5 ms·

I obviously have no clue what your question was but I can understand this attitude to some degree. Let me explain. I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the

by danbruc 13y ago

I obviously have no clue what your question was but I can understand this attitude to some degree. Let me explain. I contributed a lot to StackOverflow in the early years. Most of the questions were interesting and not answered before. I almost stopped contributing in recent years because now there are so many trivial questions and questions that have been answered before. I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. And I never understood StackOverflow as having the goal to teach programming but to help solving non-trivial problems. Now there seems to be a ton of question like how do I open a file in Python. More and more people seem to just ask everything on StackOverflow instead of reading a manual, a book, a tutorial or at least look if there is already an answer that can be adapted to their problem. I can not quantify this, it is only my personal understanding of what questions should be on StackOverflow and what should better be looked up elsewhere, but I can to some extend understand that people get annoyed be some questions.

rpedela 13y ago
I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  I think his point is that there should only be one "how do I open a file in Python" type of question/answer. Not 30 like there are today.
  - rpedela 13y ago
    Yeah I agree with that. However Google usually does a good job of finding the "best" version of a particular question and making that the first or second result.
  - reeses 13y ago
    Your comment is quite pythonic. There should be only one question about the only one right way to do something in python.
- mhurron 13y ago
  So your using SO to have other people read documentation and regurgitate the contents for you. Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Useful, I say. It's documentation regurgitated into an efficient Q & A format.
- danbruc 13y ago
  That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - sanderjd 13y ago
    This is actually a really great demonstration of your parent's point. I think the link you posted actually leads naturally to the question "ok, so how do I put all that together to actually open and read a file". Sure, you can figure it out by reading API documentation, and the more times you do it, the easier that becomes, but a resource where somebody has demonstrated how to actually use that API to open and read a file is valuable. There are lots of various "cookbook" books for this sort of thing, but the QA format also works really well for it because it publicizes problems that lots of people have had, not just the authors of a given book. Maybe SO isn't or doesn't want to be that kind of resource, but I think it is one valuable use case.
    - danbruc 13y ago
      Find File.ReadAllLines() [1] or whatever fits your needs and scroll down to the example section. Java has similar documentation, too. jQuery documentation has thousands of examples. It's all there, no need to ask. And if you can not figure out how to put together 3, 5 or 10 library or API calls then get a book about the basics of your technology and read and learn it. Asking stuff that is already out there is just wasting the time of other people, time that is better spend answering questions without an existing answer. [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx
      - 13y ago
jakejake 13y ago
I agree 100% for duplication questions. I don't have a problem with the asker getting a little spanking if they didn't bother to do any research or put in any effort whatsoever. As for "simple" questions, to me it seems all just relative. Basically, as long as it isn't a dup then I don't mind it being there. In some ways stack exchange has evolved to become a code snippet library. I guess I can see why some people might not like it, but it has helped me many, many times.
RyanZAG 13y ago
> I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? The user probably didn't understand how to use the answers for apples and oranges on peaches. This probably means that the answers could be improved by making it clear how to apply them. The problem might be that older questions are locked even when their answers are not perfect?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? Not necessarily. It could just mean that the person asking the question hasn't bothered to look at what has already been asked and answered.
ColdHawaiian 13y ago
I've been contributing a lot of answers to Stack Overflow lately myself[1], and I agree that, after a while, I'm tired of trivial questions popping up all the time, because frankly, they aren't interesting to solve. Not only that, but if you have too many of those on the site (which I think is currently the case on SO), then it makes it harder for contributors to actually find good, interesting problems to help solve. Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that. However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators). [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake

by danbruc 13y ago

rpedela 13y ago

I personally like the "how to open file" questions. Even though I have been developing software for ~15 years, I often forget basic file I/O syntax when I need to switch languages which is rather common lately. I remember how file I/O works, how to make it efficient, etc. But the syntax? Yeah I forget that, and I find StackOverflow to be a great reference manual. Often the official manuals are verbose which isn't what I want in this case. I just want a quick example to remind myself of the syntax.

gum_ina_package 13y ago
I think his point is that there should only be one "how do I open a file in Python" type of question/answer. Not 30 like there are today.
- rpedela 13y ago
  Yeah I agree with that. However Google usually does a good job of finding the "best" version of a particular question and making that the first or second result.
- reeses 13y ago
  Your comment is quite pythonic. There should be only one question about the only one right way to do something in python.
mhurron 13y ago
So your using SO to have other people read documentation and regurgitate the contents for you. Ya, that's not a way to make the site useless.
- genwin 13y ago
  Useful, I say. It's documentation regurgitated into an efficient Q & A format.
danbruc 13y ago
That is where we disagree - I don't think of StackOverflow as a reference manual. Admittedly I am mostly a C# developer and Microsoft does a really good job when it comes to documentation, at least in most cases. If you never saw it before and even if you hate Microsoft, have a look at their documentation. Here is the System.IO namespace http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.aspx and the reference manual part is just the tip of the iceberg.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- sanderjd 13y ago
  This is actually a really great demonstration of your parent's point. I think the link you posted actually leads naturally to the question "ok, so how do I put all that together to actually open and read a file". Sure, you can figure it out by reading API documentation, and the more times you do it, the easier that becomes, but a resource where somebody has demonstrated how to actually use that API to open and read a file is valuable. There are lots of various "cookbook" books for this sort of thing, but the QA format also works really well for it because it publicizes problems that lots of people have had, not just the authors of a given book. Maybe SO isn't or doesn't want to be that kind of resource, but I think it is one valuable use case.
  - danbruc 13y ago
    Find File.ReadAllLines() [1] or whatever fits your needs and scroll down to the example section. Java has similar documentation, too. jQuery documentation has thousands of examples. It's all there, no need to ask. And if you can not figure out how to put together 3, 5 or 10 library or API calls then get a book about the basics of your technology and read and learn it. Asking stuff that is already out there is just wasting the time of other people, time that is better spend answering questions without an existing answer. [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1.aspx
    - 13y ago

jakejake 13y ago

I agree 100% for duplication questions. I don't have a problem with the asker getting a little spanking if they didn't bother to do any research or put in any effort whatsoever. As for "simple" questions, to me it seems all just relative. Basically, as long as it isn't a dup then I don't mind it being there. In some ways stack exchange has evolved to become a code snippet library. I guess I can see why some people might not like it, but it has helped me many, many times.

RyanZAG 13y ago

> I see no value in explaining how to sort a list of peaches when there is already a question answering how to sort apples and one how to sort oranges. Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? The user probably didn't understand how to use the answers for apples and oranges on peaches. This probably means that the answers could be improved by making it clear how to apply them. The problem might be that older questions are locked even when their answers are not perfect?

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Does this not mean that the answers to both 'how to sort apples' and 'how to sort oranges' are not written in a way that allows easy applicability to peaches? Not necessarily. It could just mean that the person asking the question hasn't bothered to look at what has already been asked and answered.

ColdHawaiian 13y ago

I've been contributing a lot of answers to Stack Overflow lately myself[1], and I agree that, after a while, I'm tired of trivial questions popping up all the time, because frankly, they aren't interesting to solve. Not only that, but if you have too many of those on the site (which I think is currently the case on SO), then it makes it harder for contributors to actually find good, interesting problems to help solve. Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that. However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators). [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake