5 ms·
SO aims at a simple Q&A format. I wonder why people expect it to yield "great" questions. A lot of actually fruitful topics are closed for provoking discussion.
by wirrbel 13y ago
SO aims at a simple Q&A format. I wonder why people expect it to yield "great" questions. A lot of actually fruitful topics are closed for provoking discussion.
"... as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it."
Stackoverflow is not an intellectual forum, its a simple question-and-answer database with debate being discouraged, and a very limited space for the kind of questions allowed. This is by design and its great, because finally when asking a question on XML, you are NOT bothered with people starting to discuss whether XML is actually a thing worth considering. But its the same _beneficial_ rules, that in the long run lead to a plattform where people just paste in their error messages and expect other people to dive through those.
- chc 13y agoI don't see how "not a forum for debate" means "a forum for 'plz email teh codez' posts" in your reckoning. There are many fine questions with right answers that are not open-ended navel-gazing.
- Perdition 12y agoThe point is that if debate isn't allowed you aren't likely to have higher quality posters than the average for programmers. And the reality is that there are tons of lazy/stupid programmers out there that just want "plz email teh codez". The forums that I have seen work best at maintaining abnormally high levels of quality posters are ones where the Q&A is effectively secondary to the debate. The reason is that the fun of debating keeps the high quality posters around and answering shitty/repetitive questions.
- chc 12y agoI think your first conclusion is wrong. From what I have seen, Stack Overflow appears to be fairly well-supplied with quality posters, but they just don't have as many questions as the "plz email teh codez" crowd. The problem isn't that good questions are generally going unanswered, and it isn't even that good and novel questions are in short supply, but that there aren't as many good questions and they're having trouble stemming the tide of bad questions. The disproportionate rise of bad questions is the core problem.