Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>I know it’s frustrating for you, but asking a question _isn’t about you_.

Well, if StackOveflow/StackExchange is still following Jeff Atwood's philosophy, asking a question isn't necessarily about the questioner either. The question & the answer is for the community more than questioner.[0]

Understandably, most question askers see Stack Overflow as a "Siri/Alexa" type of resource to ask a question. E.g. If I ask Siri voice AI, "where's the nearest Starbucks?", she doesn't talk back about any X/Y problem such as "Is your actual problem that you're not getting enough sleep and therefore you're really asking how to cure insomnia instead of a caffeine fix?" No, Siri just responds with the address of the closest Starbucks. Why can't Stack Overflow be just like that?!?

The above "Siri" type perspective is a huge misunderstanding because the messaging from founders Atwood/Spolsky about Stack Overflow's editorial purpose is very nuanced and difficult to grasp. It's been 11 years since 2008 and that "wiki" intention is still drowned out by the frustrated by users who simply want any of their questions answered: they don't care if it's a duplicate; they don't want pushback on X/Y; they don't want their question downvoted/closed/deleted.

In contrast, the moderators (a.k.a. the high rep fellow users) of Stack Overflow are definitely not in the mode of mimicking Siri/Alexa. They're humans and they definitely will "talk back" to you and ask, "what exactly are you trying to accomplish?" Heck, the famous blog by Microsoft's Raymond Chen (The Old New Thing) is basically a collection of essays about various "X/Y Problem" submitted by customers.

(To downvoters... I don't mind the downvotes but please help with quality of this discussion: If there's a public statement from Stack Overflow explaining its true intended purpose that contradicts my cite, please reply with a reference to it for the benefit of readers of this thread.)

[0] https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376?r...

> The question & the answer is for the community more than questioner.

Part of the confusion might be that they're very unclear about this point. For example, on the front page right now the following is prominently displayed:

> Stack Overflow is an open community for anyone that codes. We help you get answers to your toughest coding questions, share knowledge with your coworkers in private, and find your next dream job.

Emphasis mine. Clearly that is something very different from building a "Q&A wiki" which you allude to.

I guess the impedance mismatch comes from the fact that the route they chose to get to their "Q&A wiki" goal was to curate questions from individuals, rather than to for example extract questions and answers from a more regular help forum.

So individuals go on SO and think the site is about helping them, and then get confused about what happens next.

>, on the front page right now [...] "We help you get answers to your toughest coding questions, " -- Clearly that is something very different from building a "Q&A wiki" which you allude to.

That text blurb on the landing page is relatively new. It may not accurately reflect Stack Overflow's long-standing strict editorial focus. The new SO landing page appeared less than 4 months ago around June 27, 2019.[1][2]

In contrast, the following "wikipedia" intention is from the SO launch 11 years ago back in September 15, 2008: "Stack Overflow is a _collaboratively edited_ question and answer site for programmers"[0]

So from September 2008 to June of 2019, it has been ~11 years of endless confusion from users because Atwood/Spolsky's intended editorial purpose of Stack Overflow has been poorly explained -- and I would also contend that it's non-intuitive for most users and hard to understand. E.g. The following is too nuanced to explain to drive-by casual SO users: I'm not just asking _my_ particular question to get _my_ particular answer but actually seeding _a_ question that's also also a _helpful_ contribution to the _community_ to build a repository quality answers to questions.

>I guess the impedance mismatch [...] So individuals go on SO and think the site is about helping them, and then get confused about what happens next.

Yes, I totally agree why the confusion happens and why the same complaints about SO have been repeated for over a decade. It's because SO's editorial purpose is basically invisible and only manifested in the powers given to moderators[3] to downvote/close and for the tradition of fellow users pushing back with X/Y dissection instead of simply answering the question.

Does the June 2019 landing page mean that SO has changed and they want to be more of "Siri/Alexa" type of resource? I'm not an employee and I don't know.

[0] 2008-09-15 launch: http://web.archive.org/web/20080915103343/http://stackoverfl...

[1] 2019-06-26 old: http://web.archive.org/web/20190626143412/https://stackoverf...

[2] 2019-06-27 new: http://web.archive.org/web/20190627173410/https://stackoverf...

[3] footnote about "moderator" powers : a Stack Overflow user only needs 15 points to flag a post as "duplicate". And voting to "close" only requires 250 points.

Those thresholds are so low that SO is basically asking non-hardcore users to also exercise moderation powers. In other words, the "moderators" are not an elite cabal; they're your fellow users voting to flag questions as "duplicate". Why are my peers flagging questions as duplicate?!? I don't know. As the old saying goes, "maybe we've met the enemy and the enemy is us."

List of reputation scores required for various "moderation" privileges:

https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges

https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

correction to above: close vote is 3000 points not 250.

Fair points. They did indeed bury it before though. Yes "collaboratively edited" is there, but what you saw front and center were the questions and answers. And as you say, the nuances of what "collaboratively edited" means can quickly get lost, especially for non-native speakers.

Maybe a meta-moderation system like Slashdot had could have helped. In the end though I think their implementation was ultimately flawed. They created a great platform for asking questions, but that wasn't what they wanted to create.

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