Is StackOverflow becoming less useful to anyone else?


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    The thing is, the smaller SEs often have better moderation teams and community guidelines than SO. You really can't tar them all with the same brush. Code Review, for example, is way more strict about rules than Code Golf or SciFi.

    SQA still gets bullshit like:
    http://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/database-and-application-data-comparision-through-selenium

    and

    all the goddamn time. Like seriously, half the questions "HOW DO I JOB", "HOW DO I TEST", or "HOW I CLICK BUTTON". Like, if you don't know how to add two ints, don't post on SO, educate yourself, you know?



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    don't know how to add two ints

    You should definitely use jQuery. It's really great and does all the things.



  • As to my statement on questions vs answers:

    I have asked four questions on SO. Only one of them has received a (single) upvote.

    I have 32 answers on SO; 19 of them have at least one upvote, and my most-upvoted answer has all of four upvotes. Yet, that gives more than enough rep to allow me to participate in all the normal user functions of the site (I could use chat or edit community wiki if I wanted, for instance, and am active with both up and downvoting).

    Do people not upvote questions that much? Yes -- oftentimes, questions are "meh" at best for the most part, and when they aren't they do get upvoted... (I know I'm guilty of that in some places, particularly in Stacks where people aren't already conditioned to provide details with their question.)

    Also, SO has plenty of copy editing opportunities out there -- and since accepted edits give +2 rep, that's an OK way to get rep if you aren't getting it any other way.

    @cartman82 said:

    Sometimes I like to go to SO and answer questions. But I have only so much time and patience. So if I have to scroll through more than 10-15 questions that are either poor or that I can't answer or that were already answered, I loose patience and give up.

    Trigger warning: meta.so, but:



  • @tarunik said:

    As to my statement on questions vs answers:

    I have asked four questions on SO. Only one of them has received a (single) upvote.

    The problem is new users come there BECAUSE THEY WANT TO ASK A QUESTION. It's a Q&A site, right? That's the point.

    @tarunik said:

    I have 32 answers on SO; 19 of them have at least one upvote, and my most-upvoted answer has all of four upvotes.

    That's a hell of a lot commitment for me to make to a site that, so far, has answered ZERO of my own questions in a useful manner.

    @tarunik said:

    Also, SO has plenty of copy editing opportunities out there -- and since accepted edits give +2 rep, that's an OK way to get rep if you aren't getting it any other way.

    I highly doubt a new user is allowed to do that. Concentration camp, remember? New users aren't allowed to do shit.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I highly doubt a new user is allowed to do that. Concentration camp, remember? New users aren't allowed to do shit.

    No, you can suggest edits as a 1-rep user.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The problem is new users come there BECAUSE THEY WANT TO ASK A QUESTION. It's a Q&A site, right? That's the point.

    Note that I said upvote -- all four of my questions have at least one answer, albeit two of them have self-answers.



  • Look, I don't know how much plainer I can make it. I came to the site to get a question answered. Several times. Not ONCE have I received a useful answer.

    Your suggestion is, "well just use the site for hours and hours and hours!" doesn't add-up. There's no reason to believe my questions would have been answered if I had a higher "reputation".

    What use is the site to me? None. So far it's been a waste of my time. Asking me to waste MORE time in the hopes maybe it'll pay-off sometime in the far future is pretty ridiculous.



  • Look, I don't know how much plainer I can make it. I came to the site to get a question answered. Several times. Not ONCE have I received a useful answer.

    Your suggestion is, "well just use the site for hours and hours and hours!" doesn't add-up. There's no reason to believe my questions would have been answered if I had a higher "reputation".

    What use is the site to me? None. So far it's been a waste of my time. Asking me to waste MORE time in the hopes maybe it'll pay-off sometime in the far future is pretty ridiculous.

    EDIT: oh look the site's broken again.

    EDIT: It gave me a 504 error, BUT POSTED THE COMMENT ANYWAY! WTF!


