Quora and Stack Overflow: two very different experiences | Hacker News Reader

Quora and Stack Overflow: two very different experiences

jeremiahlee.tumblr.com

22 pointstommorris27 comments

The overall ethos of rigidity at stackoverflow has gotten out of control.

On the one hand if I want to make a one character edit because some code snippet is broken in a non obvious way that will frustrate the next hundred people, I am told to add six. If I add six, say a comment on the edited code, I am very very likely to be rolled back. Good luck making diligence work for you in that scenario.

On the other hand, if I ask a question about a specific, mildly arcane manipulation of a data structure in python and I ask it in ordinary language that will probably make for good googling... But the answer, not the question already exists, I get voted to close. I.e., why didn't I already know the answer so I would know the correct terms to google when I googled my question five ways before asking?

Overall, it has become a more and more frustrating experience to participate in over last few years. Still a valuable thing to have exist, but I do not relish the moment when it occurs to me that an SO question might be the most expedient solution.

I'm glad I am not alone in this experience. I think because the place has become so hostile apart from the existing set of questions, I just stop participating. I end up doing what I always do on Quora, read the answer, and get the hell out. whereas 4 years ago, I looked forward to coming back because it was a great site back then.

just leave. i did, a few months back, and i have more free time and less stress. really; it's not worth the aggro.

Can't live with it, can't live without it.

I hope that something better comes along.

Having a question closed as a duplicate isn't something that should be taken personally.

You're not expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the StackOverflow answers. But some people do. And the goal of SO is not just to answer your question but to provide a useful resource for others. Having multiple questions that differ slightly and have the same answer provides a very high signal to noise ratio, so your question was closed.

If your question wasn't actually a duplicate, or provided significant differentiation from the one that it (supposedly) duplicated then it does sound like your question should have stuck around.

But otherwise, this is the right kind of housekeeping that keeps the site from turning into Yahoo Answers. It's really a win-win: you got your question answered and the corpus of the site did not grow.

The questions were pretty radically different. The other question just happened to contain the answer to mine. So mine provides a valuable link for people asking the question I was asking while needing the answer to that other previously ungoogleable-by-the-terms-of-my-question question.

Basically, if you weren't thinking of my question in terms of "recursion" you could not find the existing answer.

The new answers also provided specific-to-my-question details.

It's not about personal. To me it's about making the site more searchable, navigable and complete.

Edit: Reply to child post: I also skew towards answering (about 4 to 1). But on the rare occasion when I can't find an answer and ask a question, I always get this treatment. The presumption is always against the asker. And this has made me less likely to answer questions (this being resentment).

Understandable. I've seen a lot of complaints about SO lately (and indeed they've changed some things in an effort to address some of these issues), but I haven't seen much of this first hand.

However I tend to be on the answering side of questions rather than the asking side. I appreciate your further explanation as I try not to propagate these sorts of complaints.

I guess I don't see the problem. You got your answer from the "duplicate", right? And marking as duplicate gives google the search terms without creating duplicate answers. It sounds like this was exactly the outcome that's beneficial to everyone.

Whenever I stumble across a Quora question, the website hides everything with a subscription overlay. Even after getting rid of it, I'm only shown the first answer. After some time, my mind has associated Quora with “I don't want to be there”. Stack Overflow (SO) gained a lot of popularity by having open access; that's basically the Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique.

On the other hand, I have witnessed that up-only websites usually have a better content (e.g. HN) than up-or-down websites (e.g. Reddit). This is easily understood because people will tend to use the down vote against things they do not agree (politics, to obvious of a question, etc) with instead of badly-shapped posts.

I think the way SO goes is pretty good despite the known flaws, and I would not be competent enough to propose solutions for these.

Edit: removed incorrect expression "out of random"

What is out of random? I've never heard of it and unfortunately it has a very ungooglable name.

It's not a name, just me badly translating "au hasard", which roughly means that I'm pretending to have picked HN at random while it's the very website where I'm posting. I'm removing it from my post for clarity. I don't know where this came from.

HN is not up-only for anyone over 500 (?) karma.

The downvote button should be used early and often.

Downvotes are not used enough on HN. Upvotes are used in a weird way.

Yes, I did not consider that. But I think the fact that recent account can only upvote is a good thing for the quality of comments. I agree that downvotes can be meaningful, but they are often used to vote against an opinion, which is not good for a conversation.

I noticed this about Quora too. I land at Quora through google only by chance. As soon as I see that signin box, I leave. It's unfortunate because it would be a great site if it didn't try to be so much like facebook of questions.

