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Being a relatively new community, Stack Overflow has been wrestling with these issues for some time. Most recently, Michael Pryor [1] posted a topic [2] questio
by kylec 18y ago
Being a relatively new community, Stack Overflow has been wrestling with these issues for some time. Most recently, Michael Pryor [1] posted a topic [2] questioning the need for closing questions, which, ironically, has been closed 7 times [3], and generated a lengthy (but otherwise well-mannered) discussion with some people on both sides of the isle and many others in between, culminating in a blog post [4] about what constitutes an acceptable question.
Historically, my position has been similar to the unofficial policy here at Hacker News, in that topics/questions should be allowed if they interest/concern hackers/programmers, even though they may not specifically be about hacking/programming. However, recently I've come to see that, if left unchecked, generic discussion questions will overrun Stack Overflow simply because they appeal to the greatest common denominator of the audience, and therefore garner the most attention.
The closing system on Stack Overflow works quite well as that limited check. By providing guidelines for acceptable questions and a mechanism for closing those that aren't, Stack Overflow provides the means to keep it's garden (to borrow a metaphor from the article). However, by having the community, as opposed to appointed moderators, keep the garden, it means that fun, insightful, or otherwise constructive yet off-topic questions can remain in a limited capacity, so long as those that want to keep them outnumber those that want to remove them.
1: Cofounder of Fog Creek. Partner of Joel Spolsky, cofounder of Stack Overflow.
2: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/756650/why-do-people-close-questions-on-stackoverflow-closed http://stackoverflow.com/questions/756650/why-do-people-clos...
3: On Stack Overflow, users with a certain reputation score can vote to close a question. A question is closed when it reaches 5 close votes. The one exception is that starred moderators can immediately close or open a question. Once closed, the same mechanism is used to open a question back up.
4: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-que...
- jacoblyles 18y agoI question the wisdom of pure democracy and majority vote for such decisions as opening and closing articles. As you say, fluff topics appeal to the GCD of the population, and should have plenty of votes to stay open. One of the things that I liked most about StackOverflow when I started using it was how hard it was to get karma. To get it, you either had to ask good programming questions or give good programming answers. That's not easy to do. Then I saw a question about office chairs with 50 points on the front page.
- kylec 18y agoTrue. However, while there is an extremely low reputation threshold for being able to vote, there is a significantly higher threshold for closing and opening. The term "reputation" is sort of a misnomer in that it doesn't particularly signify technical skill, but rather an investment in the community. With a daily cap of 200[1] and a minimum of 3000 required for closing, an extremely active user would need to spend at least 15 days asking great questions and giving great answers. I think that after such an investment of time and effort, most users would want to maintain the level of quality on the site. Also, one thing that I didn't mention before is that Stack Overflow has a setting called "Community Wiki" that, among other things, is customary to use when posting subjective or off-topic material to prevent reputation gain. Whether or not a question is marked as Wiki can mean the difference between staying open and getting closed, and a question that gets over 30 answers is also deemed subjective and rolls over to Wiki. This means that not only does a closer have to earn 3000 rep, but it's also granted primarily through on-topic posts. The question you mention, I assume, is this one [2], which has been Wiki since it was posted. 1: It's possible to exceed the cap by hitting it then having an answer or bounty accepted, but this is very hard to do regularly for normal users. 2: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/306708/must-haves-for-developers-office http://stackoverflow.com/questions/306708/must-haves-for-dev...
- jacoblyles 18y agoGood points. StackOverflow is my favorite site that I discovered this year. Its community is incredible. I hope you guys make enough money off of it to stay open for a long time.
- kylec 18y agoI should clarify myself - I'm not affiliated with Stack Overflow, I'm just an engaged user that saw parallels between the article and the recent discourse about how the community should be moderate itself. That aside, I agree with your sentiment - SO is my newest favorite site, and I, too, hope that Jeff & company are able to keep the site open for a long time. Once you go Stack you never go back.