What's killing off "gameified" communities (yes I made a post of my tweets, suck it)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    So I'd have to pay money to get my question answered? Pass.

    No, some of your rep, IIRC.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @blakeyrat said:

    So I'd have to pay money to get my question answered? Pass.

    No, a bounty donates 100+ of your own reputation to award to the question.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    A simple, straightforward question from someone new to the ecosystem of node: 0 answers.

    "How to combine two obscurish testing libraries on a relatively young platform?"

    I don't know answer to that. And I'm a node.js guy.

    Consider that you're already in the top 5% of coders worldwide. To get help, you'd need to find someone even better than you, who also had the same issue, figured out the solution and happens to stumble upon your question. A "struck by lightning bolt" kind of chance for that to happen.

    Same goes for blakeyrat's WebAPI question that he got angry over. Or how about @PJH 's latest embedded software question? I don't even understand what's he talking about there.

    People like us will never get the same level of help from Q/A sites as the "how do I jQuery" level noobs. No gamification will change that equation.


  • FoxDev

    @blakeyrat said:

    @tarunik said:
    Wrong. The intended use of the site is to ask and answer questions.

    Right. I want to ask. And other people who are not me want to answer. I don't see how what you typed has anything to do with what I typed.

    So what you're saying is that you want other people to help you. but you can't be bothered to help other people.

    And you wonder why you're finding SO useless…



  • @blakeyrat said:

    No, but seriously, it's usually because I'm either on the cutting-edge of something (…) and I'm hoping to find the 3 people on Earth who have actually encountered the problem before.

    Not like this is limited to coding or other tech forums. My experience in other fields is that if you’ve done your research on whatever subject you’re dealing with and are hitting a wall, posting a question in which you detail what you already know is bound to get you zero useful answers, and typically zero answers at all.



  • I had answered a question upon SO's website.
    The top answer was posted within 2 hours of posting the question and basically says 'No, you can't.'
    It was known to be wrong and just six hours after by I posted the answer saying 'Yes, you can’ and giving explicit details but by that occasion the questioner had already abandoned his question and in the end was a 2nd answer with half the votes up of the wrong answer.
    Feeding fastest fingers first and wrong answer for ten.



  • Ok let me ask you this. I've reported something like 3 DOM bugs to Mozilla, all of which were genuine, fixed, bugs. I've reported bugs to Chromium, a couple of which were fixed (although possibly not due to my ticket, since their bug tracking/triage is awful.) I've logged bugs against Aptana, I spent years helping out at the RealBasic forums, I've done my share of Yahoo1 Answers, worked in a CS computer lab helping students for 2 years, etc etc etc.

    I've helped people out, is the point.

    Where's that reputation in my SO account? How does one tiny site know who the fuck I am and what contribution I've made? It's not enough to pay my dues, I have to pay my dues on a specific website before I can be an effective user of that website?

    I'm still filing this under "ridiculous."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    (Any other activity will be discouraged-- for example, look at all the reputation gates StackOverflow puts up to do very basic tasks, like writing a comment.)

    I think the bigger problem is the fucking pedantry of the mods, especially in current years. Pretty much the only permitted activities are "asking for teh codez" and "giving out teh codez" - anything that has even the most remote chance of spinning of a *gasp* opinion of a professional programmer will get your content memory-holed.

    Seriously. SO is full of interesting questions from 2010 or so, with lots of answers and upvotes, that have since been locked with extreme prejudice as "PRIMARILY OPINION BASED FUCK YOU" or "NOT A GOOD FIT FOR Q&A GO FUCK YOURSELF". And just how many questions will have "comments deleted", since they're not the place for discussion? What are they even for?

    And look at their fucking meta. It's as insane as North Korea.

    With all that, the rep gates aren't even that bad - at least you get past all the interesting ones fairly quickly if you swallow your pride, find a "how do I loop" type-thing, grab like 20 upvotes, and move on.

