> top 10% of the world have an easier time changing tech support forums
Surely. I was just saying it is a "little bit like" that. The principle seems to be the same: You can't criticize because ... you chose to use Stack Overflow for help. Go elsewhere if you don't like it.
Surely that is what people who don't like it do. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't express their opinions about it.
> I find better help going into very specific communities for the technologies I'm having issues with.
Probably true for some sites and not others. I would definitely say the more niche you go in subreddits, the more helpful people are, but that's not really true of Stack Overflow communities.
I mean in the context of users providing support for commercial products without being paid for it.
Stack Overflow is a general Q&A site, not a support forum for a commercial product. The context is very different. Also, while I'm at it, it has its own flaws, but people providing trite and useless answers isn't one, they get downvoted to oblivion.
> What kind of questions are appropriate? Well, thanks to the tagging system, we can be rather broad with that. As long as questions are appropriately tagged, I think it’s okay to be off topic as long as what you’re asking about is of interest to people who make software. But it does have to be a question. Stack Overflow isn’t a good place for imponderables, or public service announcements, or vague complaints, or storytelling.
> Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.
(note: good is italicized in the original text too)
>>The goal of Stack Overflow is to produce posts that are useful for others who stumble across them.
That's one of the goals. I wouldn't say it's the goal.
I would argue that the goal of any software should be to help the immediate user. If it is not, then why should the user continue using it?
Stackoverflow is successful because helping the immediate user has secondary benefits, namely that it also helps others. But that doesn't mean this secondary benefit should override the primary goal.
> Regardless of how you feel about Stack Overflow’s users and moderators, running a site like that is not cheap.
StackOverflow runs on less than 25 servers, its infrastructure is incredibly cheap considering just how much traffic they serve. And their UI, thankfully, hasn't changed much over the last decades either.
Spolsky says that the easiest way he's heard people explain the difference between Stack Overflow and old fashioned forums is that when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page. That's a charming way to put it and it's sure to be interesting to see the team that's assembled take a shot at building that kind of experience around other kinds of topics.
Now THAT is an elevator pitch: Stack Overflow is just like old fashioned forums, only when you go to Stack Overflow, the right answer is at the top of the page.
>I largely treat ChatGPT as my personal Stackoverflow. Except I get to break all the stackoverflow rules.
This is the sweetest thing about ChatGPT.
With Stack Overflow, if I ever have the misfortune of needing to ask a question, I feel like I'm a contractor with some seriously constraining contractual obligations. I feel like I'm serving them rather than them serving me. I have to perform an exotic dance through a field of eggshells just to get what I'm after.
With ChatGPT, I feel the opposite. I feel like it's really serving me. It's so refreshing to just be able to ask any kind of question, any follow-up questions, no strings attached.
Even beyond Stack Overflow, with forums and message boards in general, I no longer have to deal with moderators locking my post, users reprimanding me for not using their atrocious search feature, no whining or rhetorical judgements "why would you even want to do this, you stupid idiot?"
That said, the effectiveness of ChatGPT wouldn't be what it is without Stack Overflow question martyrs and their answerers.
> I think we should favor manpages over Stack Overflow, documentation over Google
these are not really comparable things. I definitely don't think that Stack Overflow should replace man pages, but I still find Stack Overflow valuable. It's value is in finding how someone else solved a problem similar to the one you had, or where you go to ask other developers for help when the your attempt at finding the needed information in the documentation has failed.
>StackOverflow is widely known as the place to get insulted for asking how to do X with Y. It doesn't matter what X or Y is, the answer is always "you shouldn't be doing it that way, why would you even ask that?"
I think that's true, but lateral to the point being made above. Stack Overflow banning opinion based questions was done for good reason and not part of the reason for its loss in traffic.
> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either.
Great, so you've learnt something for next time.
> Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place.
Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it." Stack Overflow's biggest problem is that frequent contributors are getting fed up with the torrent of newbie questions from people who haven't programmed for a month.
Imagine joining Math Overflow because you're an enthusiast mathematician... only 19 of every 20 questions are about how to multiply two digit numbers. Imagine joining a DIY group after years of practice only to find that you spend most of your time building cubes out of playdough and sticks. Have you tried reading the new queue on Stack Overflow? What does this[1] even mean? (I'm actually kind'a shocked about how good it's looking right now; only about half of the questions are utterly irredeemable.)
People from the outside don't see this. There are filters in place and people who care to make them work. So all you see is the hostility and none of the reason. But please believe me when I say that it's not just us being cronies. We really do care about the site, and we just don't want to lose it.
> The problem is, SO can't tell someone who asks an insane question from someone who asks the same question but has constraints that make it sane.
Stack Overflow is not there to help you solve your use-case. It's there to create a body of knowledge that everyone can refer to. You need to spell out your specific reasons so that the question and answers become useful to others.
A lot of the friction on Stack Overflow comes from people thinking it's a free help website rather than an attempt to create a collaborative knowledgebase.
I've used stackoverflow for years and have never heard it put like that.
"Stack Overflow ultimately has much more in common with Wikipedia than a discussion forum. By this I mean questions and answers on Stack Overflow are not primarily judged by their usefulness to a specific individual, but by how many other programmers that question or answer can potentially help over time."
Personally I would have been much more understanding of the process of using stackoverflow if I knew this, and so would many of the people who get stung expecting an answer to their question.
In reality the user is contributing their question to the community, not asking a question in the traditional sense. That's my take anyway.
> I think some are just more aware that StackOverflow as a whole is a complex functioning system and not just a collection of standalone questions. Therefore, their behavior is focused more on the well-being of the system rather than a singe question or a single user.
Totally agree with this. Stack Overflow has many flaws, but most users need to think more about the system as a whole. In that context, it becomes clear that the goal of Stack Overflow is not to answer your specific question, but to create a useful body of knowledge for the general userbase.
Surely. I was just saying it is a "little bit like" that. The principle seems to be the same: You can't criticize because ... you chose to use Stack Overflow for help. Go elsewhere if you don't like it.
Surely that is what people who don't like it do. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't express their opinions about it.
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