  • :belt_onion:

    That's just Discourse saying it loves hates you humanity in general



  • @tarunik said:

    did it simply say you didn't have enough rep to use the g++ tag?

    Not g++, but yeah, something like that. As I said, it's been a while, so I don't remember the details.


  • BINNED

    @sloosecannon said:

    You can't apply the same pedantic rules to programming that you can to cooking, period.

    YMBNH


  • :belt_onion:

    I don't care! Lawn: Off. Now!

    Filed Under: Sometimes, you need to make a stand, and THIS IS THAT STAND



  • What really used to get me was when there was no place to put the question, and the official answer was basically "Too bad then you can't ask it". No suggestions, no advice, just "This isn't allowed here, go away". Also typically a lot of rude comments insulting the OP for asking the wrong question, along with a bevy of downvotes. They also had something that would ban you from the site if you had enough questions with downvotes. Like it would tell you that "Sorry, new questions from this account aren't allowed". It was highly rude.

    I actually had a moderator (a real one) send me a private message expressing concern that while I was reviewing questions I would upvote ones that were later closed as off-topic. "at odds with the community consensus" was the actual wording used.

    Like I said, the entire concept of the site is wrong and tries to encourage the wrong things. I've seen questions and had answers of my own downvoted just because someone disagreed with what I said, regardless of if it was a valid answer or answered the question correctly. I've also seen questions that had the wrong answer upvoted, and of course the idea that after an amount of time you can't even update the question or ask it again or it will be closed as a "duplicate".

    Then on top of that if you had the rep to be a community mod, you'd occasionally be thrown tests while reviewing questions. if you got enough of them wrong it would suspend your community admin privileges, but as a community admin you were supposed to use your own discretion. Instead they were expecting you to tow the party line and enforce the status quo regardless of if you believed something was on topic or not.



  • @DocMonster said:

    Then on top of that if you had the rep to be a community mod, you'd occasionally be thrown tests while reviewing questions. if you got enough of them wrong it would suspend your community admin privileges, but as a community admin you were supposed to use your own discretion. Instead they were expecting you to tow the party line and enforce the status quo regardless of if you believed something was on topic or not.

    I can see the stare decisis argument for doing that, though. If you, as a community moderator, don't like the rules, speak up when you try to change them.

    (Though they really do need a "vote to not close".)



  • @DocMonster said:

    What really used to get me was when there was no place to put the question, and the official answer was basically "Too bad then you can't ask it". No suggestions, no advice, just "This isn't allowed here, go away".

    That's bad, and the folks who get into the robo-post "too bad" mode should feel bad.

    At least have a meta post that you can drop links to to say "this isn't a good fit for this site, here are some other resources you can check out"

    @DocMonster said:

    Also typically a lot of rude comments insulting the OP for asking the wrong question, along with a bevy of downvotes

    Yeah -- that's a knee-jerk bad reaction to the abysmal question quality in some tags sigh

    @DocMonster said:

    I've also seen questions that had the wrong answer upvoted,

    I've had cases where I've glanced at an answer, upvoted it, then revisited it and realized it was wrong, but had my vote locked in. :facepalm: Perhaps you could suggest a (pedantic) edit to the wrong answer to get that vote lock off so you can flip your vote?

    @DocMonster said:

    and of course the idea that after an amount of time you can't even update the question or ask it again or it will be closed as a "duplicate".

    You can edit the existing question, or ask a new one that differentiates itself from the existing question on the topic...

    @DocMonster said:

    Then on top of that if you had the rep to be a community mod, you'd occasionally be thrown tests while reviewing questions. if you got enough of them wrong it would suspend your community admin privileges, but as a community admin you were supposed to use your own discretion.

    The review audit system is a bit of a mess, yes; there's lots of meta.SO discussion on it

    @DocMonster said:

    Instead they were expecting you to tow the party line and enforce the status quo regardless of if you believed something was on topic or not.

