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Comment by paulstovell | Hacker News Reader

That’s the point though: when StackOverflow was born, people used forums to discuss such things. And forums had this annoying property of you having to scroll past a dozen opinions, off topic dicussion, and other rubbish to find the answer.

The whole philosophy of StackOverflow was that it wasn’t about sharing opinions, discussions, etc. - it was about questions that have an answer.

Jon’s post points out this difference: that some askers want to ask a question, but haven’t taken the time to understand what makes StackOverflow different to the discussion forums of old.

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exactly. I think it gets frustrating for people because the people who are there are the ones you'd probably like to have a more subjective conversation about design with.

But they're there because you can't. I remember the days of Usenet and the various news groups for help. You help a person with a question and then go on to read something else... and there's a followup question a few minutes later. And another. And another.

The people answering questions have time boxed their involvement. Here's 15 minutes, here's an answer and move on.

I've had discussions on slack that span days. But that's ok... because its people I know and trust to be mindful of my time and theirs. They ask interesting questions that make me think.

To open up the spigot to everyone asking those questions (and while they are the ones I'd be most interested in having a discussion with), would make it impossible for me to ask or find anything in the future.

And as an expert in my domain, I'd be rather annoyed at getting dozens (or I suspect hundreds Jon's case) questions asking my opinion each day. I don't have time for them. I've chosen to spend time to answer this question and have a reasonable work / life / social-site balance.

So where does one find discussion forums where those kinds of questions are welcome? Did StackOverflow kill them off?

A lot of people don't seem to be aware that the Stack Exchange network consists of lots of different sites. StackOverflow is just the biggest one, but there are sites for all sorts of discussion: https://stackexchange.com/sites

Those sites all work exactly the same as StackOverflow and you can login with a single account. Just the rules regarding content are different. See for example https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/

There is also the Area 51 site for proposals for new sites: https://area51.stackexchange.com/

Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, mailing lists, google hangouts, irc, slack or discord channels.

They're still around. They're smaller... and by being smaller they are more useful.

What Stack Overflow killed off was Experts Exchange and a smattering of forums. Some are still around, but they're not trying to be searchable. Reddit's /r/javahelp or Code Ranch - every time there's a question its posted as a new question. Few people go back to find old posts there, but then that's the way the community works... and it works because it is so much smaller than Stack Overflow.

Pretty much, or at least shrinked them a lot. If you make a initially better experience for 75% of the content, few communities manage to survive while only dealing with 25%. (ratio choosen at random, I have no idea what it looks like in practice)

IRC channels and Slacks have taken some of it, with all the downsides that comes with that.

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