Because they give incentives to people answering a lot of questions so in the end you have normal people working like their real support channels with boilerplate answers and without reading the posts besides checking for keywords.
They are providing something that people want: answers (not written in text speak) to interesting questions. As to why they appear to be getting so much traction to a problem already solved by several sites (Reddit, MetaFilter, StackExchange, Googling), I'm not entirely certain. I suspect the answers market is just that large, and though I haven't followed them much, there must be some key (or controversial) people involved helping them. Never underestimate the buzz that human drama creates.
The whole point is that they don't have to answer. They hope someone else from the community will before they get to it.
It is the evolution of the mailing list then forum style "support". Make a forum, let people ask question and answer them themselves. Ideally don't participate in the communication at all yourself. Win!
I have a feeling there's some kind of reward system in place for reviewing products and answering questions. There's so many answers to fairly simple questions that are along the lines of
> will this HDMI cable connect my laptop to my tv?
> i don't know but it sends a good signal from my xbox to tv
They help nobody and just clutter up the actual helpful answers
Presumably following the right topics and people will allow you to filter out the senseless and inane questions. They also are trying to do a better job of monitoring them than many other Q&A sites, incorporating also crowd monitoring.
That's because people who answer are being paid to do so, or have other types of incentive system put in place, and they wouldn't want risk losing them by writing what they actually think.
Not so much with open source, where the one answering has (potentially) just came back home from work and is just taking the time and energy to do it from their own free time and goodwill while they sip a beer and think about what to make for dinner in a couple minutes.
I think this is deliberate crowd-sourcing the process. They incentives were put there by design to optimize for single-sourcing questions and answers for the benefit of future askers. They have to balance helping the initial questioner versus people 2 through 2 million who may ask the same question in Google search, and want the 1 best answer. They are dramatically favoring the second group.
Whether they've gone too far is open for question, but I believe it's deliberate.
Agreed. I don't get it either. Time is precious - an hour spent solving customer problems or developing customer acquisition can provide significantly more return than an hour spent answering questions in exchange for the uncertain value of "points".
Now, I can understand if you have a question you need answered having it answered in a relevant way by experts is great. And if you can help someone else, that's great. That helps float all boats. But what is the drive to collect points? I don't get the point thing. On HN either, I just don't get it.
What the article doesnt mention is that its not easy to ask a good question or give a good answer, as is made evident by going through a new question/new answer queues that are littered with code-only/cryptic stuff.
The hidden value of such participation, at least for me, is that it forces you to express yourself clearly, if you want to get any real help that is.
There are only three reasons why people answer questions on stackoverflow:
1. fake internet points
2. a genuine interest in the question/problem
3. get paid to do it
I don't know anyone who sticks with stackoverflow very long if #1 is their primary motivation.
And group #3 is a pretty small percentage of users whose companies have off loaded support onto SO, but they are paid real money to answer whatever question someone posts, so they will put up with a lot.
But leaves, in my opinion, #2 is being the majority of people actually answer questions on stackoverflow. Which I think breaks down to an aspect of question-asking that is often overlooked. Given that I am not just waiting around to help you, then it is up to you, question-asker, to motivate me to want to take time out of my day to answer your question.
At the worst, are people who asks questions with a chip on their shoulder, as if the internet is broken or the people who wrote the documentation committed some personal foul against them, and its up to the rest of the internet to make it up to them. I have absolutely zero motivation to help that person. Then there are the people that but no effort into either composing the question or finding thier own answer, a question that can be answered trivially enough by copying the title of the question into google and looking at the results. Again, you have failed to motivate me to answer your question.
Then comes the good questions, the ones that tell a story, that entice me into wanting to help this person achieve their goals. I want to help you, but have other things to do, give me a reason to procrastinate and help you figure out your problem/misunderstanding. Tell me a story of what you are trying to do, what you tried and failed, let me see your thinking process that went into it. It's up to you to build a social bond that I care enough to help you.
That, to me, is your job as "the asker". Make me want to help you, and when it's done we can both feel good about what happened. If you can't take the time to do that, then there is little point in me helping you. I, honestly, have more important things I should be doing.
It's about advertising. Each question provides an opportunity for many people to answer it. It's like a trivia game -- you don't pay people to answer trivia questions. They come to give an answer, and they get shown an ad.
If they get lucky, they may also be able to show an ad to somebody who got there via Google with a vaguely similar question. They spent a number of years getting a very good reputation with a "Top Writers" program, attracting people who wrote good answers in exchange for merch (but not cash). That provides a lot of inbound links, and now they're monetizing it.
That's one of the thing that surprises me: how does StackOverflow keep quality answers since people who are knowledgeable enough don't need to be there on the first place.
Your phrasing makes it seem like the people answering have the job of "keep up with the rate of incoming of questions." So, if there are a lot of incoming questions, they must reduce quality of feedback, since they are spread thin.
Personally, when I answer a question it's because I want to, and feel I can be helpful. I have no skin in the game with regard to the site's overall ability to keep up with incoming questions. So, I take as long as I need, and do as much hand-holding as I feel is appropriate, not governed by external pressure.
But I suppose there are professional moderators and such who really do have that external pressure, and thus have incentive to give curt feedback, or even to drive people away — thus reducing that pressure, making their lives easier.
As a SO user from the early days, I do miss that feeling of mostly interacting with people doing it "for the love of it," rather than governed by efficiency.
It seems to be more about the detailed and correct answer voted up the most that you find from searching something on Google, for that it works really well, not being part of the community there I don't care about that other 10 half assed replies for badges/points
I don't understand what getting paid for answers is for? They volunteer to help answer questions, most do this because they get that warm fuzzy feeling inside from doing a good deed and helping someone out, the rest for the free access to the site.
No one at SO gets paid to post. so why should EE pay them to post?
For people answering questions, they’d see the same question 10,000 times, and likely miss the questions that are actually worth answering.
And in a Q&A site, the answerers are far more important than the questioners — if the questions will be answered, the questioners will flock there out of need, regardless of want. Answerers are however not so constrained.
People complain about SO because, I think, it does the correct thing (unlike most Q&A sites) — it tries to optimize usage and rules for those who answer questions. Most people, however, only ask questions, or search for answers.
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