The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

People always talk about how SO is so terrible, and yet it's still the best resource by a mile. People have just forgotten that the lack of that carefully curated environment created the complete mess that was all the forums we used to have before. Sure, it's not ideal - SO could do better in terms of helping people understand the site's goals and enforcing the rules in a less hostile way, but they are working on that (a lot…

So, years ago I "used" Stack Overflow a lot. Now, rarely, if by "use" you mean "ask and answer questions". But, I find answers to my questions on it every day, and it is still far superior to other sources. I've noticed a pattern in my attitude towards SO: when I ready an article about it on Hacker News, I get mad. When I'm actually on it, I get detailed, multiple answers to my question, written before I ever got…

This article doesn't even touch the worst problem with SO. Code rot. Answers are typically out of date and no longer good practice. Some claim that the ability to edit answers fixes this, but all it does is subvert the accept/vote functions. You end up with strange "Ship of Theseus" answers where what is written has nothing to do with what was so highly voted, or what solved the original problem. Where SO goes wrong is that they have tried…

IMO, it's more elitists than trolls. I use SO more like a complement to Google rather than a Q/A platform because it's hard to break into the community as a low-karma newbie. It's very discouraging when you ask for help nicely, provide context to your question, and try to contribute back only to see your question immediately closed or the only replies you get are unhelpful or self-serving. Why even bother to put in the effort of asking a question…