This sums it up well.
https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69fa...
SO has the goal of being a Q to A catalog. You're not contributing unless you are asking a new, answerable question or providing and answer to a new or existing question.
There are tons of people asking questions that are already answered, tons of people asking questions that would take a book to answer, and tons of people asking questions that are subjective and time sensitive. All of this needs to be closed and removed.
The fact of the matter is that tons of questions have already been asked and answered. In fact unless its for a newer technology there are probably not that many left to ask. Because of this about 95% of all new content ought to be removed. In fact you will find a vastly different culture if you stick around the GO tag vs the Java tag.
But the issue is there is a never ending trickle of people who don't realize the above. They sign up and start asking answered or impossible to answer questions, trying to start discussions, or trying to make you debug their specific issue.
You either ignore them or try and help them understand the site by telling them to RTFM.
This system has had some issues and may still be adjusted, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark. I've probably gained close to 1000 rep so far from documentation I contributed to but did not author.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the trickle down karma like that.
From the announcement of Stack Overflow, before the site was even in private beta (https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/):
> Stack Overflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange meets wikipedia meets programming reddit.
The community elements of the site are nice, and I have made some friends there, but "wiki of programming answers" is much closer to the original vision of the site than "community".
There is content that doesn't belong and content that does, this is established by the company at a broad scale and customized for various boards by the community.
I haven't seen the case where content belongs but is denied because you're not well enough know or w/e. If by old boys club you mean long standing members are preventing new members from changing policy then yeah thats true.
Another thing you're failing to realize is that that plenty of people who do RTFM, become contributors, and stick around. More than enough to keep up with demand.
> that get the boot because they've been addressed(poorly) previously
This is a valid complaint. I believe SE needs the Karma system to do a better job at rewarding cleaning up existing questions.
> At what point do you start just running a Wiki of programming answers, and not a community of programmers.
Its more we want a community to create a q/a based wiki. There needs to be a question answering community (no need to focus on the asking one it will come) and strict question moderation helps attract and retain the answering community. Retraining and attracting 15+ year industry vets is much more vital to SE's health than retraining new users.
I have to admit some skepticism of this idea.
It has been discussed on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576124
joekrie 51 days ago [-]
I find it to be a great resource if someone has already answered your question, especially if I find it via Google. As for asking questions, it's a bit off-putting to be immediately downvoted without explanation, and to not get a single answer.
Point is, it's good resource to free-ride but not actively participate.
city41 51 days ago [-]
That's basically the point of the site. I think SO's owners are ok with this trade off.
FWIW it wasn't always like this. I have a lot of points on SO mostly acquired about 5 years ago. Back then SO was a much friendlier, and much more interesting place to participate in. I haven't actively participated in about 3 years or so.
CaptSpify 51 days ago [-]
I've always thought this described it best: SO is a great place to find answers to your questions, but SO is a terrible place to ask questions.
Let's be honest, reading the docs should be everyone's first step before posting a question. So many questions follow the template of "I want to know how to do this but I don't want to put in any effort." The volume of those kinds of questions are what drove me away - not the moderation.
I am still pretty highly ranked on SO (top 1%), but I haven't been active for nearly two years now.
You have just nailed the problem with their gamification.
It takes effort - and thus time - to write a good answer. Since everyone is trying to score the easy wins, you get a flood of mediocre boilerplate answers. In the time it takes you to write a quality answer, the question has been answered multiple times. Likely one of these boilerplates has even been accepted by OP.
For a company that obviously considers the long game over immediate and cheap gains, they haven't managed to impart these values to their userbase.
Incidentally that was also my gripe about SO job ads two years ago. (Iow. when I considered posting something.) At the time their candidate search only allowed to search by answer scores. I had pretty simple needs: What if I'm not looking for developers who can recite trivia? What if I want to seek out the thoughtful ones who actually know how to ask good questions?
Their answer at the time: sorry, we don't have that.
It shouldn't even be that hard: eliminate the insane outliers and jackpots, find the people with matching skill sets who consistently ask decently scored questions.
Python standard docs are not great, trying to remember how to use capturing groups on regexes for example (which I use maybe once or twice a year), it takes wading through three or four screens worth of text to get what I want. The Stack Overflow answer is likely to be far more concise, and will give me the example I am needing near the top of the page.
Why read the docs when you can google for the exact single question you have and be looking at the answer a second later?
Especially on technologies you are diving into just to quickly do something, and that you don't have time to learn in any depth.
Unlike most manuals, it's a fairly short and incredibly well written document. Anyone who reads and follows most of it will be a very valuable user to the community. In fact, following it's process might lead you to figuring out your own questions before you submit sometimes, at least that's how it's worked for me. Sure, it requires effort, but it makes for a better experience all around.
[Many questions that I see get downvoted are authors that make no attempt to follow the guidelines, or have asked a question easily answerable in the standards docs for that language or library. Still, I often answer these personally to provide a bit of hand-holding because what's obvious to someone who's been working with a language for 5 years might not be to someone who's been with it for 1. It's hard to draw a line around obviousness. In any case, if you follow the guidelines you're likely to receive help.]