chmullig.com » stackoverflow http://chmullig.com Chris Mulligan's blog on life, computers, burritos, school Tue, 21 Apr 2015 15:41:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 The only mark of a good StackExchange question http://chmullig.com/2013/05/the-only-mark-of-a-good-stackexchange-question/ http://chmullig.com/2013/05/the-only-mark-of-a-good-stackexchange-question/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 15:02:30 +0000 http://chmullig.com/?p=523 How do I know a StackExchange Q&A is worth reading? It’s been closed.

StackExchange, particularly the incredibly popular stack overflow, is an incredibly resource. However it’s rapidly being ruined by overly zealous moderators who believe themselves to be the arbiters of what goes where. Almost every good answer that I find on stackexchange (that’s not a very small subset of issues with specific programming languages), is marked as closed. The entire StackExchange network is devolving into a ridiculous set of arbitrary restrictions no user can possibly understand. Programmers.SE was intended to be the more general extension of StackOverflow, but now it seems very narrowly defined and arbitrary, such that it has nothing to do with programmers and is, instead, about Computer Science algorithm design? Oh, but also some business development issues. But definitely NOT career issues. And, obviously, definitely not technology issues.

It’s come to the point where I consider posting on a stackexchange site, but assume my question will be closed and simply decide not to ask it instead. How are these overly zealous, and generally rude and dismissive, moderators helping the world?

]]> http://chmullig.com/2013/05/the-only-mark-of-a-good-stackexchange-question/feed/ 0 Stackoverflow overflow http://chmullig.com/2011/02/stackoverflow-overflow/ http://chmullig.com/2011/02/stackoverflow-overflow/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 01:36:11 +0000 http://chmullig.com/?p=268 Recently I’ve gotten a bit obsessed with stackoverflow.com. It’s a programming Q&A site. You can ask questions, you can answer and comment on them. However they have a sick twist – people vote on everything. They vote on your questions, answers, comments. You earn reputation points when your content is voted up, and you lose points when it’s voted down. You also earn badges, like gaming achievements.

They’ve recently started a whole bunch of related sites under the stackexchange brand. Same model and software, but with different subjects. So far there are already more than I care to count with only very spurious differentiation, but a few highlights include gaming, cooking, english, programming (as a profession), power users, sysadmin, linux, ubuntu, and a lot more.

Here’s my badge of honor. Right now I have 674 rep and 10 badges on Stackoverflow, and 261/4 on gaming (plus ~100 on a bunch of the other sites, just for signing up). That’s my profile image, which should update automatically!

Stack Overflow profile for chmullig at Stack Overflow, Q&A for professional and enthusiast programmers

It’s amazing how satisfying and competitive the Q&A system ends up. I find myself less and less interested in any other medium for asking or answering questions like the kind on Stackoverflow. It’s slow and there’s no rep, what’s the point?

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