3 ms·

SO is brilliant for classes of questions that have black/white type answers and infuriating for almost any question that has an "it depends" somewhere in the an

by SeanDav 13y ago

SO is brilliant for classes of questions that have black/white type answers and infuriating for almost any question that has an "it depends" somewhere in the answer. Unfortunately many legitimate and serious programming/technology questions can only be answered with "it depends" and "this is my opinion". For example: "Should I use NoSQL or an ACID based approach to my xyz development issue?" This is the type of issue that is common and without an explicit answer and is the type of question that will be closed because it requires an opinion or may lead to arguments. It is almost unbelievable to me the number of times I have found great information in SO questions/answers that have been closed by some mod for the above reasons.

josephlord 13y ago
I wonder if it would work if they were left open but marked norep and allowed voting etc. but did not count towards Karma scores or scaled to a much reduced level.
camus2 13y ago
It's an interesting question but it has no place on SO,it's open ended and ask for a recommendation. It depends on too many factors to encourage an accurate aOnly you knows your requirements. a good SO question is accurate,non trivial,with a reproducible test case. Why dont you try Quora instead?Quora is made for that type of question.I'm personally not interested in Quora as I find its content quality quite poor.
- mlangdon 13y ago
  I love the 'try quora' advice. 'Not enjoying running our gauntlet? Maybe trying swimming in this rain filled dumpster? I wouldn't.'
- Morgawr 13y ago
  >Why dont you try Quora instead?Quora is made for that type of question.I'm personally not interested in Quora as I find its content quality quite poor. I think you answered your own question yourself.
captainmuon 13y ago
What makes it incredibly bad is that if you ask for advice, your question is closed. But if you ask a simple question, people often think you are stupid and question your intentions and give you unsolicited advice. What I do nowadays is to pretend to be stupid, "I have the xyz issue, how do I do that with MySQL", and usually someone will comment that I should really be using a NoSQL solution, or how to do it in a relational database. Example: I was looking for a canvas library for Gtk. (A canvas library gives you "retained mode" drawing, you say "here is a rectangle, there is a circle", and they stay there and you can manipulate them later on. Its the opposite of "immediate mode" where you have a paint handler that redraws the screen each time. It has nothing to do with HTML5 Canvas.) There are a couple of Gtk canvas libraries, but most of them seem no longer developed and they have various issues. Its also very confusing since some are named very similarly. I posted a nice, informed question asking what libraries are out there that fulful certain criteria, and are still maintained. The question was closed in 5 minutes, and later even deleted. A few days later I posted another question, pretending to be clueless, asking "where is the canvas widget in Gtk? I know there is one but I can't make it work". Then, I got helpful comments like "AFAIK there is none built in, but I recommend this library...". The irony is that the non-deleted question is not very helpful to anybody, but the original one would have been an excellent reference. When you have to jump through silly hoops to ask your question, something is clearly wrong with the community.
- rwentk 13y ago
  If you build 'Your question is bad and you are bad for asking it' into your constitution instead of finding a more constructive solution for noise, bad things will happen. The principle that closing questions avoids arguments is causing serious arguments. :) So - yes, something is broken. SO needs to decide if it's: 1. A Wiki-like repository of canonical solutions to common coding problems. 2. A mentoring network for professionals. 3. A mentoring and training network for amateurs/students with wildly varying degrees of actual clue and potential clue. 4. A social network for people who like talking about code. 5. A way for coders to advertise their skills to employers. 6. An industry forum for debate about best practices. At the moment different users are expecting different things from it - which is never going to work, because those goals are mutually exclusive. SO might be saved if it splits into different sub-forms with explicit cultural differences and user backgrounds. Also - code academy schools with principles like 'no feigned surprise' and 'don't be a dick' have a lead on this. It's possible SO would have worked better with those principles from the start.
shagie 13y ago
You might want to look at Stack Overflow's younger sibling(? child? cousin?) - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ which is intended for the design type questions rather than the code type questions. Realizing that these softer questions are very likely to stray into the discussion and debate realm the caretaker community of programmers.se can be very active in closing the questions (also with only ~50 questions/day, one can look at every question each day). The exact phrasing of the "Should I use NoSQL or an ACID based approach..." question would likely run into this and cite the Gorilla vs Shark blog post ( http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ ) and close the question as a recommendation question. However, if you went through and wrote it "Here is my problem, here is my design, here are the potential issues that I see with that design, would switching the database from A to B solve these issues without creating worse new ones?" it would likely be a question that remains open. Programmers.SE really does try for a higher threshold of quality than stack overflow in that with higher quality questions it is possible to attract people who will give high quality answers. One bit to note is that with a small amount of reputation on any stack exchange site, someone can get into the chat part of the site (the minimum rep is to keep the spammers out) where discussions are completely appropriate. All of the Stack Exchange sites are designed around the "problem and solution" model. Furthermore, the model was designed to avoid some issues of the scale of community by making discussion difficult and not appropriate. To that end, I'd suggest reading A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Much of the problems that Stack Overflow in particular is facing (compared to the smaller stack exchange sites) is a clash between the core group (read that group article) and the endless september. It saddens me, but I do believe the endless september is winning in that the core group lacks the numbers or the tool to properly defend itself within the system.

by SeanDav 13y ago

josephlord 13y ago

I wonder if it would work if they were left open but marked norep and allowed voting etc. but did not count towards Karma scores or scaled to a much reduced level.

camus2 13y ago

It's an interesting question but it has no place on SO,it's open ended and ask for a recommendation. It depends on too many factors to encourage an accurate aOnly you knows your requirements. a good SO question is accurate,non trivial,with a reproducible test case. Why dont you try Quora instead?Quora is made for that type of question.I'm personally not interested in Quora as I find its content quality quite poor.

mlangdon 13y ago
I love the 'try quora' advice. 'Not enjoying running our gauntlet? Maybe trying swimming in this rain filled dumpster? I wouldn't.'
Morgawr 13y ago
>Why dont you try Quora instead?Quora is made for that type of question.I'm personally not interested in Quora as I find its content quality quite poor. I think you answered your own question yourself.

captainmuon 13y ago

What makes it incredibly bad is that if you ask for advice, your question is closed. But if you ask a simple question, people often think you are stupid and question your intentions and give you unsolicited advice. What I do nowadays is to pretend to be stupid, "I have the xyz issue, how do I do that with MySQL", and usually someone will comment that I should really be using a NoSQL solution, or how to do it in a relational database. Example: I was looking for a canvas library for Gtk. (A canvas library gives you "retained mode" drawing, you say "here is a rectangle, there is a circle", and they stay there and you can manipulate them later on. Its the opposite of "immediate mode" where you have a paint handler that redraws the screen each time. It has nothing to do with HTML5 Canvas.) There are a couple of Gtk canvas libraries, but most of them seem no longer developed and they have various issues. Its also very confusing since some are named very similarly. I posted a nice, informed question asking what libraries are out there that fulful certain criteria, and are still maintained. The question was closed in 5 minutes, and later even deleted. A few days later I posted another question, pretending to be clueless, asking "where is the canvas widget in Gtk? I know there is one but I can't make it work". Then, I got helpful comments like "AFAIK there is none built in, but I recommend this library...". The irony is that the non-deleted question is not very helpful to anybody, but the original one would have been an excellent reference. When you have to jump through silly hoops to ask your question, something is clearly wrong with the community.

rwentk 13y ago
If you build 'Your question is bad and you are bad for asking it' into your constitution instead of finding a more constructive solution for noise, bad things will happen. The principle that closing questions avoids arguments is causing serious arguments. :) So - yes, something is broken. SO needs to decide if it's: 1. A Wiki-like repository of canonical solutions to common coding problems. 2. A mentoring network for professionals. 3. A mentoring and training network for amateurs/students with wildly varying degrees of actual clue and potential clue. 4. A social network for people who like talking about code. 5. A way for coders to advertise their skills to employers. 6. An industry forum for debate about best practices. At the moment different users are expecting different things from it - which is never going to work, because those goals are mutually exclusive. SO might be saved if it splits into different sub-forms with explicit cultural differences and user backgrounds. Also - code academy schools with principles like 'no feigned surprise' and 'don't be a dick' have a lead on this. It's possible SO would have worked better with those principles from the start.

shagie 13y ago

You might want to look at Stack Overflow's younger sibling(? child? cousin?) - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ which is intended for the design type questions rather than the code type questions. Realizing that these softer questions are very likely to stray into the discussion and debate realm the caretaker community of programmers.se can be very active in closing the questions (also with only ~50 questions/day, one can look at every question each day). The exact phrasing of the "Should I use NoSQL or an ACID based approach..." question would likely run into this and cite the Gorilla vs Shark blog post ( http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ ) and close the question as a recommendation question. However, if you went through and wrote it "Here is my problem, here is my design, here are the potential issues that I see with that design, would switching the database from A to B solve these issues without creating worse new ones?" it would likely be a question that remains open. Programmers.SE really does try for a higher threshold of quality than stack overflow in that with higher quality questions it is possible to attract people who will give high quality answers. One bit to note is that with a small amount of reputation on any stack exchange site, someone can get into the chat part of the site (the minimum rep is to keep the spammers out) where discussions are completely appropriate. All of the Stack Exchange sites are designed around the "problem and solution" model. Furthermore, the model was designed to avoid some issues of the scale of community by making discussion difficult and not appropriate. To that end, I'd suggest reading A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Much of the problems that Stack Overflow in particular is facing (compared to the smaller stack exchange sites) is a clash between the core group (read that group article) and the endless september. It saddens me, but I do believe the endless september is winning in that the core group lacks the numbers or the tool to properly defend itself within the system.