Is StackOverflow becoming less useful to anyone else?
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I think that the problems @groaner, @mott555, Blakey, and others are having with the site are partly because they are only engaging with it from the question side -- asking questions alone is a very inefficient way to gain rep.
The only reason I became aware of SE was because Google directed me to it numerous times while searching for a solution to a problem I was having. While it's very good at solving those problems, the community there doesn't seem to be one for which I'd want to spend my valuable time rep-grinding.
Is there something wrong with "Hi, welcome to Frobinators.SE! What is the model number of the widget you are frobinating?" or something of that ilk, instead?
Removing the patronizing "Hi, welcome to Frobinators.SE!" goes a long way, but it's still not quite there.
This is what I'm objecting to:
The words look kind at first glance, but upon deeper examination, they're basically saying "LOL NOOB!" and then throwing work on the guy. If you don't like his answer, that's fine, but you want him to do work now? He took time out of his busy day to provide a quick answer (to a riddle, no less, it's not like the question is asking advice on how to perform open-heart surgery), and this is the thanks he gets? He probably won't make that mistake again!
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The words look kind at first glance, but upon deeper examination, they're basically saying "LOL NOOB!" and then throwing work on the guy.
Seems like they should have just let it be. He'll see which answers get voted up or whatever (assuming his really does suck) and adjust future behavior.
All of this stuff documented here just smacks of big fish in small ponds. People like to be important, even if it's in a tiny slice of whatever.
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PHP in common. That sounds like the basis for a friendship. Right?
Seems like reason to avoid a person IMO
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Hi, welcome to stack exchange. You won't find any of the answers you seek, but feel free to be a pedantic dickweed in the mean time.
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Which would be less of a wtf if they were honest about the kind of site it actually is—a wiki presented in question-and-answer format—rather than presenting it as a place where you could go to actually get your questions answered.
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Content creators are ruining the internet.
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TRWTF
Not really -- those edits get reviewed by a higher-rep user before getting applied. It's actually rather nice being able to chip in with copy-editing, especially on Stacks where there's plenty of it to do :)
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What if I don't want to have my question edited?
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And still not a forum.
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Which would be less of a wtf if they were honest about the kind of site it actually is—a wiki presented in question-and-answer format—rather than presenting it as a place where you could go to actually get your questions answered.
What's particularly ironic about this is that the rules are set up to prevent discussion, even on questions that warrant it, because the owners/admins say it's not a discussion site, it's a question and answer site.
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Wasn't it (co)founded by Jeff?
Seems he has form for telling people how they must communicate.
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So you only need 5 assholes to completely ruin the site, even if there's 100,000 non-assholes? Great design.
You can flag a closed question for moderator's attention as an anti-close.
But yes, I've seen 5 people work in unison to do some damage to a particular tag, because there wasn't enough audience for that tag.
The same thing happens on wikipedia on topics of narrow interest.
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Wait ... Idea percolating, not sure how to classify yet ...
What if we formed a group of WTDWTF members to counter the high rep assholes on SO?
Oh wait, there's that "sounds like work" feeling nagging me ...
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What if we formed a group of WTDWTF members to counter the high rep assholes on SO?
Because it takes assholes to beat assholes?
We'd need to stick around too long to get enough SOPointzzzzzz and that, well...
"sounds like work"
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What if we formed a group of WTDWTF members to counter the high rep assholes on SO?
There's this matter of "incentive". To wit: why would I want to do that?
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Because SO is becoming less useful and instead of bitching about it, you could further the good of humanity by trying to actually fix it?
Or is that crazy talk and I'm hallucinating?
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Because SO is becoming less useful and instead of bitching about it, you could further the good of humanity by trying to actually fix it?
It's a commercial site. If I'm going to try to "actually fix it", I'd need: 1) a share of the revenues, and 2) some evidence that my "fixing it" would increase those revenues.
Or is that crazy talk and I'm hallucinating?
It's crazy to think the site is some kind of holy fount of knowledge. You'd have a better case with Wikipedia, but even they pull in shitloads of moolah from wikia.com, so.
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you could further the good of humanity by trying to actually fix it?
If we have to overthrow a cabal to do it I'm out.
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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.
I'm active, but only in very selected tags. Almost everything there I do is either user support for certain software packages or because I looked up something, didn't find an answer, solved it myself and wrote the answer up.
Just shy of 65k
repforumpointzzzz!
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What if I don't want to have my question edited?
There's a rollback function to allow you to reject a broken or otherwise non-useful edit to your post.
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trying to actually fix it?
Or is that crazy talk and I'm hallucinating?
have to overthrow a cabal to do it
This is why.
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This is why.
But if there's a cabal that needs overthrowing, it doesn't get better by just crying about it into your beer with your friends.
If you want to write good SO answers (not speaking about the other SE sites) then the best way to do it is to write something not snarky or insulting. It should also answer the question asked, answer the question that the questioner was thinking of but didn't actually ask (sometimes you can get enough clues to figure this out, sometimes not), explain why the solution you're giving is the best one, and provide links to resources elsewhere (documentation, wikipedia, whatever is suitable) so that readers can find out more if they care to. Answering a question is really the core of how you teach someone, and sometimes a question is poorly asked such that any answer you give will be unenlightening to anyone. That's when you should comment to request clarification, propose/make an edit (e.g., because some people can't format code for shit, but if they at least cut-n-paste it in somehow it's still recoverable) or vote to close it (if you're high-enough rep).
The preceding paragraph makes it sound like a lot more work than it really is.
Most of my answers take 5–15 minutes to do, including testing (because I hate making mistakes where other people can see them).
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It is a holy font of knowledge if you ignore answers written by people other than Jon Skeet and Eric Lippert.
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Wasn't it (co)founded by Jeff?
Seems he has form for telling people how they must communicate.
And they're usually silly ideas on it, too. This "forum" being Exhibit A. It and StackOverflow both stink of "Everyone's doing it wrong! I must educate people on the correct way!"
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Does StackOverflow repeatedly pop up toasters asking you if you're really sure you want to communicate that way, or does it leave that to the people with the Super Rep Pointzzzz?
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It has toasters.
What algorithm does Stack Exchange use to determine if a question may be subjective?
I was asking a question in serverfault.com and this message warned me (correctly!): The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed So, I'm curious if there any class...
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Probably just looking for subjective terms.
"best" is almost a given.
Oh it looks like they forgot "greatest".
What greatest app yes?
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Also ugly popups:
And more traditionally:
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Rough translation: "Are you sure you want to answer your question? You could do these two things that are totally unrelated instead!"
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Is that an alert? Seriously? A freaking alert? In 2015?
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Oh god, help us.
- Accomplishes the goal.
- Can be written in a way that can be understood.
- Is succinct.
- Is used when interrupting the user is necessary to accomplish the goal.
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A lot of people hit "reply" thinking it's a forum, so they "answer" the question with "Well actually I was making a pot roast, not an oven roast, so I need crockpot info instead"
Or "I am also having this issue, plz advise!"
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So, add an optional forum.
Question
blahAnswers
blah blahblah blah bleh
Forum
But what about this idea.- Ask it in another question.
How can I refine the question. - Add the steps you used.
Rather than
Question
blah- comments
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- Not sufficient, voting to close.
- Ask it in another question.
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A lot of people hit "reply" thinking it's a forum
Hmm… well, it does look like a forum…
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Or "I am also having this issue, plz advise!"
Who answers their own question with that?
A lot of people hit "reply" thinking it's a forum
Outrageous. Does not Jeffpute™.
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That's what the comments are for, except if the comment is toxic, then it's jeffed out.
He actually advised people to hash out question refinement in chat.
IMO, it is just a glorified forum, where the succinct question and answers are placed at top.
And there are forums that accomplish this same thing, but also allow forum discussion (by moving the "accepted answer" to the top). As a matter of fact, this is the most common model. Even wikipedia follows it, as the article is displayed first, with an attached discussion page.
But instead of allowing this conversation to flow (the argument for infiniscroll), he chopped it up into per question or answer topics. Which puts all the meta information about the question all over the place.
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Who answers their own question with that?
I could see it happening if someone saw an abstract-ish answer and wanted to ask for that answerer to send teh codez.
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Those things are encouraged to be comments.
Answers should be atomic, and should answer ideally anyone who comes in with the OP question in mind.
Requests for clarity or more information become comments, not answers. Because asking for the code does nothing for the next guy, unless it becomes a part of the answer.
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The problem is that SO:Q&A is supposed to be a lookup resource for anyone.
But people want to use it like a solve my exact problem for me in my context, and then proceed to communicate like there's no one else watching.
But all the rules have swung so far in the opposite away from collaboration and cooperation and attempting to understand the context of the question instead of its words exactly, that the site accomplishes neither form.
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I could see it happening if someone saw an abstract-ish answer and wanted to ask for that answerer to send teh codez.
Eh? Someone answering their own question like that?
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Maybe they have multiple personalities?
@RaceProUK and @accalia is the same person, split personality.
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I can't tease?
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Eh? Someone answering their own question like that?
Here...
A lot of people hit "reply" thinking it's a forum
One more time with emphasis, blakey...
A lot of people hit "reply" thinking it's a forum
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@RaceProUK and @accalia is the same person, split personality.
THEY'RE ONTO US!
RUNAWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Here...
I'm still not following what someone replying to their own posts and your post have to do with each other, but my brain is mashed so I'm assuming that's me not getting it.
Nothing to see here. As you were.
Toe the line - Wikipedia
