"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site"
This is sad.
We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.
Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.
I agree with many of your points. Some of the StackExchange sites have degenerated into being virtually unusable unless you align yourself with the small group of people who viciously down-vote and close otherwise useful and relevant questions. The idea is/was great, but in some corners it seems to be starting to derail.
Yes, you have to agree with the groupthink or you are basically an outcast. That said, I think it is still very useful.
I mean on some level I think it's sort of stupid. The original idea always centered around SO being a blog for programmers that don't really blog; at least that was what was constantly talked about. However, any question or answer that contains any semblance of personality is struck down or edited to an extreme. It's really anal retention run amok. But it's still useful. :)
> The original idea always centered around SO being a blog for programmers that don't really blog; at least that was what was constantly talked about.
I used to listen to the early podcasts and I never got this impression. As far as I can tell SO has always been run much the same way - aimed at getting the top google hit for direct questions like "how do I make my button transparent." For the most part they are succeeding. Questions like "list of freely available programming books" have always been outliers.
Now that they are not allowed at all, maybe the old ones should be hidden instead of being shown as "locked."
StackExchange is an SEO company, not your blog hosting company. Just because you find a topic interesting does not mean it is their job to host your discussion/poll/list-of-lists etc. for it.
No, go back and listen. The blog thing was always there. It was a part of Atwoods general opinion that people are better off if they are totally in the public.
Yes I often find myself wishing that, at the user level at least, USENET was still all pervasive. However, that is probably remembering the past a little more fondly that I should. Joel even talks a little about the comparison here [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-...].
I agree with you. However, this is not like something that has "failed" in the sense that this sort of mindset was always prevalent from the Beta of SO. This is just Jeff Atwood's philosophy plain and simple. I don't think it is, as you say, put in place to increase revenue, I think it was sort of "control freak" mindset that Jeff Atwood displayed (love it or hate it). I don't know how much Joel agreed with him on this sort of stuff in the beginning but the inane amount of micromanagement, brow beating questioners, etc was always there. You can go back to the old podcasts and blog posts for that. In the beginning, for a long time, there was push back, I felt like even in the SO blog comments there would be 25% disagreement with this idea, but I think the collective has "gotten out of control" (if you think it is bad thing). I remember long discussions on the podcast about whether some such question was relevant enough to stay on the site.
I always thought Programmers SE was just evidence of this silliness; I saw and still see no reason for it to exist outside of SO. But that's the way it goes.
Nuuton will allow you to have the ability to discuss such subjects directly without such policies. You may even discuss the actual stackoverflow site if so desired (or the book homepages).
Interesting, I'm not familiar with that. The fact is SE sites have such a large user base and for the most part I'm not sure the problems it has are significant enough to give much room to new players, unless it is something really remarkable.
It does not compete with SE, because its a search engine. But it does allow for people to discuss items on SE without the friction they create (as an example). You can also do so with other site (actually, all sites).
Comments
"This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site"
This is sad.
We need to set stack exchange free. The community failed in creating a free and open environment for asking and answering questions: A place where information may be categorized but never restricted even if it's bad. To be bad it must exist first, if you restrict the existence of crap, it won't be crap anymore, because it won't exist.
Stack exchange is a walled garden run by members blindly following a doctrine put in place to increase revenue in the first place.
I agree with many of your points. Some of the StackExchange sites have degenerated into being virtually unusable unless you align yourself with the small group of people who viciously down-vote and close otherwise useful and relevant questions. The idea is/was great, but in some corners it seems to be starting to derail.
Yes, you have to agree with the groupthink or you are basically an outcast. That said, I think it is still very useful.
I mean on some level I think it's sort of stupid. The original idea always centered around SO being a blog for programmers that don't really blog; at least that was what was constantly talked about. However, any question or answer that contains any semblance of personality is struck down or edited to an extreme. It's really anal retention run amok. But it's still useful. :)
> The original idea always centered around SO being a blog for programmers that don't really blog; at least that was what was constantly talked about.
I used to listen to the early podcasts and I never got this impression. As far as I can tell SO has always been run much the same way - aimed at getting the top google hit for direct questions like "how do I make my button transparent." For the most part they are succeeding. Questions like "list of freely available programming books" have always been outliers.
Now that they are not allowed at all, maybe the old ones should be hidden instead of being shown as "locked."
StackExchange is an SEO company, not your blog hosting company. Just because you find a topic interesting does not mean it is their job to host your discussion/poll/list-of-lists etc. for it.
No, go back and listen. The blog thing was always there. It was a part of Atwoods general opinion that people are better off if they are totally in the public.
For some reason I don't see SO as having degraded as much as some of the other SE properties.
Yes I often find myself wishing that, at the user level at least, USENET was still all pervasive. However, that is probably remembering the past a little more fondly that I should. Joel even talks a little about the comparison here [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-...].
I agree with you. However, this is not like something that has "failed" in the sense that this sort of mindset was always prevalent from the Beta of SO. This is just Jeff Atwood's philosophy plain and simple. I don't think it is, as you say, put in place to increase revenue, I think it was sort of "control freak" mindset that Jeff Atwood displayed (love it or hate it). I don't know how much Joel agreed with him on this sort of stuff in the beginning but the inane amount of micromanagement, brow beating questioners, etc was always there. You can go back to the old podcasts and blog posts for that. In the beginning, for a long time, there was push back, I felt like even in the SO blog comments there would be 25% disagreement with this idea, but I think the collective has "gotten out of control" (if you think it is bad thing). I remember long discussions on the podcast about whether some such question was relevant enough to stay on the site.
I always thought Programmers SE was just evidence of this silliness; I saw and still see no reason for it to exist outside of SO. But that's the way it goes.
Nuuton will allow you to have the ability to discuss such subjects directly without such policies. You may even discuss the actual stackoverflow site if so desired (or the book homepages).
Interesting, I'm not familiar with that. The fact is SE sites have such a large user base and for the most part I'm not sure the problems it has are significant enough to give much room to new players, unless it is something really remarkable.
It does not compete with SE, because its a search engine. But it does allow for people to discuss items on SE without the friction they create (as an example). You can also do so with other site (actually, all sites).