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Ask HN: Stack Overflow Without the Cancer?

5 points by singularity2001 ↗ HN
Is there a web page where one can ask questions without risking being marked as stupid, irrelevant, lazy etc or randomly being closed? Where helping others is consistently rewarded and never punished? Where possible duplicates friendly point to possible answers? @PaulG: Could you please fund such a site?

10 comments

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holler
what kind of questions are you looking to pose? you could try https://sqwok.im
singularity2001
mostly tech questions, but also math, linguistic, historic…

Thanks, I'll give sqwok a try.

Unfortunately SO has some significant network effect, but there is a hUgE demand for a proper alternative, so as long as there is any activity on such a site it might be a starting point.

holler
> Unfortunately SO has some significant network effect

What are some of the specific issues that's causing? In my own experience I've used SO frequently for answer seeking but never contributed due to the barrier of needing to accumulate points first and not wanting to spend the time to do so.

Re: Sqwok, it's small right now but there are a good amount of people checking in on it regularly as development progresses.

singularity2001
> What are some of the specific issues that's causing?

By network effect here I meant mainly a large amount of users, Resulting in many possible answers even to obscure questions

EnderShadow8
Marking questions as "stupid, irrelevant, lazy etc" is SO's way of maintaining site content quality. Though they do get a bit aggressive at times, it's actually a good thing. A site without that just turns into Reddit.

AKA Shitpost Central.

MattGaiser
Has any alternative to meanness been found for turning random rabble of highly assorted quality into something with a minimum bar?

The military does it. Prisons do it. Stack Overflow does it. It clearly works and has for millennia. Just wonder if it is the only way.

I agree that if SO that was nice to people who did not do much prior research would quickly have a lot of junk.

singularity2001
Gentle education? Scandinavian prisons do it, schools do it, HN does it*

* (I was once called out by dang for posting humor/meme content but fully comprehend now how keeping such stuff away yields better discussions)

singularity2001
you're right I don't mind (too much) getting labeled anything or getting downvoted but I do mind content being closed and blocked (often for outrageous reasons or no reason at all)

if someone with a math degree and 10 years of experience in the field is treated as ignorant I don't know want to know how newcomers to stack overflow feel.

LinuxBender
AFAIK there isn't one and is not really an issue of platform or technology. In my opinion even if such a site were created it would devolve quickly into everything negative that you mentioned unless it has a solid team of great moderators, architects and leaders that understand human nature thus designing around it. HN is an example of a well moderated site, but it is a simple site relatively speaking. Stack Overflow could be everything you desired but was not guided in that direction. From my experience editing posts on one of their groups it was expected to just grow organically without external intervention. I assume this was to make a big knowledge base platform with low overhead by outsourcing all editing to volunteers that would eventually be acquired for a nice sum of money. I expect some day people will need a paid account to access answers, but that is the cynical side of me. I have never seen a large complex site like SO designed with human nature factored in but would love to see one.
brudgers
Hire a consultant. It doesn't scale and is expensive. So, it ain't for everyone, obviously, of course.

Like Wikipedia, StackOverflow mostly does what it must do to be a better alternative than anything else.

If StackOverflow did not close questions the way it does, pages would be (more) full of answers that call the person asking stupid, lazy, etc.

StackOverflow is not designed to protect itself from the people asking questions. It is designed to protect itself from the people answering them. It is designed to discourage social dominance. Discourage an insider versus outsider culture.

Yes it has rules and norms. Like all rules and norms, they are not for everyone. Unlike most rules and norms, they are not established to further entrench entrenched power (yes, there's a first mover points advantage to answering a regular problem but there's a low cap on the maximum required points for trust advantages).

To put it another way, StackOverflow is designed to minimize the effects of the bad ways people behave. It cannot eliminate them. Good luck.