    @cartman82 said:

    Consider that you're already in the top 5% of coders worldwide. To get help, you'd need to find someone even better than you, who also had the same issue, figured out the solution and happens to stumble upon your question. A "struck by lightning bolt" kind of chance for that to happen.

    At least twice I've asked a question on SO, got no response, then cross-posted the same question here and got one within minutes.

    @blakeyrat said:

    talk about literally nothing except the little pointless baubles you can get from this stupid forum software. Half the threads are full of nothing but that.

    But we do it in an ironic way, so it's all right.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't have any solid proposals either. But there could be at least some slight recognition of the problem.

    On a site co-founded by Atwood?

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    CLOSED_WONTFIX

    @blakeyrat said:

    How does one tiny site know who the fuck I am and what contribution I've made?

    It won't, especially since you change your account every time you change jobs.



  • This question has been closed because it is too interesting. Try asking a more boring question instead...


  • FoxDev

    @blakeyrat said:

    Ok let me ask you this. I've reported something like 3 DOM bugs to Mozilla, all of which were genuine, fixed, bugs. I've reported bugs to Chromium, a couple of which were fixed (although possibly not due to my ticket, since their bug tracking/triage is awful.) I've logged bugs against Aptana, I spent years helping out at the RealBasic forums, I've done my share of Yahoo1 Answers, worked in a CS computer lab helping students for 2 years, etc etc etc.

    Yay, good, have a medal?
    @blakeyrat said:
    Where's that reputation in my SO account? How does one tiny site know who the fuck I am and what contribution I've made? It's not enough to pay my dues, I have to pay my dues on a specific website before I can be an effective user of that website?

    I'm sure in your magical fairyland, SO would have that ability, but we're in the real world, where that sort of cross-pollination of info just doesn't happen. Why? Because it's unbelievably impractical, basically impossible, since there's no way of SO knowing what 'blakeyrats' on other sites are the one true @blakeyrat. And that stuff you did in college? That's not online, so no-one can find it.
    @blakeyrat said:
    I'm still filing this under "ridiculous."

    What's ridiculous is you thinking it's ridiculous.

    Is SO perfect? Of course not; nothing is. Your problem though isn't actually with SO; your problem is you don't want to play the game. And if you're not going to play the game, how do you expect ti win?



  • When looking for answers, I usually use google, and if SO shows up in my results, I'll go take a look. Stuff I do find on there by this method is generally useful, but I don't have much interest in asking SO directly...


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @cartman82 said:

    Consider that you're already in the top 5% of coders worldwide.

    Senpai noticed me! blush

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    anything that has even the most remote chance of spinning of a gasp opinion of a professional programmer will get your content memory-holed.

    The guidelines for what goes on SO vs Programmers vs Code Review vs... it's all a big mess. I had to participate in other SEs before I got a good feel for what's too opinionated to have an answer vs what is a "good" subjective.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    There really isn't anything you can do to incentivize people to play fair and not try to game the system.

    Are we still talking about SO here, or life in general?



  • @antiquarian said:

    It won't, especially since you change your account every time you change jobs.

    Guess what relationship there is between the length of time I've held a StackOverflow account and my development skill/experience? Go ahead. Guess.

    BTW I actually saw (maybe an urban legend) that there are some recruiters who actually ask your SO reputation number to place you in jobs. Fucking ridiculous, if true.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Your problem though isn't actually with SO; your problem is you don't want to play the game. And if you're not going to play the game, how do you expect ti win?

    If I did play the game, if I spent hours gaming for points by looking for easy unanswered questions, would I then "win"?

    Somehow, I don't think so. I think I'd just be a bigger loser-- same unanswered questions, but now hours of wasted time behind each one,


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    some recruiters who actually ask your SO reputation number to place you in jobs. Fucking ridiculous, if true.

    :wtf:

    I'm not sure I'd want to be recruited by those people.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    It's not enough to pay my dues, I have to pay my dues on a specific website before I can be an effective user of that website?

