionary note. The mob is always happy to stoop to lower levels of discourse. It cannot be trusted to govern itself as a site grows. And most of the Internet is more than willing to cater to this out of fear of losing visitors. I say bravo. Let the 'gregarious' go elsewhere and live in the land of forum signatures, endless bike shedding, and editor wars once again.
  - tnorthcutt 14y ago
    FYI, I heartily agree, and accidentally fat-fingered the down arrow on my phone. Sorry about that.
  - 4ad 14y ago
    Yeah, because edit wars are surely better than editor wars, and what we're doing now (with Jeff here!) is not bikeshedding. The only questions on SO are the trivial questions that could be answered by reading some documentation. If questions are broad or open ended, the value lies in the discussion, not in any particular answer. I also found that many accepted answers are blatantly wrong. For me, SO has no value. /r/programming doesn't have any value either, but that doesn't make SO better.
    - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
      SO wishes to remain a Q&A site, rather than a discussion site. They're intentionally limiting its scope. This is a very good thing. There is a huge opportunity for a quality, ruthlessly moderated programming-centric discussion site. I'd argue that an aggregator is suboptimal over the long term due to the economic structure of the Internet favoring eyeballs over quality content. I do agree that SO quality sucks at times, though.
- overcyn 14y ago
  So what would you do instead? Ignoring stack overflow (which I think is doing fine). How do you improve a community who's quality is declining? Do you just let it run its course for better or worse? I really think moderation is the best choice.
bigiain 14y ago
Personally, I think that unless you foster a community that'll self-police the quality, nothing else those "in charge" can do will help much in the long term.
Tangurena 14y ago
I deny the charge that it was "going downhill" before all the deletions started. If the "quality" is declining, then it is due to the vast quantities of new questions being asked, and the inability of regular users to find questions that they can answer. Yogi Berra described the situation as "Nobody goes there anymore. Its too crowded".

Suppose you we're in charge of a q&a site whose quality was going downhill. How would you go about fixing it if not for locking and deleting questions?

by overcyn 14y ago

Suppose you we're in charge of a q&a site whose quality was going downhill. How would you go about fixing it if not for locking and deleting questions?

dionidium 14y ago

I don't think there's any evidence that these extremely popular, "fun" questions have any effect on the day-to-day programming queries submitted to StackOverflow. I haven't seen any presented. Some people have an intuition that the presence of these historical bits contributes to a reduction in quality. I think that intuition is mistaken. Who knows who is right or even if that's a meaningful thing to ask. We're just discussing preferences.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
/r/programming should be enough of a cautionary note. The mob is always happy to stoop to lower levels of discourse. It cannot be trusted to govern itself as a site grows. And most of the Internet is more than willing to cater to this out of fear of losing visitors. I say bravo. Let the 'gregarious' go elsewhere and live in the land of forum signatures, endless bike shedding, and editor wars once again.
- tnorthcutt 14y ago
  FYI, I heartily agree, and accidentally fat-fingered the down arrow on my phone. Sorry about that.
- 4ad 14y ago
  Yeah, because edit wars are surely better than editor wars, and what we're doing now (with Jeff here!) is not bikeshedding. The only questions on SO are the trivial questions that could be answered by reading some documentation. If questions are broad or open ended, the value lies in the discussion, not in any particular answer. I also found that many accepted answers are blatantly wrong. For me, SO has no value. /r/programming doesn't have any value either, but that doesn't make SO better.
  - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
    SO wishes to remain a Q&A site, rather than a discussion site. They're intentionally limiting its scope. This is a very good thing. There is a huge opportunity for a quality, ruthlessly moderated programming-centric discussion site. I'd argue that an aggregator is suboptimal over the long term due to the economic structure of the Internet favoring eyeballs over quality content. I do agree that SO quality sucks at times, though.
overcyn 14y ago
So what would you do instead? Ignoring stack overflow (which I think is doing fine). How do you improve a community who's quality is declining? Do you just let it run its course for better or worse? I really think moderation is the best choice.

bigiain 14y ago

Personally, I think that unless you foster a community that'll self-police the quality, nothing else those "in charge" can do will help much in the long term.

Tangurena 14y ago

I deny the charge that it was "going downhill" before all the deletions started. If the "quality" is declining, then it is due to the vast quantities of new questions being asked, and the inability of regular users to find questions that they can answer. Yogi Berra described the situation as "Nobody goes there anymore. Its too crowded".