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Ask HN: How did Stack Exchange succeed despite its awful community?

4 points by booruguru ↗ HN
I just read a StackExchange discussion titled, "Are TED presentations academically credible?" http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26277/are-ted-presentations-academically-credible

The top comment reads as follows: "It's not clear to me how this is relevant to academia..."

Ugh!

Based on everything I've read (from people the who manage StackExchange) they consider pedantry to be a feature of their community rather than a bug.

Yet, every time I read a page on the StackExchange network I have to sift through comments questioning the appropriateness of the question. What's more, questions are routinely "closed" for being "off topic" despite high page views and numerous answers.

Why do people put up with this--seriously? I no longer intentionally visit their network because its such a miserable and frustrating experience.

EDIT: A typo.

10 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 28.9 ms ] thread
27182818284
It wasn't bad in the beginning.

There are a lot of interesting threads with a lot of interesting and often fun posts that would be killed immediately if they were made today. For example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-c...

Even that was closed down. Essentially they wanted a great site, and did that, but then the pendulum swung too far the other direction and now I find the place groan worthy

andrewhillman
I think people put up with this because StackOverflow is considered a technical Rank Badge. The higher the score, the more opportunity and respect you receive.

I agree that pedantry is a big problem but it also occurs on HN. Rather than closing topics they should redirect those "off-topic" questions and answers to a new forum.

Or... someone should create SLACKoverflow for these off-topic Q/A's. I am sure it would be helpful and receive lots of page views to boot.

DanBC
It is frustrating that people will very quickly leap in with "this question is off topic and needs to be closed", but very slow to actually edit the question to make it fit.

IMO that question is valid for that site, but is lousily worded. A quick bit of editing could have avoided all that meta stuff.

If you're ever in that kind of situation just remember that META IS DEATH; and that TROLLS EXIST. This might be an example of Troll by result, and not troll by intent. Ignore, as much as possible, the people who make comments like that because they are not going to be any help to you ever.

You should have a read of the Meatball wiki about trolls.

Another tactic, which is time consuming and ultimately unfun, is to treat them as they treat others and use their own tools against them. Flag their comments as off topic; provide useful counter arguments; stalk their posts and counter the posts at every opportunity; upvote / downvote appropriately. (If this is serious you may want to consider buying votes from MTurk.)

mlewisTW
Do users earn reputation for voting to close off-topic questions? Maybe they have poorly incentivized their users to close questions rather than answer them.

Why do people put up with this? Because there's not a better option. Want to make one?

ngBlaster
Stack Exchange could be much better. They have created a good model, however the knowledge needs to be aggregated back into a documentation format, that is browsable. Documentation + Q&A together = Awesomeness.
mlewisTW
What do you mean documentation + question and answer? Like a wiki with Q&A?
8_hours_ago
I completely agree that Documentation + Q&A together = Awesomeness. My first programming language was PHP, which I self taught to myself using only the online documentation. Without the comments at the bottom of every page of documentation, the learning process would have taken a lot longer. I haven't looked at the PHP documentation in years, but I hope that the discussions still exist. I'm surprised that more documentation doesn't have the same kind of commenting system, or every a better one... from what I can remember the discussions on the PHP documentation were single threaded and didn't have any user moderation. I also recall people commenting and saying "Don't listen to Bob's comment above! It's completely wrong!! Here's how you do it: ..." followed by: "Steve has it almost correct, but you should really use X instead of Y.", followed by 10 more comments with no real conclusion on how to "correctly" query a mysql database. If there was a Stack Exchange type of Q&A that was embedded on each individual page of documentation, that might be very useful.
mlewisTW
In due time, this will exist. The interactive documentation (a wiki on steroids) will merge many existing systems into one platform that is unparalleled. I plan to make this system, I just need to figure out where to start, and organize a team.
kazinator
What's the problem? The question isn't closed, and has an accepted answer. Both the question and that answer are ridiculously upvoted. About those "ugh" comments: they are also quite upvoted: people agree with them. The question is not blatantly off topic, but it is squarely not on topic either. Plus it has another problem, namely that it appears to be a solicitation for opinions about a generalization about TED presentations. (You would think that the credibility of a presentation of any kind rests in its particular content, and not in its association with other presentations by name, or sponsorship or whatever.)

About SE: the various stackexchange sites have different "flavors". I like the EE one (electronics.stackexchange.com). It has a small core of regulars with decent personalities.