    "Why did you cut my gas off when I'm paying the electric company so much money?"

    Look, no matter how they call it, they don't care about your "reputation". They're giving you a carrot to chase so that you're (well, not "you" you, etc.) incentivized to contribute to their site. They don't give a shit what you did for Mozilla, because that doesn't get questions on SO answered, and getting questions on SO answered means people will come and ask questions, which means more views, which means fat bank account and a chance to actually pay off those angel investors.

    Seriously, do I have to explain that?


    Filed under: I don't but I will anyway


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @tar said:

    I usually use google, and if SO shows up in my results, I'll go take a look.

    Yes, exactly. I just asked a question (last week, my first ever). Of course, I had to create a new account, because my old one was tied to that horrible universal ID thing. I don't even remember who I signed up with to get it. (Another terrible idea of Jeff's. I don't think I ever saw a place other than SO to use that worthless identity mechanism.)

    I had searched and searched and tried shit for days with no luck, so I got desperate and asked the question. Someone up voted it, though no answers or comments. Honestly, I don't think anyone knows how to do what I was trying to do.

    I eventually figured out a workaround. Though I think for other reasons it's not going to matter, because the thing I was trying to do probably lacks reasonable ways to do some other things that we need it to do (and I'm kind of shocked that more people don't, but whatever).

    Yes, that was intentionally vague.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    BTW I actually saw (maybe an urban legend) that there are some recruiters who actually ask your SO reputation number to place you in jobs. Fucking ridiculous, if true.

    That actually worries me, if true...



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    The guidelines for what goes on SO vs Programmers vs Code Review vs... it's all a big mess.

    SO: "plz give me teh codez"
    Programmers: "how do I maek codez"
    CR: "I made codez, are they gud?"

    I think.



  • Obviously I understood all that, I'm just addressing the people who just seemed oblivious to that fact. You know, the people saying if I only had a single SO account I'd have no problem getting questions answered.



  • @tar said:

    When looking for answers, I usually use google, and if SO shows up in my results, I'll go take a look. Stuff I do find on there by this method is generally useful, but I don't have much interest in asking SO directly...

    My experience is different:

    @,full:true said:

    I'll google, and if SO shows up in my results, I'll take a look as a last resort. Stuff I do find there is generally not useful, therefore I have little interest in asking SO

    SO is getting everybody to chase their tails answering and re-answering the same stuff - nobody is bothering to research their problems, or learn how to.

    OTOH
    I've seen this problem even in the (non-SO) forum for the very specific software used at my work - same questions over and over - which just makes searching that much harder. RTFM.

    I still think its worse at SO.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Obviously I understood all that, I'm just addressing the people who just seemed oblivious to that fact.

    Um...you were the only one who seemed that way.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ijij said:

    the very specific software used at my work

    I think this is an important point. On the stuff I'm looking at for work, it's not the same questions over and over. They often don't directly address what I'm looking for, but they've often put me on the right direction, or at least sparked a new thought about a different approach.



  • What SO really needs is version controlled answers. With locking.


  • FoxDev

    @blakeyrat said:

    BTW I actually saw (maybe an urban legend) that there are some recruiters who actually ask your SO reputation number to place you in jobs. Fucking ridiculous, if true.

    I'd refuse to answer on the grounds that the number is meaningless outside of SO.
    @blakeyrat said:
    If I did play the game, if I spent hours gaming for points by looking for easy unanswered questions, would I then "win"?

    A single upvote was enough for me to get the ability to create wiki posts and participate in meta, so no, you won't be spending hours harvesting rep points. A mere eight upvotes, and you'll be able to offer bounties.

    So yeah, you can get quite far by just answering a dozen questions or so. And that won't take long if you choose questions you can answer quickly.



  • I think a couple people showed the general sentiment. In any case, my point was, don't confuse a proxy for a value for the actual value.



