Ask HN: Stackoverflow changed a lot, any alternatives? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Stackoverflow changed a lot, any alternatives?

13 pointsNicoJuicy7 comments

It has been a long time since i used stackoverflow / serverfault for a question, it used to be great.

My last 2 questions cost me reputation points (disincentives) and got unanswered ( i even deleted a question and went googling / experimenting for it the next 5 hours, i also spend a heck of a time before asking on Stackoverflow...).

None the less, is there any alternative for stackoverflow? There has been so much rules there i didn't notice the last year (or something), that it doesn't feel like a community anymore. More like editing a page on Wikipedia, that doesn't get accepted.

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I don't know of an alternative but I'll add a gripe. Many answerers like to not answer questions but instead tell the askers to do something a completely different way. That's great, if you're a beginner. But advanced usage does require doing unusual and difficult things that aren't textbook usage of a language/toolkit.

One helpful source for me has been bug/issue report forums but it's not really a substitute. Also GrepCode.com is helpful for reading the source of various libraries (at least Java).

Do you have links to the questions you've had rejected? Or examples of what you're talking about that we could look at?

I stopped by stack overflow a few days ago and was discouraged from answering anything for the opposite reason: so many questions just seemed like non-programmers trying to outsource their job to stack overflow.

Personally, I've been answering very technically detailed questions in terms of micro-blogs on Quora.

However, on S.O., sometimes when the question is not too obvious or asking an exact thing the Admin tend to mark it as vague and get downvoted.

Try out the Subreddits for the exact questions or IRC channels.

I've used subbreddits for Rails and it's IRC, there are many nice people whom at least direct you to read something that has the answer.

I agree with you that sometimes StackOverflow is just a sausage fest of sad sacks whom never see the sun-light and have 20K upvotes (Which makes me rage quit every time I get downvote from them).

But still they might be able to answer your questions.

I still use it to find answers, but refrain from posting (questions or answers) there any longer. Seems like a lot of downvoting over there for no reason. Negative comments, snide remarks, etc... I've even had answers downvoted for simple typos in my answer code, etc... Seems like there are several top answerers over there that have a know-it-all complex and get upset whenever anyone else tries to answer. Maybe it's only that way in the python/requests/beautiful soup areas where I mainly try to help.

I haven't contributed to SO in any way since they disabled anonymous questions.

I do like that their moderators might close a question as open-ended/opinionated/whatever but not delete the genuine attempts to answer the question

I can't stand the wankers who answer the question with another question: "Why are you doing it this way?" (Didn't your mothers tell you this was rude?!) It may be a valid question, but when they outnumber quality attempts to directly answer the question my blood boils. ;-)

My experience has been nothing but useful. When I ask a bad question, instead of crying about it, I figure out how to ask a better one. The community on stackoverflow helps me do this. On more than one occassion, it has saved my bacon when I've found myself in the deep end of the pool.

i can vouch, 8/10 questions i asked were blocked/deleted in same day in last month

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