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Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to h

by zainny 14y ago

Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely intolerable to the mods at SO. Not sure how the rest of you feel but in my mind if the answer is black and white, the question was probably bad.

danso 14y ago
It was locked fifteen months after the question was asked...I think its prudent to protect a significant discussion from the noise that it will inevitably generate as people discover it via long tail in years to come
- EugeneOZ 14y ago
  There is another way to protect question on SO - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-protected-question http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-prot...
- csomar 14y ago
  This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.
logn 14y ago
Exactly. I've desperately needed answers to a handful of questions in the last 2 weeks alone that were all locked. I think unless you can quote an error message there's a good chance it will be locked. Didn't know server hard drive space came at such a premium. Honestly what good does it do to lock a question? I can see wikipedia wanting to groom their site to maintain some credibility and focus to achieve high overall quality with limited editing resources. But Stack Overflow? Give up the power trip already. How has Joel not created Subjective Overflow already?
- davorak 14y ago
  Why not post to one of the other stackexchange.com sites like http://programmers.stackexchange.com http://programmers.stackexchange.com, there is a wide variety now one probably fits the kind of questions you want to ask.
- jsmeaton 14y ago
  Locked means you can't add information, you can still read it. If you needed answers, ask a new question. You're not supposed to ask your own questions within someone elses question, and that is exactly why some of these questions are locked.
stan_rogers 14y ago
It is off-topic, though, for StackOverflow. By rights, the question should be on the Programmers StackExchange site, where it would actually have relevance. (On the other hand, ProgrammersSE isn't exactly a hospitable environment itself, so migration might not be such a great idea. Which may, in fact, explain the fact that it was locked rather than migrated when ProgrammersSE came out of beta. It was supposed, originally, to be more about the programmer than the programming, but it seems to have lost its way.)
renanbirck 14y ago
From what I see, anything in SO that doesn't have code in it and that attracts attention will eventually get locked. I sometimes notice this pattern on other Stack Exchange sites: non-technical questions, with some rare exceptions, tend to get closed/deleted.
pablasso 14y ago
Stackoverflow has always been that way, this kind of questions were just more tolerated at the beggining. But I don't get why is this a problem? Stackoverflow is for pragmatic questions and is great a it. If you want discussion there are other communities in stackexchange, such as 'programmers'.
yen223 14y ago
> "It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere" That's exactly what StackOverflow is meant to be. I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates what StackOverflow is trying to achieve here - to be the place to document hard, solid facts - nothing more. If I wanted to read commentary and opinions on programming, there's always HN or Slashdot.
- davorak 14y ago
  It seems like this type of question should fall in to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ domain as well or at least much more so the StackOverflow.
  - prawks 14y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Is anyone aware of topics being moved from one stackexchange to another? This would be a fantastic feature, obviously.
    - lil_cain 14y ago
      There's a "vote to move" feature when you nominate a question for closing (or at least, there was when there was just StackOverflow and ServerFault)
- SiVal 14y ago
  Maybe you are the only one who appreciates it. I sure don't. I'll have a question, I'll google it, be excited to when Google finds that someone else has asked the exact same thing, and then disappointed to find that it was asked on StackOverflow, where the Red Guards will inevitably have discovered an interesting question and taken steps to make sure it isn't answered. Hint to SO mods: it's not the question that is "unhelpful", it's you. While Google manages to sort through the unbelievable chaos of the entire open Web to bring up the most relevant answer to any question on any topic in a fraction of a second using the latest 21st Century search algorithms, SO goes at it from the other direction, making sure so few questions are answered that what remains won't overwhelm its 1980s-era MS-DOS search technology. I appreciate Joel's letting us use his vintage '486 to gather the world's biggest collection of code snippets, but I'm hoping someone with less primitive technology will replace SO with a system focused more on providing answers than on preventing questions.
hakaaaaak 14y ago
It should be easier to mark a question as duplicate or incorrectly tagged with version of language or framework, but aside from that, I don't agree. Without that site, I'd be lost.
nanidin 14y ago
My experience with SO is this: Google for something, see a relevant SO link, click it. Page loads, question covers exactly what I'm looking for. First 3 comments on the question are about how the question doesn't belong on SO, or is too broad, or wrong, or whatever. The first answer contains the information I need. I don't really contribute to SO for the same reason I don't really contribute to Wikipedia - the editors seem so hellbent on enforcing standards and rules that they throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Doesn't the fact that you actually found an answer that covers exactly what you're looking for indicate that SO didn't throw the baby out?
  - nanidin 14y ago
    True enough, but I'm afraid that if the editors had the power, they would have nuked the question before the answers even got there.