  • @ijij said:

    Stuff I do find there is generally not useful,

    We may be in agreement here, I'd say it's about 50% useful, and I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy.

    I have a pretty broad range of going concerns though (work + personal), so I often have questions about msbuild, PowerShell, C++11, C#, node.js, XPath, YAML, SQLite, Android NDK, Emscripten, Haskell, make, Box2D, jQuery (and now Rust as well...)—SO is better on some of those than others...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ijij said:

    My experience is different:

    I'll google, and if SO shows up in my results, I'll take a look as a last resort. Stuff I do find there is generally not useful, therefore I have little interest in asking SO

    This, generally, is mine too.

    I'm often looking for things that are assumed (by me) to be less common anyway?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So I'd have to pay money to get my question answered? Pass.

    Rep, not money.

    @cartman82 said:

    People like us will never get the same level of help from Q/A sites as the "how do I jQuery" level noobs. No gamification will change that equation.

    QFT. OTOH -- I do find myself browsing SO on occasion, hunting down and helping answer wackadoodle C++ compiler questions and the occasional embedded snafu.

    @RaceProUK said:

    So what you're saying is that you want other people to help you. but you can't be bothered to help other people.

    And you wonder why you're finding SO useless…


    Again, QFT. If he could be bothered to post even one or two answers, ever, he'd be able to get past most of the early-stage rep gates -- which have more to do with spam control than anything else!

    @Gurth said:

    Not like this is limited to coding or other tech forums. My experience in other fields is that if you’ve done your research on whatever subject you’re dealing with and are hitting a wall, posting a question in which you detail what you already know is bound to get you zero useful answers, and typically zero answers at all.

    Research has its bounds, though -- there's no substitute for someone who can answer from experience.

    @antiquarian said:

    you change your account every time you change jobs.

    Why does he feel he can't take his work identity with him between jobs? That sounds like a serious problem on his end...

    @RaceProUK said:

    I'm sure in your magical fairyland, SO would have that ability, but we're in the real world, where that sort of cross-pollination of info just doesn't happen. Why? Because it's unbelievably impractical, basically impossible, since there's no way of SO knowing what 'blakeyrats' on other sites are the one true @blakeyrat. And that stuff you did in college? That's not online, so no-one can find it.

    Besides, he can't find a single interesting question on the entirety of SO? That sounds a bit narrow-minded to me...or do blakeyrats have no curiosity whatsoever?

    @ijij said:

    SO is getting everybody to chase their tails answering and re-answering the same stuff - nobody is bothering to research their problems, or learn how to.

    Part of the problem is that the terminology has diverged faster than it can be linked together -- especially with a significant population of ESL folk on SO -- not that their English is bad, but it's often differently-structured and differently-idiomatic, which makes searches that much harder.

    @RaceProUK said:

    A single upvote was enough for me to get the ability to create wiki posts and participate in meta, so no, you won't be spending hours harvesting rep points. A mere eight upvotes, and you'll be able to offer bounties.

    So yeah, you can get quite far by just answering a dozen questions or so. And that won't take long if you choose questions you can answer quickly.


    I have about 270-odd SO rep, off of 10 upvoted/accepted answers. Out of those ten, only four of them have more than one upvote, and the most-upvoted answer of mine has a mere four upvotes. And that's more than enough rep to use the site -- I'd argue that once you hit 50 rep (which isn't hard to do IMO), you'd be in more than good enough shape.

    @tar said:

    We may be in agreement here, I'd say it's about 50% useful, and I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy.

    I have a pretty broad range of going concerns though (work + personal), so I often have questions about msbuild, PowerShell, C++11, C#, node.js, XPath, YAML, SQLite, Android NDK, Emscripten, Haskell, make, Box2D, jQuery (and now Rust as well...)—SO is better on some of those than others...


