What happened to StackOverflow.com? It sucks now.

[GodlessAstronomer]

When StackOverflow.com first started I was really excited about it. Every time I asked a question it was answered within an hour. When I answered other peoples' questions I was rewarded with upvotes and comments.

I stopped using SO for a while except when I had some really esoteric questions, so wasn't surprised when they weren't answered. Recently I started using the site again, both for questions and answers. It sucks. Like really, really sucks. I have asked around 10 questions in the past few weeks and almost none have been answered satisfactorily. I have answered probably 15 questions and in total have received maybe 5 upvotes, even though my answers were correct and useful. People no longer bother to accept answers or upvote good content, they just read what they need and move along.

Is StackOverflow dying, or am I just reading/asking the wrong kinds of questions?

 

[Woosta]

Most of my questions get answered unless they're somewhat complex, but I will say that months ago people were more reluctant to answer. I think the top answerers are getting a bit tired of answering redundant-ass questions all over again and just pick and choose, at least that's what I do nowadays.

 

[GeekDrew]

IMO, the entire StackExchange network has the potential to crumble. It's a wonderful idea, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots out there, which seems to drive away the people that are willing to help those that deserve help.

 

[Markbnj]

IMO, the entire StackExchange network has the potential to crumble. It's a wonderful idea, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots out there, which seems to drive away the people that are willing to help those that deserve help.

I've run into this same thing on other forums, like MSDN, where I used to be active. There are so many people posting drivel, who don't make the effort to do even the most cursory research, or to search for the 500 previous posted answers, or who just want someone to paste some code they can copy into their projects. I ended up feeling like I was just enabling a bunch of lazy idiots who shouldn't even be in the business.

This forum is the only place I still participate in, mostly because it's the last place that has retained some of the old programming forum feel for me.

 

[GeekDrew]

This forum is the only place I still participate in, mostly because it's the last place that has retained some of the old programming forum feel for me.

I'm a sysadmin, rather than a programmer, but same situation. I browse ServerFault on a daily basis. It has its days... sometimes the questions are great, sometimes they're complete crap.

 

[beginner99]

The issue IMHO is once a site/forum gets too big, searching it becomes a matter of luck because you get so many hits for your search but your specific question is just a bit different and after reading irrelevant answers for half an hour well you will ask anyway so next time you don't even do a search on the site.
I use google before asking questions. (in general, not specific to stackoverflow but found quite a few answers there using google).

 

[eLiu]

I don't think I've ever posted a question on stackoverflow. But it's one of the first places I start searching when I do have a question. Even if someone hasn't asked the exact same question before, I can usually get enough similar hints to piece together the answer.

Then I can ask a less lazy sounding question like "I think the way to do ____ is _____. Is that right?" elsewhere (i.e., here). Lots of helpful people on here... my posts usually get answers from folks like degibson, schmide, cogman, etc.

But I guess my point is that I think stackoverflow has a wealth of useful information, even if the community isn't what it used to be.

 

[Monster_Munch]

I have to put a bounty on my questions to get any sort of answer, and even then it takes several days. When it first started you would get loads of answers in a few minutes.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I hate to dredge up an "old" thread (especially one I created) but lately I have become incredibly frustrated with StackOverflow. If you answer a really basic question you get a heap of rep because so many people already know the answer that it becomes an echo chamber. Yet no one ever bothers to answer anything even somewhat difficult because there's maybe 10 points in it for them. I am working a lot with WCF RIA services lately and I can never seem to get an answer to any of my question on SO.

My questions are well-considered, detailed and written in decent English. I used diagrams, code and external links wherever useful. Yet almost none of my recent questions are getting answers. It's so frustrating! Can anyone help me to formulate my questions a little better? I remember Jeff Atwood used to go on about how if your questions weren't being answered it's because they're bad questions, but I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Here is a sample of my recent SO questions, all with zero answers.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...n-interrupts-caliburn-micro-coroutine-executi
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...m-being-copied-to-the-client-proxy-in-wcf-ria
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...ing-filenotfound-exceptions-during-unit-tests
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...ntity-framework-and-asp-net-membership-tables
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-entitys-collection-a-set-in-entity-framework
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4917009/wcf-ria-service-agent-pattern-with-complex-queries
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...ion-but-continue-to-send-it-up-the-visual-tre
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4341431/how-could-i-animate-one-stack-panel-item-at-a-time

My topics aren't especially complex or difficult, so I really don't get it.

 

[Net]

go back and compare your first questions with the questions your asking now and see if the level of complexity is harder to answer.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I hate to dredge up an "old" thread (especially one I created) but lately I have become incredibly frustrated with StackOverflow. If you answer a really basic question you get a heap of rep because so many people already know the answer that it becomes an echo chamber. Yet no one ever bothers to answer anything even somewhat difficult because there's maybe 10 points in it for them. I am working a lot with WCF RIA services lately and I can never seem to get an answer to any of my question on SO.

My questions are well-considered, detailed and written in decent English. I used diagrams, code and external links wherever useful. Yet almost none of my recent questions are getting answers. It's so frustrating! Can anyone help me to formulate my questions a little better? I remember Jeff Atwood used to go on about how if your questions weren't being answered it's because they're bad questions, but I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I went and gave you answers on a couple there, but I don't know how much it'll help. Most of your questions are well-worded, but dealing with a specific technology or a very specific issue such that I have no experience or no response. You'll have to wait for someone with some specific experience to come across your questions. If you don't a response on SO then it would be good to seek out a place where people with that specific experience congregate.

I've never thought SO's model was very good. It was popular in the early days because of its freshness, and the reputation orgy that happened in trivial questions. I spent lots of hours perusing the "Unanswered" questions, trying to help people that weren't getting help. My reputation is still at 2k because I didn't seek out the "Active" category and hang out where lots of people were voting each other up just to get the rep. It was like a popularity contest or something. It was frustrating and ultimately drove me away so I quit hanging out there answering questions. I do go back sometimes just to peruse and try to answer questions, but now I mostly only go there when I have a google search that takes me there.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Thanks LokutusofBorg, I left a couple of comments for you if you're interested.

The reputation system seemed to be what would make SO so useful in the early days. In fact I think it is what made SO so popular, but I also think it makes the site significantly less useful.

The reason is that often the more obscure a question is, the more difficult it is to answer and also the more important it is to find an answer. But because it's so obscure, even if someone with the knowledge (or willing to research the knowledge) to answer it finds it, then the potential reward for them is maybe an accepted answer and one or two upvotes.

On the other hand, if I constantly F5 the latest questions and quickly answer the easiest ones then a whole bunch of people will jump into the question thinking they'll answer it, they'll see my answer and they'll upvote it. The result is 5+ upvotes for answering a basic, trivial, unimportant question.

The upshot of all of this is that the reward for answering questions is often inversely proportional to the importance/urgency of a question. Those 5+ upvote questions could have been answered with 5 minutes of Googling or 10 minutes in a textbook. The obscure questions are begging for someone with specialized knowledge.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Exactly. That's why it sucks, IMO. It works cause the only other thing out there is Experts Exchange, or forums that most search bots don't penetrate well if at all.