The downvote observation is a very good one. Downvoting is destructive in general and unpleasant for the content writer.

To play devils advocate for a bit: Perhaps it was a "basic" question, but it's also pretty terse. More importantly, you have not given me any reason why I should want to help you.

You don't provide any information about what you are trying to do, what problem you are trying to solve, attempts that you have made to solve your own problem. You tell me no story, nor prove that you are a "peer" -- someone who has put the same effort into that craft as a potential person who may have the answer will have.

Ultimately you haven't answered the "What have you tried?" question. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/

You are asking someone to help you; a little more humility couldn't hurt. I don't get paid to help you solve your problem -- other than worthless internet points -- so just give me a reason to want to help you solve your problem. I want to help, but not if you are going to be a jerk.

Since I've been using native Javascript, StackOverflow has become a pointless visit for this very reason.

The comment or answer to any Javascript question seems to be essentially 'use jQuery' (and sometimes just that alone).

This is never the answer that I am looking for, so I always look elsewhere.

I hate this so much too. StackOverflow needs a "no jquery" filter.

Great experiment! As have been stated time and time again the stack* sites have a set of rules.

This post touches into why the rules are enforced in what I think is a less than stellar way.

Now if I could get myself to use quora again after them burning all goodwill and trust a while ago.

All rules cost you. All of them. Even the ones you need.

Stack Overflow appears to be starting to suffer from Wikipedia editor syndrome. All is well until a few people suddenly realise they have a bit of power and instead of using it for good, decide to just yield it just because they can, putting more effort into fiercely enforcing minor rules to push their own agenda, rather than providing useful content. Yes rules are important, but some battles are more important than others.

The point is that these people think that they are doing something good. However, they do not realize that they are in a context where contribution is done on voluntary participation and that they are making contributors flee. They still think as if their website was some kind of closed circle where people want to belong.

Quora is more focused towards open questions, I don't think a technical specific question is common there.

Also, keeping things behind a curtain is very debatable.

It is unfortunate that janitorial tasks are being rewarded disproportionately in SO, looks like they're headed the Wikipedia way of a closed editorial group.

I was answering very specific technical questions on Quora for awhile, so it's actually okay for that purpose.

I stopped answering questions because the questions never got beyond stuff that you should be able to google in five minutes.

"I stopped answering questions because the questions never got beyond stuff that you should be able to google in five minutes."

Yes, there's that as well.

How much reputation do you get for janitorial work on SO? I was under the impression that it wasn't much, especially compared to actual answers.

I tend to agree that the moderation has got a bit vigorous.

I've been using stackoverflow for over 4 years. I have asked hundreds of questions. Over those years, it has become virtually impossible to ask questions because it "does not fit the guidelines".

I've grown so frustrated by the negative experience, I have visited that site less and less and my engagement has fallen off.

I've complained about this issue for years ago on meta.stackexchange, that new users will experience negativity from the cynical comments if not the discouragement from the censorship (downvoting and closing the question) regarding the context of the question being asked, and that the mods are taking the questions literally as it is written without the human compassion of trying to understand. As if on cue, the question was downvoted to damnation and I found myself fighting a flame war with angry set of engineers and was eventually blocked from adding to the discussion as if some verdict has been drawn. It didn't help that lower reputation members agreed with what I was saying, because your reputation on SO is measured by how many accepted questions you can show to your potential employer (btw many employers seem to dislike finding leads on careers.stackoverflow.com for some reasons).

the chat at stackoverflow is even worse. I don't know if it's the "brogrammers" slacking off at work or just university kids trolling, lot of the starred comments in the chat are vulgar. Even the high reputation members seem no different at times.

Honestly, I think that stackoverflow has shot itself in it's own foot. It's feeling less like a community and more like a system of cold engineers ready to rip a newcomer's question apart or how well they can emulate a computer.

I don't like Quora because I dislike the fact that you have to be logged in to view more of the answer or other stuff.

I've sought refuge in Ask HN because so far, no "but this is not efficient obviously OP doesn't know what he's doing" type of comments often seen on stackoverflow, stackexchange sites.

Everytime I ask a question on stackoverflow I feel like I'm walking across a minefield and I've been a member for over 4 years.

As someone who helps recruit developers for my company and has input on hiring decisions, I would find a high SO rank (say 10k plus) to be a cause for skepticism at this point. Certainly not a disqualifier, but not at all a positive mark as I'm sure the SO gamers imagine it to be.

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