    I find it semi-useful myself -- it's nowhere near perfect but it's much nicer than wrestling with 50 PHP-hellstew message boards full of various flavors of hard-to-identify-until-you're-down-a-rabbit-hole n00bishness, or having to deal with total pedants on IRC who, while well-intentioned with their RTFMs, don't know what to do when you have questions that don't fit neatly into any of their bins, or are never around to see your questions.



  • @tarunik said:

    Rep, not money.

    Rep is worthless to me, so I guess if I had access to any I could put a bounty on all my shit. But then I'd lose the rep and not be able to comment anymore. So. Whee.

    @tarunik said:

    Again, QFT. If he could be bothered to post even one or two answers, ever, he'd be able to get past most of the early-stage rep gates -- which have more to do with spam control than anything else!

    I only have an account in the first place for work-related tasks. My employer doesn't pay me to answer questions on StackOverflow. (Ironically, I could probably quite easily get access to a discretionary budget to put actual cash-money bounties on my questions-- but it looks like SO doesn't allow that.)

    @tarunik said:

    Why does he feel he can't take his work identity with him between jobs?

    Sure I can. What reason would I have to do it? (Other than to fulfill the stupid StackOverflow bullshit.)

    @tarunik said:

    Besides, he can't find a single interesting question on the entirety of SO?

    I haven't looked. Why would I?

    @tarunik said:

    That sounds a bit narrow-minded to me...or do blakeyrats have no curiosity whatsoever?

    My employer pays me to work on specific problems, not dick around with other people's problems.

    At home, I don't use StackOverflow because... why would I?

    @tarunik said:

    I find it semi-useful myself -- it's nowhere near perfect but it's much nicer than wrestling with 50 PHP-hellstew message boards full of various flavors of hard-to-identify-until-you're-down-a-rabbit-hole n00bishness, or having to deal with total pedants on IRC who, while well-intentioned with their RTFMs, don't know what to do when you have questions that don't fit neatly into any of their bins, or are never around to see your questions.

    I never said it was worse than what came before. I said it's (practically) useless to me now.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What reason would I have to do it?

    What reason do you have not to have a consistent work identity throughout your career? It strikes me as bizarre that you don't...

    @blakeyrat said:

    My employer doesn't pay me to answer questions on StackOverflow.

    They don't pay you to post here, either.

    @blakeyrat said:

    I said it's (practically) useless to me now.

    I find it strange that you don't ever have questions outside your chosen subject matter -- or the subject matter forced upon you by work.

    One of my two SO questions is actually a curious-novice-language-lawyer-meets-novice-CPU-designer question about a very dark corner of the C++ standard...and the other is about SVN. 😛

    What SO and the various SEs have is breadth of knowledge...


  • Banned

    @blakeyrat said:

    My employer pays me to work on specific problems, not dick around with other people's problems.

    'cause we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl~~


  • BINNED

    @tarunik said:

    I find it semi-useful myself -- it's nowhere near perfect but it's much nicer than wrestling with 50 PHP-hellstew message boards

    Now now, it could be worse, could've been [this shitty software][1].*

    In general, I'll agree with blakey here (minus the usual hyperbole he so likes to use). The whole rep thing put me off SO to the point I didn't even feel like answering questions. I'm likely help on a regular forum / mailing list / IRC than somewhere where I have to grind rep just so I get the "benefits" of commenting.

    * Sorry, cheap joke, I had to. That place is useless anyway, regardless of the forum software.
    [1]: http://community.freepbx.org



  • @Onyx said:

    The whole rep thing put me off SO to the point I didn't even feel like answering questions. I'm likely help on a regular forum / mailing list / IRC than somewhere where I have to grind rep just so I get the "benefits" of commenting.

    I generally find that it's much easier to manage 1 SO account than a zillion and two forums, mailing lists, and/or IRC channels...



  • @tarunik said:

    What reason do you have not to have a consistent work identity throughout your career? It strikes me as bizarre that you don't...

