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Ask HN: What is Stackoverflow doing to avoid its decline?

11 points by soroso 11y ago

quadrature 11y ago
It appears im out of the loop. What decline are you referring to ?.
- detaro 11y ago
  This discussion is currently on the front page and might have triggered this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869886
vonklaus 11y ago
It really boils down to what SO optimizes for which seems to be less clutter, higher quality answers & lack of subjective questions(vim v. emacs). I think their strategy alienates people as users(like myself) from posting, but encourages consumption. I only post there when I have a difficult problem I haven't been able to solve. I think that is the system working. They have alienated some power users, I remember a thread ~1 year ago about someone deleting their account on SO because of these policies but I suspect a lot of the pure engineers and egotists like posting and dealing strictly with interesting thought provoking content. tl;dr What SO sees as its major asset, others may see as "decline"
mayoff 11y ago
This is going to sound harsh, but here's my take. When you're farting around, you want to read “fun” questions and answers (e.g. “Interesting uses of sun.misc.Unsafe”), and when you see stackoverflow moving away from the “fun”, you have time to write an angsty blog post (because you're just farting around). When you're trying to get work done, you want to find direct answers to specific questions (e.g. “how do I do X in JQuery again?”). The Powers That Be want stackoverflow to focus on this kind of Q&A, so you're not likely to find your question closed for being off topic, and even if it is, you don't have as much time to write an angsty blog post (because you're hard at work). Then there's the fact that people are more likely in general to publicly complain than to publicly praise, and complaints are more fun to read than paeans. So if your impression of stackoverflow's “decline” is based on recent posts you've seen on HN, you should try to get a more objective assessment. I don't see stackoverflow as declining based on their traffic measurements: https://www.quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc https://www.quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc

11 points by soroso 11y ago

quadrature 11y ago

It appears im out of the loop. What decline are you referring to ?.

detaro 11y ago
This discussion is currently on the front page and might have triggered this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869886

vonklaus 11y ago

It really boils down to what SO optimizes for which seems to be less clutter, higher quality answers & lack of subjective questions(vim v. emacs). I think their strategy alienates people as users(like myself) from posting, but encourages consumption. I only post there when I have a difficult problem I haven't been able to solve. I think that is the system working. They have alienated some power users, I remember a thread ~1 year ago about someone deleting their account on SO because of these policies but I suspect a lot of the pure engineers and egotists like posting and dealing strictly with interesting thought provoking content. tl;dr What SO sees as its major asset, others may see as "decline"

mayoff 11y ago

This is going to sound harsh, but here's my take. When you're farting around, you want to read “fun” questions and answers (e.g. “Interesting uses of sun.misc.Unsafe”), and when you see stackoverflow moving away from the “fun”, you have time to write an angsty blog post (because you're just farting around). When you're trying to get work done, you want to find direct answers to specific questions (e.g. “how do I do X in JQuery again?”). The Powers That Be want stackoverflow to focus on this kind of Q&A, so you're not likely to find your question closed for being off topic, and even if it is, you don't have as much time to write an angsty blog post (because you're hard at work). Then there's the fact that people are more likely in general to publicly complain than to publicly praise, and complaints are more fun to read than paeans. So if your impression of stackoverflow's “decline” is based on recent posts you've seen on HN, you should try to get a more objective assessment. I don't see stackoverflow as declining based on their traffic measurements: https://www.quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc https://www.quantcast.com/p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc