7 ms·

I am a mod on a similarly hostile StackExchange site. The community has always been outright hostile to active discussion (outside of chat, the area of the site

by fredley 12y ago

I am a mod on a similarly hostile StackExchange site. The community has always been outright hostile to active discussion (outside of chat, the area of the site for specifically this) for all but a brief period when it was still working out what it was. The fact it's hostile to active discussion is part of what enables it to continue to be a useful resource. That's not to say Stack Overflow isn't without its problems, but it's more the hostility (something which we're trying to address[1]) that's the problem than the stance against active discussion. [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240839/the-new-new-be-nice-policy-code-of-conduct-updated-with-your-feedback https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240839/the-new-new-...

lelandbatey 12y ago
Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually fantastic that they focus so narrowly on answerable questions. It's still a super useful resource, and a tight focus means it will probably be able to stay on track for a long long time. However, I wish there was a place as fantastically focused on good discussion.
- solistice 12y ago
  Isn't Jeff Atwoods working on Discourse right now?
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    A good online community comes from the users and the management, not the software.
  - the_af 12y ago
    Isn't Discourse software aimed at improving internet forums rather than a discussion venue in itself? It's not comparable to stackexchange, which is software plus a community.
    - solistice 12y ago
      But stack-everything only has such a vibrant and focused community because community rules have been made as clear as they have. If you go through Jeff Atwoods blog, you'll see that they are making the same considerations for Discourse, which has it's own "community rules" that ship with it. They're not only writing better forum software, they're also investigating what makes great forums great and horrible forums horrid and they're baking it into their product.
- fidz 12y ago
  What do you think about Quora?
  - girvo 12y ago
    That hiding answers to people who aren't logged in is user-hostile.
  - SquareWheel 12y ago
    Isn't that the spammy site that insists you log in to view answers? I always took it as another Experts Exchange.
    - mlvljr 12y ago
      Wait, these are different sites??
  - username223 12y ago
    The "?share=1" guys? Mostly useless.
    - paradite 12y ago
      What exactly does it do? And is this a bad practice?
      - teh_klev 12y ago
        >What exactly does it do? It does this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-read-all-answers-on-quora-without-having-to-register http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-r... And it's officially supported: https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better But you still need to sign up/in in to casually browse. >And is this a bad practice? It's pretty user hostile which is why I personally never used the site.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    Targets a different audience with different kinds of questions.
- colordrops 12y ago
  Wouldn't this be easily solved by adding a "discussion" link from the question page to a wiki/forum page for more free-form or reddit-vote style questions?
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  On the other hand, in the past few years I've found that all of the most useful Stack Overflow or P.SE pages I've found when Googling for information have turned out to be questions with 25+ upvotes, with answers having 50ish upvotes. And all closed as "not constructive." It's certainly staying on track, but it's worth noting that many track-related analogies are pejoratives that focus on the way that you can't steer vehicles that go on tracks. I suspect an inordinate amount of incoming traffic to Stack Exchange is for information that only Stack Exchange apparently thinks (not just by the closing, but by the choice of words in explaining the reason for the closing) is not particularly valuable. Methinks that's evidence that the community governance has become an echo chamber - otherwise one should think that the people running this company would have identified a gap in the market that they could be exploiting by now.
  - StuieK 12y ago
    I started slant.co for this. Closed question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are... Open Question: http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards-for-programming http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards...
    - stinos 12y ago
      Yeah slant is ok, but still needs more users/moderation to be as useful as SO (even despite questions getting closed). Eg I browse to http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous-integration-tools http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous... and it lists 'Visual Studio default theme' as an option with one recommendation. So I signed in but I see no way to tell a mod that it doesn't belong there? (I could add a con saying 'This is not a CI' though)
      - StuieK 12y ago
        I'm honestly really sorry about that, we're in the middle of building a flagging system at the moment. Up until now we typically have been using the comment to moderate but this is obviously really inefficient. I removed that option, thanks for pointing that out. We have a long way to go on the moderation side of things. Anything else you don't like/wish we had?
dionidium 12y ago
It's not just about discussion. It's a general stance positioning the perfect against the pretty good. Here's just one example: questions often get closed as duplicate after good answers start rolling in. Sometimes, the new answers are better than the old ones. The mods argue that the users should move their answers over to the old question. Or that they should improve the old answers. It's a lot of should, should, should. But why are we talking about shoulds that will never get done when a really good answer is already here? You've got users actively providing good content and your response is to reprimand them and tell them that content should be over here instead? You know, we have these things called links on the world wide web. The internet isn't running out of them. Sometimes it feels like the mods are building a really tidy card catalog at the expense of the books in the collection.
- dionidium 12y ago
  While I'm ranting, I'll just note that the position that there's a canonical way to ask every question and a that there exists a single acceptable answer is a fairly absurd proposition that, once accepted, leads to all kinds of equally absurd behavior.
- warfangle 12y ago
  It's almost like there should be a mechanism when marking a question as a duplicate to automatically move the answers from the new question to the old question... along with a 301 redirect on the removed-as-duplicate URL.
  - bryancinman 12y ago
    Not sure if that would work since most "duplicate" questions are similar but not identical. Therefore an answer responding to the duplicates' specific use-case would be confusing in the context of the original question. Perhaps include the duplicate question in the answer when it's merged. Hidden behind a link e.g "This answer was posted in response to a duplicate question" and a link to view the content of the duplicate question.
- drewblaisdell 12y ago

by fredley 12y ago

lelandbatey 12y ago

Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually fantastic that they focus so narrowly on answerable questions. It's still a super useful resource, and a tight focus means it will probably be able to stay on track for a long long time. However, I wish there was a place as fantastically focused on good discussion.

solistice 12y ago
Isn't Jeff Atwoods working on Discourse right now?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  A good online community comes from the users and the management, not the software.
- the_af 12y ago
  Isn't Discourse software aimed at improving internet forums rather than a discussion venue in itself? It's not comparable to stackexchange, which is software plus a community.
  - solistice 12y ago
    But stack-everything only has such a vibrant and focused community because community rules have been made as clear as they have. If you go through Jeff Atwoods blog, you'll see that they are making the same considerations for Discourse, which has it's own "community rules" that ship with it. They're not only writing better forum software, they're also investigating what makes great forums great and horrible forums horrid and they're baking it into their product.
fidz 12y ago
What do you think about Quora?
- girvo 12y ago
  That hiding answers to people who aren't logged in is user-hostile.
- SquareWheel 12y ago
  Isn't that the spammy site that insists you log in to view answers? I always took it as another Experts Exchange.
  - mlvljr 12y ago
    Wait, these are different sites??
- username223 12y ago
  The "?share=1" guys? Mostly useless.
  - paradite 12y ago
    What exactly does it do? And is this a bad practice?
    - teh_klev 12y ago
      >What exactly does it do? It does this: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-read-all-answers-on-quora-without-having-to-register http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/43179/how-can-i-r... And it's officially supported: https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better But you still need to sign up/in in to casually browse. >And is this a bad practice? It's pretty user hostile which is why I personally never used the site.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Targets a different audience with different kinds of questions.
colordrops 12y ago
Wouldn't this be easily solved by adding a "discussion" link from the question page to a wiki/forum page for more free-form or reddit-vote style questions?
bunderbunder 12y ago
On the other hand, in the past few years I've found that all of the most useful Stack Overflow or P.SE pages I've found when Googling for information have turned out to be questions with 25+ upvotes, with answers having 50ish upvotes. And all closed as "not constructive." It's certainly staying on track, but it's worth noting that many track-related analogies are pejoratives that focus on the way that you can't steer vehicles that go on tracks. I suspect an inordinate amount of incoming traffic to Stack Exchange is for information that only Stack Exchange apparently thinks (not just by the closing, but by the choice of words in explaining the reason for the closing) is not particularly valuable. Methinks that's evidence that the community governance has become an echo chamber - otherwise one should think that the people running this company would have identified a gap in the market that they could be exploiting by now.
- StuieK 12y ago
  I started slant.co for this. Closed question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are... Open Question: http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards-for-programming http://www.slant.co/topics/1150/~what-are-the-best-keyboards...
  - stinos 12y ago
    Yeah slant is ok, but still needs more users/moderation to be as useful as SO (even despite questions getting closed). Eg I browse to http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous-integration-tools http://www.slant.co/topics/799/~what-are-the-best-continuous... and it lists 'Visual Studio default theme' as an option with one recommendation. So I signed in but I see no way to tell a mod that it doesn't belong there? (I could add a con saying 'This is not a CI' though)
    - StuieK 12y ago
      I'm honestly really sorry about that, we're in the middle of building a flagging system at the moment. Up until now we typically have been using the comment to moderate but this is obviously really inefficient. I removed that option, thanks for pointing that out. We have a long way to go on the moderation side of things. Anything else you don't like/wish we had?

dionidium 12y ago

It's not just about discussion. It's a general stance positioning the perfect against the pretty good. Here's just one example: questions often get closed as duplicate after good answers start rolling in. Sometimes, the new answers are better than the old ones. The mods argue that the users should move their answers over to the old question. Or that they should improve the old answers. It's a lot of should, should, should. But why are we talking about shoulds that will never get done when a really good answer is already here? You've got users actively providing good content and your response is to reprimand them and tell them that content should be over here instead? You know, we have these things called links on the world wide web. The internet isn't running out of them. Sometimes it feels like the mods are building a really tidy card catalog at the expense of the books in the collection.

dionidium 12y ago
While I'm ranting, I'll just note that the position that there's a canonical way to ask every question and a that there exists a single acceptable answer is a fairly absurd proposition that, once accepted, leads to all kinds of equally absurd behavior.
warfangle 12y ago
It's almost like there should be a mechanism when marking a question as a duplicate to automatically move the answers from the new question to the old question... along with a 301 redirect on the removed-as-duplicate URL.
- bryancinman 12y ago
  Not sure if that would work since most "duplicate" questions are similar but not identical. Therefore an answer responding to the duplicates' specific use-case would be confusing in the context of the original question. Perhaps include the duplicate question in the answer when it's merged. Hidden behind a link e.g "This answer was posted in response to a duplicate question" and a link to view the content of the duplicate question.
drewblaisdell 12y ago