    If you have questions or some justification for why something might be on topic -- that's what Meta is for:

    @riking said:

    If you, as a community moderator, don't like the rules, speak up when you try to change them.



  • @DocMonster said:

    What really used to get me was when there was no place to put the question, and the official answer was basically "Too bad then you can't ask it". No suggestions, no advice, just "This isn't allowed here, go away". Also typically a lot of rude comments insulting the OP for asking the wrong question, along with a bevy of downvotes.

    StackExchange sites are each fairly narrowly focused. If you post a question that isn't strictly about programming on StackOverflow, it's going to be closed.

    Having said that, as a general rule, if something doesn't fit, the people casting Close votes should mention why and point out an alternative StackExchange site if there is one.

    @DocMonster said:

    They also had something that would ban you from the site if you had enough questions with downvotes. Like it would tell you that "Sorry, new questions from this account aren't allowed". It was highly rude.

    Yes, if you get enough downvotes on your questions or on your answers, a temporary restriction is added to your account.

    @DocMonster said:

    I actually had a moderator (a real one) send me a private message expressing concern that while I was reviewing questions I would upvote ones that were later closed as off-topic. "at odds with the community consensus" was the actual wording used.

    In my opinion they were out of line. Hell, I wasn't aware that moderators could even see what you do in the review queue.

    @DocMonster said:

    Like I said, the entire concept of the site is wrong and tries to encourage the wrong things. I've seen questions and had answers of my own downvoted just because someone disagreed with what I said, regardless of if it was a valid answer or answered the question correctly.

    Sadly, this does happen. Especially from people who post a different answer. It shouldn't happen, but some people are just dicks.

    @DocMonster said:

    I've also seen questions that had the wrong answer upvoted, and of course the idea that after an amount of time you can't even update the question or ask it again or it will be closed as a "duplicate".

    There is a tools in place to address the ones with wrong answers, but the bounties, the tool used to solicit new answers to old questions, requires you to spend some of your own reputation to do it.

    Upvotes themselves are another tool to deal with wrong answers. Just because an answer is accepted doesn't mean it will be the highest voted answer and the amount of votes something has is visible to everyone.

    In fact, if an answer doesn't work, make a comment about why it doesn't work (and downvote it)!

    @DocMonster said:

    Then on top of that if you had the rep to be a community mod, you'd occasionally be thrown tests while reviewing questions. if you got enough of them wrong it would suspend your community admin privileges, but as a community admin you were supposed to use your own discretion. Instead they were expecting you to tow the party line and enforce the status quo regardless of if you believed something was on topic or not.

    The review queue is entirely optional. Thus the review checks will only catch people who are using the review queue.

    Do note that moderation powers granted by reputation alone are different than the ones if you were elected to a Moderator position. For example, as an almost 50k user on StackOverflow, I have all the normal permissions. However, I can't unilaterally Close1 or Delete questions. For Close votes, I need 4 more people to agree with me. For Delete votes, the number of people who are needed scales based on how many upvotes the question has. Incidentally, only Closed questions can have Delete votes and I think 3 is the minimum of people required to vote, with that number going up by 1 for every 2 upvotes it has.

    1 Except in tags where I have enough answers with enough upvotes to give me that tag's gold badge. At present, that's only the java tag for me. I can unilaterally mark java questions as duplicates; all other close types still need 5 people.

    @riking said:

    (Though they really do need a "vote to not close".)

    Once a question is closed, people with enough rep to close can instead vote to reopen a question. I've seen controversial questions go through multiple close/reopen cycles.



  • @powerlord said:

    Having said that, as a general rule, if something doesn't fit, the people casting Close votes should mention why and point out an alternative StackExchange site if there is one.

    Or even another site altogether (say, someone on rpg.se saying "Hey, this topic doesn't fit a Q&A format well, but you'd get good mileage out of posting it on GitP instead of here").