by zainny 14y ago

danso 14y ago

It was locked fifteen months after the question was asked...I think its prudent to protect a significant discussion from the noise that it will inevitably generate as people discover it via long tail in years to come

EugeneOZ 14y ago
There is another way to protect question on SO - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-protected-question http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-prot...
csomar 14y ago
This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.

logn 14y ago

Exactly. I've desperately needed answers to a handful of questions in the last 2 weeks alone that were all locked. I think unless you can quote an error message there's a good chance it will be locked. Didn't know server hard drive space came at such a premium. Honestly what good does it do to lock a question? I can see wikipedia wanting to groom their site to maintain some credibility and focus to achieve high overall quality with limited editing resources. But Stack Overflow? Give up the power trip already. How has Joel not created Subjective Overflow already?

davorak 14y ago
Why not post to one of the other stackexchange.com sites like http://programmers.stackexchange.com http://programmers.stackexchange.com, there is a wide variety now one probably fits the kind of questions you want to ask.
jsmeaton 14y ago
Locked means you can't add information, you can still read it. If you needed answers, ask a new question. You're not supposed to ask your own questions within someone elses question, and that is exactly why some of these questions are locked.

stan_rogers 14y ago

It is off-topic, though, for StackOverflow. By rights, the question should be on the Programmers StackExchange site, where it would actually have relevance. (On the other hand, ProgrammersSE isn't exactly a hospitable environment itself, so migration might not be such a great idea. Which may, in fact, explain the fact that it was locked rather than migrated when ProgrammersSE came out of beta. It was supposed, originally, to be more about the programmer than the programming, but it seems to have lost its way.)

renanbirck 14y ago

From what I see, anything in SO that doesn't have code in it and that attracts attention will eventually get locked. I sometimes notice this pattern on other Stack Exchange sites: non-technical questions, with some rare exceptions, tend to get closed/deleted.

pablasso 14y ago

Stackoverflow has always been that way, this kind of questions were just more tolerated at the beggining. But I don't get why is this a problem? Stackoverflow is for pragmatic questions and is great a it. If you want discussion there are other communities in stackexchange, such as 'programmers'.

yen223 14y ago

> "It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere" That's exactly what StackOverflow is meant to be. I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates what StackOverflow is trying to achieve here - to be the place to document hard, solid facts - nothing more. If I wanted to read commentary and opinions on programming, there's always HN or Slashdot.

davorak 14y ago
It seems like this type of question should fall in to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ domain as well or at least much more so the StackOverflow.
- prawks 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Is anyone aware of topics being moved from one stackexchange to another? This would be a fantastic feature, obviously.
  - lil_cain 14y ago
    There's a "vote to move" feature when you nominate a question for closing (or at least, there was when there was just StackOverflow and ServerFault)
SiVal 14y ago
Maybe you are the only one who appreciates it. I sure don't. I'll have a question, I'll google it, be excited to when Google finds that someone else has asked the exact same thing, and then disappointed to find that it was asked on StackOverflow, where the Red Guards will inevitably have discovered an interesting question and taken steps to make sure it isn't answered. Hint to SO mods: it's not the question that is "unhelpful", it's you. While Google manages to sort through the unbelievable chaos of the entire open Web to bring up the most relevant answer to any question on any topic in a fraction of a second using the latest 21st Century search algorithms, SO goes at it from the other direction, making sure so few questions are answered that what remains won't overwhelm its 1980s-era MS-DOS search technology. I appreciate Joel's letting us use his vintage '486 to gather the world's biggest collection of code snippets, but I'm hoping someone with less primitive technology will replace SO with a system focused more on providing answers than on preventing questions.

hakaaaaak 14y ago

It should be easier to mark a question as duplicate or incorrectly tagged with version of language or framework, but aside from that, I don't agree. Without that site, I'd be lost.

nanidin 14y ago

My experience with SO is this: Google for something, see a relevant SO link, click it. Page loads, question covers exactly what I'm looking for. First 3 comments on the question are about how the question doesn't belong on SO, or is too broad, or wrong, or whatever. The first answer contains the information I need. I don't really contribute to SO for the same reason I don't really contribute to Wikipedia - the editors seem so hellbent on enforcing standards and rules that they throw the baby out with the bathwater.

icebraining 14y ago
Doesn't the fact that you actually found an answer that covers exactly what you're looking for indicate that SO didn't throw the baby out?
- nanidin 14y ago
  True enough, but I'm afraid that if the editors had the power, they would have nuked the question before the answers even got there.