Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

I still visit Stack Overflow links when Google search turns them up, and still occasionally answer questions that I notice while visiting, but I don't go there just to answer questions anymore.

The quality of questions is abysmal and getting worse at an exponential rate. It used to be a site where experienced developers ask focused, well-written questions, after doing some work to solve the problems on their own. Sure, there have always been crappy questions, but as recently as three years ago, the bulk of the questions on the front page were decent.

A huge portion of questions now are homework assignments where the student just wants a canned answer and hasn't made an attempt to solve the problem; are written by people with such a poor grasp of English that they're worthless; endless repeats because no one has searched for existing answers; etc.

I also used to moderate on a daily basis. The flood of low-quality content wore me out, but what really ended my moderation was constantly being challenged by the fake entries they shove at you to "make sure you're paying attention" while moderating. The bot suspended me from moderating a few times because, when presented with posts that required moderator attention, I didn't pick the exact category it thought needed fixing. I'm doing free labor for you and you're going to be a dick about it? No thanks. It's no wonder the quality has gone to shit.

At one point I was "top 1%" in a number of topics, moderated, voted in elections, etc. Now I barely use the site. As much as I dislike Reddit, I increasingly click on Reddit links when I'm looking for answers.

Stack Overflow is still a valuable resource but it's all downhill from here.

This is such a classic HN moment.

The post is about SO, the top comment is complaining that the moderation is too strict and draconian, and the second comment is this one complaining that the moderation isn't enough.

So is always walking a tightrope. Moderation of so much content and trying to make sure only the good stuff sticks is hard, and it burns people out having to deal with the same annoying low-effort things all the time, which leads to them being harsh when people make genuine errors.

>The post is about SO, the top comment is complaining that the moderation is too strict and draconian, and the second comment is this one complaining that the moderation isn't enough.

They're both right. SO is moderating on the wrong things.

Yeah, there's more to both comments. GP mentions being mistreated as a moderator while the other top comment mentions the moderation culture and focus of moderation being on the wrong things, e.g. trying to close "duplicates". They're not really incompatible perspectives.

Yes, SO is very toxic towards contributors AND moderators.

My personal philosophy is that all questions should follow a very specific format:

1. I am attempting to solve problem X

2. I took steps A, B, C

3. I expected result Y

4. I instead encountered result Z

I'm not familiar enough with Stack Overflow to know whether this is already a feature, but I'd love to see an enforced question format like the above, or something in the ballpark. Like a multi-input form that doesn't allow you to submit unless you fill in each field.

Do you have to be attempting to solve a problem in order to have a question worthy of asking?

And if I'm attempting to solve a different problem, but have to ask the same question, will answers tailored to the problem that you're solving be helpful to me? If not, can I ask the same question without it being closed as a duplicate?

Breaking from that format should require reputation — something small like 100 rep so that newbies are forced to use it

> all questions should follow a very specific format

The format is good enough, but I really dislike the idea of enforcing it for every question. As a top comment suggested, some of the most interesting questions in SO are sort of open-ended. Most of my questions and answers there (~3.5k reputation) violate your format.

Sure, but those are the exceptions. They are fine (or they should be), after all there's enough space for both.

OP is complaining (not without merit) about the typical X Y questions, that are hard to answer, because there's a very specific question, but very little actual context that would help creative solutions. This leads to boring brute-force hackish answers. At best.

1. I attempted to solve problem X

2. I found out that algorithm Y solves X

3. I expected to find an implementation of Y in langauge Z on stackoverflow

4. I encountered no usefull implementations and posted my implementation instead

Moderator burnout is a huge problem in all sorts of places. I saw this happen on Wikipedia. It's just plain hard work, and the volume and pace of it means it's easy to get the sense that you are all that's preventing the fall of Western civilization. This in turn leads to bad contributor experiences, alienating people who might in other circumstances end up moderating.

I really wonder how fixable this is. From your SO experience, do you think it's inherent to the model? E.g., does the ratio between types of the work people are willing to do mean moderators will always be outgunned? Or are there perhaps technical or social solutions that you think would have fixed it?

There is no "fix", IMHO - just as in physical societies, maintaining infrastructure takes a lot of boring work that never ends as long as people still use it.

That said... There were and are a lot of things that could make it less frustrating. Once again, we can look at physical societies: if 99% of people litter and .001% of people sweep up after them, the latter are gonna have a rough time. If we can increase the size of the latter group that'll help somewhat - but so will reducing the size of the former, and if there's less of a crushing workload then increasing the number of workers may get easier too.

Stack Overflow is entirely moderated by volunteers, and their numbers haven't exactly scaled with the volume of casual users. I find it interesting to look at how moderation changes around major holidays - especially Christmas and New Years Day: suddenly there is much less work to do, and more of it gets done - but not only done, done well! Folks are happier, more relaxed, more... Friendly and helpful.

For years, Stack Overflow's management has looked at discussions like this one and said to themselves, "those damned volunteers are making us look bad, we've gotta make their work harder so they stop screwing this up". And... It has had precisely the opposite effect: more litter, fewer sweepers == increasingly hostile interactions with those who remain to push the brooms.

I strongly suspect a campaign to encourage a bit more... Civic pride... "This site belongs to all of us, pick up after yourself", etc. Might've done more good.

Agreed on Reddit posts. They're a lot less formal and depending on the community and activity can be super helpful. Especially with followup questions.

Reddit picks up the slack of SO for those who want to discuss issues and better understanding. Still though, the flood of bad questions happens on Reddit too.

In the last couple of years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of search queries I've made ending in "reddit". Not only is it great for answering questions, but it's probably the best place on the internet for getting a relatively less biased opinion on products or services (at least compared to product reviews on websites). I've used it to buy electronics, choose ISPs, and find the parts of town I'd be interested in moving into.

My work blocks Reddit, but not SO.

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