    @powerlord said:

    In fact, if an answer doesn't work, make a comment about why it doesn't work (and downvote it)!

    Good idea -- save for the problem I mentioned earlier.

    @powerlord said:

    There is a tools in place to address the ones with wrong answers, but the bounties, the tool used to solicit new answers to old questions, requires you to spend some of your own reputation to do it.

    Upvotes themselves are another tool to deal with wrong answers. Just because an answer is accepted doesn't mean it will be the highest voted answer and the amount of votes something has is visible to everyone.


    Yes, bounties are rather intimidating to work with because of having to spend your own rep to use them; that might be something worthy of review...

    @powerlord said:

    Once a question is closed, people with enough rep to close can instead vote to reopen a question. I've seen controversial questions go through multiple close/reopen cycles.

    This does happen on occasion -- a closed question can still be workshopped (i.e. edited)


  • :belt_onion:

    @powerlord said:

    Yes, if you get enough downvotes on your questions or on your answers, a temporary restriction is added to your account.

    To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret

    sigh. Security by obscurity, eh?



  • @powerlord said:

    Once a question is closed, people with enough rep to close can instead vote to reopen a question. I've seen controversial questions go through multiple close/reopen cycles.

    Yes, I'm talking about a "disagree" vote to stop the cycle from happening in the first place.

    If all else fails, a diamond mod can use their super-votes.



  • @sloosecannon said:

    >To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret

    sigh. Security by obscurity, eh?

    That reminds me of something I read once about Paypal's system flagging accounts. Not even supervisors can override it, it's basically magic and an act of God that nobody knows how it works or how to fix it.



  • @powerlord said:

    For Close votes, I need 4 more people to agree with me.

    Is that a percentage of something, or just a flat 5? So you only need 5 assholes to completely ruin the site, even if there's 100,000 non-assholes? Great design.

    @tarunik said:

    "Hey, this topic doesn't fit a Q&A format well, but you'd get good mileage out of posting it on GitP instead of here"

    Also use human-readable words instead of mysterious acronyms like "GitP".

    @DocMonster said:

    That reminds me of something I read once about Paypal's system flagging accounts. Not even supervisors can override it, it's basically magic and an act of God that nobody knows how it works or how to fix it.

    Remember, SO moderators are selected on the basis of "people who have a lot of free time". PayPal actually pays money to their people.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Also use human-readable words instead of mysterious acronyms like "GitP".

    GitP == a tabletop roleplaying forum (that's all you need to know to make sense of what I said)


  • :belt_onion:

    @tarunik said:

    GitP

    Get in the Powah?



  • @sloosecannon said:

    Get in the Powah?

    Giant In The Playground. Most known for the webcomic "Order of the Stick"



  • My favorite SE sites are currently Programmers and Philosophy. CR is dangerous, because it is a religious mess. SO is fine in the rare cases when I have a question... usually. I think I did ask one that didn't get answered, but I rarely need to ask there. Searching usually works. In C# questions, there's a good chance that answers by Eric Lippert or Jon Skeet will show up, and those are always full of interesting information. My favorite answer, though, was one I made to a 2yo question. Every few months I get some rep, and have already surpassed the selected answer, because sooner or later someone always gets fed up with all the (wrong) guides on WPF that say you can't raise routed events, and benefits from my answer.



  • @thegoryone said:

    I picked up about 500 rep off a few answers I've put in, so I've definitely put some time in, but like I said - you get downvoted rather than corrected when people don't agree and the resident "superusers" are quick to insult others who help by putting them down or criticizing them but rarely seem to answer questions and instead seem to focus on insulting people who do.

    Yeah -- downvote without comment, or at least upvoting an existing comment, is bad, and the current crop of SO high-reps isn't all that great. (Some of the other Stacks are much better, though.)



  • @tarunik said:

    the current crop of SO high-reps isn't all that great. (Some of the other Stacks are much better, though.)

    HEY! I catch exception to that.



