It's true. For my part, I started (and continued to) answer on a tag with not a lot of questions and answers, so most/some of the time I'd write the only answer. Though I had a professional interest into the tag at the time, I didn't choose it because it was easy to write the single answer on a question.
All SO tags I've ever followed the number of people answering is greater than the people asking, so that's not really an issue, I think. Although, maybe, it felt that way due to down voting.
The case you described is easy to identify and you can just leave a comment, which will be useful to both: other people answering questions and the person asking. Different from the down vote.
I have written 85 SO answers, yet I have never posted a question of my own on SO. Even so, I think SO has made me more productive, and that's counting all my time answering questions as wasted when in reality my time spent answering questions was certainly not completely wasted.
My primary reason for believing that SO has made a net positive impact on my productivity is that about half the time I google some programming problem, I end up on SO. I'm fortunate that most of my questions (or questions similar enough) have already been asked on SO.
I suspect I've read thousands if not tens of thousands of SO answers, and most of those answers were far more helpful than what I was able to find elsewhere.
I've often wondered why I've never asked a question myself. I think part of it is that I like searching/tinkering to find answers, and I hate waiting. I know it's not the best explanation because I know how quickly some SO questions can be answered.
I guess I should just be thankful there are plenty of other programmers more than willing to post SO questions.
No, it IS a bad thing. What you get (and what happens on SO) is that certain people will post something, anything, to new posts so they have the first comment. They then spend the next five minutes gradually expanding their answer either based on their own knowledge or worse of all, by cherry picking info from other peoples answers.
This is certainly not the case with every answer, and it it may be more prevalent under some tags than others. However it happens enough that I've become fed-up of crafting well thought out replies just to see them copy+pasted, with some minor word changes, into answers from first-posters.
I have only ever answered one question on SO, and this was it. I used to be pretty active on some of the other sites (cstheory and the old theoretical physics stack exchange) but this answer got enough attention that I immediately vowed not to post to SO again, since it could only damage my track record there.
Yes. I shouldn't have said nobody. I actually like answering old questions, for example. I've earned that badge 10 times :)
What it really comes down to, though, is that when somebody asks a new question, I want to answer their new question, with all of its subtleties, in response to its particular phrasing, in its context.
It's a rather limited form of writing, but if you have some topic that is also covered by Stack Overflow, you can answer questions.
That has the (big, in this context) benefit of directly and immediately showing that a) there is interest in the answer, since someone posted the question; and b) feedback about the quality of your answer, with the option to edit and improve it.
Sure it's bite-sized for the most part, but it is writing in some form. And yes I'm biased, it's easily my number one form of writing (but I don't go around wanting to be a writer, I don't think).
Those questions, anybody having spent time answering thousands of questions had to think about it. When you realize an SO account isn't really worth much for your brand, you may realize other benefits of your participation: the rare pleasure of really helping somebody (sometimes, not when answering trivial questions), the enjoyment you get from a very fun game (if you're into it) and the knowledge you build for yourself (I forced myself to watch some tags just because they were about technologies I didn't knew and that I wanted to learn). IMO you have to stop when it becomes boring. I stopped participating for 3 or 4 years before I learnt Rust and felt the need to see what other people were asking about the language and the approaches other people had to solve problems.
SO allows multiple answers per question. I have on occasion asked something and given a crappy/hacky self-answer as a stopgap, with somebody else eventually chiming in with a much better one later.
I think it strongly depends on the tags of the question. In particular I think you will poor quality answers on popular, high volume tags like JavaScript.
It is. Note that it takes some skill at writing to do a self answered question well. Often these falls into either:
1. Lots of material in question. Very simple unexplained answer.
2. Sparse material in question. Want to be multi part blog in the answer.
Neither of those are received well.
The key is to have a question that is good, helpful, and reproducible by others too (so they can try it out or find it if they have similar problems) and enough, but not too much detail in the answer. The answer is the tricky part because people get caught with not explaining anything because they already understand the domain in the question or explaining every nuance of the solution even though it is unnecessary for the solution itself.
Now it's a dilemma. I can just write up my answer and wait to post it until someone else posts, maximizing the amount of reputation I'd get for the same answer. If everyone does the same, the net outcome is a longer waiting period to get answers to questions. I'd rather keep game theory out of it.
I'm a little bit active as in asking questions and sometimes answering questions I google and find the solution to. Yet, 50% of my rank points comes from one answer I made soon after I created the account.
I used to answer questions until they kept telling me that answers should not be short but long with examples. I didn't want to waste my time so i stopped answering all together
Same experience here. Quick, one or two line answers to simple, common questions seem to do the best.
Although, those questions that I've poured the most time into and really tried to answer thoroughly are my favorites. Especially if it's something I had to do a bunch of research and/or testing to confirm. The lack of feedback is supplanted by the quenching of the thirst to learn something new. In fact, this quenching is my favorite part of the SE sites.
> I really like answering questions; it's nice to know that the thing I'm writing will be immediately useful to somebody, and maybe a bunch of somebodies
Totally agree. Explaining something to somebody else is a great way to learn, too.
That was my experience on early SO, and it was great. I'd just browse a tag I knew, and pick questions where I knew most of the answer, and the act of explaining it would be useful to me, too.
Now I find doing so neither fun nor fulfilling. First there's lots of garbage questions that are impossible to answer. When you do finally find something good, it's hard to get it before it gets closed as dupe or someone else answers. And if it's from a new user, there's still a good chance they'll never come back to accept the answer and awards your fake internet points.
I'd love to see a SO that encourages more new users to actually answer those "dupe" questions (instead: hide them from search and older users)
Same with me. I do sometimes answer questions if they fit into a niche I have some particular knowledge about, but on the whole I've found it to be a mostly negative experience contributing on SO.
I remember John Skeet saying he would sometimes post a half finished answer just so he could get their first and deter other users then polish it later.
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