    I dunno, I guess I could. The old StackOverflow login system was complete trash (for a long time, I refused to use the site at all simply because OpenID is such a fucking terrible clusterfuck awful idea-- naturally Atwood would be a fan of it), so I have like 5-6 accounts there, and honestly I probably couldn't authenticate half of them if I wanted.

    @tarunik said:

    They don't pay you to post here, either.

    True but this is (generally speaking) a thousand times more entertaining than dealing with StackOverflow's bullshit.

    I do painful unfun things when I'm paid to. Visiting StackOverflow, trying to navigate the minefield of permissions, struggle with their awful Markdown bullshit, OpenID bullshit, etc-- none of that is fun. It's work. I can't see myself slacking off actual work to do SO "account maintenance" work for free.

    @tarunik said:

    I find it strange that you don't ever have questions outside your chosen subject matter -- or the subject matter forced upon you by work.

    Of course I do. I answer them in the normal way.

    @tarunik said:

    What SO and the various SEs have is breadth of knowledge...

    From what Yamikuronue posted, it sounds like the non-programming ones might be actually worthwhile.

    I doubt they're worthwhile enough to justify all the bullshit though.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I dunno, I guess I could.

    Start here. (although, you may need SO staff help if some of your old SO accounts are tied to email addresses you no longer can receive email at)

    From the sounds of things...even if you consolidated 2 or 3 of your SO accounts together, that would be enough to push you over some of the most critical early rep thresholds...



  • I don't give enough of a shit. But next time I use the site, I'll just tie an account to my Facebook or something "permanent", instead of a job-specific username/password.

    Or I'll just never use it, because my success rate is like 20%.


  • Banned

    Considering your track record, what you'll actually do is create a new account tied to your workplace again, and again, and again.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @blakeyrat said:

    it sounds like the non-programming ones might be actually worthwhile.

    Most of them are. SQA.SE is, ironically enough, fucking terrible. I'm steeling myself for the inevitable: if I'm going to get anything out of that site, I'm going to have to make a major effort to set up some quality control guidelines based on my participation on other sites and run for moderator. I'm not sure there's enough decent people on the SE to make it worth cleaning up.

    PCG.SE is a fun timewaster. Puzzling looks like it'll be the same once it gets more momentum. I hang out a lot on cooking, gaming, rpg, scifi, personal finance, and The Workplace, all of which are decent examples of the system working well. Skeptics has the most extreme moderation policies but it somehow works for them. UX can be interesting once in a while.



  • Arcade is fun too, mostly for the clickbait question titles and generally lax rules in comparison. It even has @codinghorror as a genuinely useful member of the community, for a change.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Arcade

    @Yamikuronue said:

    gaming

    Same diff.



  • Ah, missed that. Time to go get some sleep, I suppose.


    Filed under: writing a thesis makes you have no idea what's going on around you for like a month



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    Most of them are. SQA.SE is, ironically enough, fucking terrible.

    http://sqa.se/

    Those assholes!

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Arcade is fun too, mostly for the clickbait question titles and generally lax rules in comparison. It even has @codinghorror as a genuinely useful member of the community, for a change.

    Impossible.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand



  • RPG, Aviation, and Worldbuilding are all good IME. DIY is a mixed bag -- balancing moderation there is very hard when you have such a large population of ask-and-run and low-rep users, but high quality questions are hard to come by, and simply handing out flags wouldn't help much because you'd probably run out of both flags and new users in a hurry...



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    SO: "plz give me teh codez"
    Programmers: "how do I maek codez"
    CR: "I made codez, are they gud?"

    +1 Funny

    @Captain said:

    What SO really needs is version controlled answers. With locking.

    I believe they already have some version control stuff built in. Just not an overall system for tracking and updating outdated information. A lot of the stuff there isn't really aging very well.

    @blakeyrat said:

    (Ironically, I could probably quite easily get access to a discretionary budget to put actual cash-money bounties on my questions-- but it looks like SO doesn't allow that.)

    There you go, a startup idea. Stack Overflow meets Freelancer.





  • More like this.


Log in to reply