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This makes me wonder if it's just a disconnect in the product that SO is providing - SO is consistently a very useful, high-quality product for me (and I say th

by cheald 11y ago

This makes me wonder if it's just a disconnect in the product that SO is providing - SO is consistently a very useful, high-quality product for me (and I say that as someone who is certainly not googling basic JQuery questions), but I hear this critique often enough that I wonder if there is some major market segment that SO is just completely failing to serve. I don't think that SO is a bad tool, but it may well be a bad tool for a certain subset of programmers seeking help. I would be interested in figuring out who that segment is and what they want!

detaro 11y ago
I think they've made pretty clear that they want to be a place for "simple" fact-based Q&A things and not a discussion forum, not a community (in the sense that people know each other and interact on a personal bases) and that is the product they offer, and it is great. The issue I see is that they have been so successful that now they are THE place where you'll find someone capable of helping you. And then you have a question where you are sure that you could get great input from the expertise assembled on SO, but you aren't supposed to use it because the question has the wrong format. And there is no other (obvious) place to get the answer, because SO has all the mindshare, because they cover most questions. A site that only caters to "questions not applicable to SO" would have a very weird scope, and a general site has to compete with SO for the SO-type questions, which is hard to do because SO does those very well.
- cheald 11y ago
  FWIW, I can highly recommend project mailing lists and IRC channels as a great way to tap into discussion-based knowledge and expertise for various things. I find I generally tend to do most of my free-form discussion in those contexts, and augment with SO serving as an index of quick solutions to common problems.

by cheald 11y ago

detaro 11y ago

I think they've made pretty clear that they want to be a place for "simple" fact-based Q&A things and not a discussion forum, not a community (in the sense that people know each other and interact on a personal bases) and that is the product they offer, and it is great. The issue I see is that they have been so successful that now they are THE place where you'll find someone capable of helping you. And then you have a question where you are sure that you could get great input from the expertise assembled on SO, but you aren't supposed to use it because the question has the wrong format. And there is no other (obvious) place to get the answer, because SO has all the mindshare, because they cover most questions. A site that only caters to "questions not applicable to SO" would have a very weird scope, and a general site has to compete with SO for the SO-type questions, which is hard to do because SO does those very well.

cheald 11y ago
FWIW, I can highly recommend project mailing lists and IRC channels as a great way to tap into discussion-based knowledge and expertise for various things. I find I generally tend to do most of my free-form discussion in those contexts, and augment with SO serving as an index of quick solutions to common problems.