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Weird. In the past two years or so, I've answered almost every one of my own answers after an additional day or two of work. Generally, when I think I've exhaus
by 67726e 11y ago
Weird. In the past two years or so, I've answered almost every one of my own answers after an additional day or two of work. Generally, when I think I've exhausted all leads on solving a problem I'll distill everything down into the smallest reproducible setup, do a detailed write-up, and list all what I've done. At best I might get a token up-vote from someone who pities me, but I never get any real attention. There are easier picking out there, after all.
I used to be pretty active on SO and Programmers.SE as a young buck, and back when SO was still pretty new and shiny. Nowadays it just feels like a race to the bottom as someone trying to answer a question. The winning strategy is to post a shitty, incomplete answer and get the upvotes and while that is happening, update to a better, clearer answer, oftentimes poaching content from the guy or gal who took the time to do a detailed, "good" answer. I get the notion of consolidating the answers into that one perfect answer, but working on a good answer and having it poached by the highest voted answer will leave a bad taste in most folks' mouths.
In the case of Programmers.SE, there was a shift in the site topic and, in my opinion, some rather overzealous moderators along with the handful of folks who just seem to sit on the site and close-vote any and everything that does not perfectly align. Always be wary of those that seek power over their fellow man...
StackOverflow and the surrounding sites are a good force overall, don't get me wrong, but as someone who tried to be active and use the site, it leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not interested in answering "How do I do X in jQuery" and I'm not interested in having someone plagiarize me.
- jimhefferon 11y ago> The winning strategy is That's true, if you care about the points, badges, etc.
- 67726e 11y agoWell, it's gamified for a reason. Sure, I'll hang out on IRC and help folks, respond to questions on YouTube video tutorials I've posted, etc. I'm certainly altruistic to a point, but throw a number in front of me and it becomes a competition. Combine that with the fact that folks get to "win" against me by posting a shit answer and stealing my work, and I'm just not gonna play that kind of game. I'm not gonna learn anything posting intro to Java answers, now am I?
- mistermann 11y ago> That's true, if you care about the points, badges, etc. Jeff Atwood has discussed this subject fairly extensively, and it does matter to a lot of people, which helps make SO more successful than it would otherwise be.
- cuu508 11y agoThe easy, popular questions have been answered. You're left formulating and answering long-tail questions. These understandably get less traffic and so less upvotes. People don't go around browsing SO and upvoting high quality answers. They solve their own problems and upvote/edit/comment along the way. And that's fine.
- jlynn 11y agoThis leaves me wondering how you might a site like SO that incentivizes participation and quality answers, but disincentivizes poaching and incomplete first answers. Could you build an incentive strategy and reputation system around collaborative answers?
- stcredzero 11y agoWhat if incomplete first answers could be "merged" with better, more complete, answers, with the better answer getting the karma from the incomplete one?
- vitd 11y agoOne option is to either not show scores for some time after answers are posted (at least to other viewers - maybe the asker could still see answer scores?), and/or to randomize the order in which answers are shown for some period of time. That would at least make it less likely that people read just the first answer, up-vote it, and move on. Each person would see a different "first" answer, at least for some time period. Maybe after an hour or 24 hours, then they become ranked by votes? Just a thought - I haven't actually tried it.
- curiousjorge 11y agoI think that there is misconception that more reputation = more money = job which drives this point whoring. While I don't argue the demonstrated knowledge and skills, having talked to job recruiters, SO is actually very far down their list to my surprise.
- sitkack 11y agoSO should be modified to provide both a correct answer and a low latency answer, they aren't necessarily the same thing, nor should award points in a winner-take-all manner. The person who puts in a day should get rewarded, the person who edits for grammar and clarity should get rewarded. In effect, it is a group of people solving a problem where only one gets a payout. That is what is broken.