  • @powerlord said:

    HEY! I catch exception to that.

    Well, I'm sure you're alright, but you're kind of the exception that validates the rule ;) What tags are you active in BTW?



  • I'm not that active on SO any more.

    When I was, it was mainly in the java tag... although looking at my tags list, I apparently answered quite a few php questions as well...

    DON'T JUDGE ME. :P

    Edit: Maybe I should answer a few more PHP questions just to hit gold status in the PHP tag. Nah, that sounds suspiciously like work.



  • Ah. No wonder I've never seen you -- the vast majority of my activity is in the C++ tag, but I'm also slightly active in the C tag.


  • :belt_onion:

    @powerlord said:

    Maybe I should answer a few more PHP questions just to hit gold status in the PHP tag. Nah, that sounds suspiciously like work.

    Yeah, it's amazing how the pursuit of badges can turn a little fun helpfulness into a real chore (I found myself actively paging through the JavaScript questions a few days ago because I was close to a badge).



  • @powerlord said:

    I apparently answered quite a few php questions as well.

    You should go hang out with @arantor!



  • Well, it turns out I have over 941 upvotes in PHP tagged questions and you need 1000 for the gold badge.

    Of course, this answer alone is nearly a quarter of that. Behold the truthiness!

    (Edit: I also have over 200 PHP answers, which is the other requirement)



  • and is stupid and should be deprecated. Or if not deprecated, given the same fucking precedence as &&, as well as or and || having the same precedence.

    For a language aimed at beginners, this shit really isn't.

    Also, @abarker, I quickly found it wasn't worth my time answering PHP questions on there. Way too much pedantry about things.



  • @Arantor said:

    Also, @abarker, I quickly found it wasn't worth my time answering PHP questions on there. Way too much pedantry about things.

    I just figured that the two of you have PHP in common. That sounds like the basis for a friendship. Right?



  • That and TD :wtf: of course ;)



  • @Arantor said:

    That and TD :wtf: of course ;)

    Of course.



  • Just make sure that if you ever visit the C# section of Code Review and say that you approve of

    if(simpleCondition)
      GoLeft();
    else
      DoOtherThing();
    

    because you don't believe that people who would add another line before or after the else without adding curly braces should stay employed. The Holy Fire of the Righteous will purify your unclean soul.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Magus said:

    The Holy Fire of the Righteous will purify your unclean soul.

    Well deserved, too. I think. That broken up sentence wasn't easy to follow.



  • Well, to be fair, I typed it. I have a strong tendency to use long, twisted, unusual grammar for reasons which not even I, myself, understand. And too many commas.

    One thing I like about this place is that people are better at parsing my strange sentences.


  • :belt_onion:

    What, do you, @Magus, think, there may, in fact, be too many of the punctuation mark, commonly called a comma, inserted into this, or any other, sentence?



  • Indeed; but you, at least, are only using punctuation that everyone knows how to use, rather than the bizarre, almost entirely unused sort I tend toward.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Abuse commas all you like, but don't abuse braces by omitting them in your code.


  • :belt_onion:

    for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
        while(i>2)
           if(i>3)
              cout << "Hi!";
    

    Filed Under: ABUSE THINGS


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @sloosecannon said:

    ```
    for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
    while(i>2)
    if(i>3)
    cout << "Hi!";

    
    Filed Under: &lt;a&gt;ABUSE THINGS</blockquote>
    
    
    FLAGGED


  • But I used *gasp!* a semicolon!



  • It's only half a source of shit now?



  • Yet whenever someone proposes to make a Minecraft only site on Area 51, it gets smacked down say "That's what Arquade is for".



  • @sloosecannon said:

    [code]
    for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
    while(i>2)
    if(i>3)
    cout << "Hi!";
    [/code]

    while(1);
    

    Optimized!


  • :belt_onion:

    @nightware said:

    while(1);

    Optimized!

    Was wondering if someone would catch that.


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