4 ms·

Maybe it's just me, or the type of questions I ask, but I've found SO to be a little elitist. I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almos

Maybe it's just me, or the type of questions I ask, but I've found SO to be a little elitist. I love it for the fact I very often find answers there, but almost every time I've asked a question, the responses or lack thereof have been pretty brutal.

ygra 13y ago
It's a little messy sometimes. Trivial beginner questions are usually answered within a minute and you get about three correct answers immediately. But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. Can be very frustrating. If you have mostly questions of the latter kind then there's a bit of luck involved whether the right person sees your question or whether it just goes unnoticed and dies.
- markdown 13y ago
  > But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Even worse when a moderator comes along and closes it, as if it would have cost him something to just leave it open in case some kind soul came along and responded.
PommeDeTerre 13y ago
It is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics. In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information. For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly. When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products. Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.
- tikhonj 13y ago
  This really depends on the topic. I mostly stick around the functional programming tags (Haskell and OCaml) and have seen all sorts of difficult questions answered, often very well. Sometimes SO is basically the only place to find an answer at all. Especially in the Haskell tag, even extremely involved and non-trivial questions rarely go unanswered.
gregd 13y ago
It's not just you and it gets worse on sites like SF where it's horribly elitist. On SO, it definitely depends on the category of your question. I've found that C# questions, which tend to be the most popular category, generally have the most thorough and complete answers, which I also don't find to be as elitist as some of the other categories.

ygra 13y ago

It's a little messy sometimes. Trivial beginner questions are usually answered within a minute and you get about three correct answers immediately. But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. Can be very frustrating. If you have mostly questions of the latter kind then there's a bit of luck involved whether the right person sees your question or whether it just goes unnoticed and dies.

markdown 13y ago
> But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Even worse when a moderator comes along and closes it, as if it would have cost him something to just leave it open in case some kind soul came along and responded.

PommeDeTerre 13y ago

It is often quite useless for questions that go beyond the basics. In such cases, a complete lack of attention is almost better than getting the responses that incorrectly suggest that the wrong question is being asked, or a moderator rewriting the question to ask something completely irrelevant, or comments that give blatantly wrong information. For any moderately complex question regarding open source software, for instance, you're generally better off asking on the project's mailing list or IRC channel, or even contacting the main developer(s) directly. When dealing with commercial software, you're often better off using whatever support the provider offers, even if it comes at a monetary cost. Some of the more established online communities are also helpful here, especially for older products. Unless the Stack Overflow question/answer page shows up in a search engine's search results, I've not found Stack Overflow to be worth the time and effort to use it.

tikhonj 13y ago
This really depends on the topic. I mostly stick around the functional programming tags (Haskell and OCaml) and have seen all sorts of difficult questions answered, often very well. Sometimes SO is basically the only place to find an answer at all. Especially in the Haskell tag, even extremely involved and non-trivial questions rarely go unanswered.

gregd 13y ago

It's not just you and it gets worse on sites like SF where it's horribly elitist. On SO, it definitely depends on the category of your question. I've found that C# questions, which tend to be the most popular category, generally have the most thorough and complete answers, which I also don't find to be as elitist as some of the other categories.