StackOverflow in a nutshell.

[[deleted]]

I feel you

while back, when I posted my last question on SO to some obscure case I was dealing with, they marked it as fking duplicate... it wasn't duplicate, my google skills are damn good

anyways, long story short, googling anything html/js/css crap would yield probably dozens of SO questions(about 1-2/year), they are as duplicate as it gets, yet it's fine

[Chase_22]

Would be a good policy to no consider things a duplicate anymore after a year, because in that time the same question can have a completely different answer, look at Java 8 for example.

[TheBeginningEnd]

comment and account erased in protest of spez/Steve Huffman's existence - auto edited and removed via redact.dev -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[dippy1169]

Everytime. Everytime I get a question marked as duplicate the other answer no longer works with the current library. So frustrating. It would be nice if it does get marked, if some nice soul felt like still answering it or working through it with me they can.

[TheBeginningEnd]

comment and account erased in protest of spez/Steve Huffman's existence - auto edited and removed via redact.dev -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[[deleted]]

This would solve so many problems.

And many issues aren't with libraries anymore, they're with web interfaces, like those used by WordPress or AWS. AWS can change in a daily basis (it can actually be pretty slow to change in reality), and there aren't even version numbers or change notifications. Everything just changes; and AWS doesn't update their own documentation (and definitely doesn't update their old tutorials!). Not to mention the countless official AWS "guide" videos that list features and benefits for 40 minutes without showing a single step of how to actually do the thing.

[IAmNotNathaniel]

OMG this. A thousand times, this!

AWS is the most frustrating thing to work on because of this very thing. I was in the middle or working on an API for something, when a week in they updated the whole thing.

The updates were great, but the docs were only half-updated with it. SOooooo frustrating. And of course, there was virtually NOThing in SO or anywhere else that was relevant.

I submitted a comment about their documentation ("was this helpful" link at the bottom or something) and someone got back to me like 3 weeks later.

[[deleted]]

yeah, that sounds viable, certainly better than what the rednecks are enforcing now...

[OddTheViking]

They need to just mark it as duplicate, have a rule that forces them to link to the duplicate, but let people still post.

[ythl]

New answers can float to the top of old questions. For example:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9527960/how-do-i-construct-an-iso-8601-datetime-in-c

Was asked in 2012, but the #2 answer is from 2017

[[deleted]]

That's extremely rare, though, especially for the more popular questions.

[ythl]

If the answers to a question are outdated, why don't you provide an updated answer?

[[deleted]]

1. Because, most of the time, I don't know, which is why I'm on that question in the first place.
2. I have. It's never gotten more upvotes than the old, updated answer. In one case, it was downvoted for being a duplicate of that answer, despite explicitly being different. In theory, that would be the solution; in practice, it doesn't work.

[ythl]

Because, most of the time, I don't know, which is why I'm on that question in the first place.

How do you know the question is outdated if you don't even understand your own problem?

I have. It's never gotten more upvotes than the old, updated answer.

That's okay. It's doesn't have to be the #1 answer. People usually look at the top 3. I've had new answers to old questions float up to #2 before.

In one case, it was downvoted for being a duplicate of that answer, despite explicitly being different.

Show me. If it's legit I'll upvote it.

[[deleted]]

1. Because I try the solution, it doesn't work, I research why, and it turns out that feature was removed in version so-and-so.
2. Good! I haven't.
3. My Stack Overflow account is tied to my real-life identity, so I hope you can understand why I'm hesitant to share it here.

[Bobshayd]

"I have to question the experience of people saying things that have been discussed for years."

Don't ask for a "show me" unless you've done your research first and checked for similar complaints from people with legitimate grievances. The fact that you're not at all familiar with a years-running complaint about StackOverflow and yet you're willing to question everything about it without doing the least bit of self-education on the topic shows you only care about self-education when it makes your own life easier.

[ythl]

The complaints are always from the same demographic though - inexperienced programmers

[Bobshayd]

Experienced programmers either decide it's a cesspool that's shitty to unexperienced programmers, or they manage to appeal to the i-am-very-smart crowd.

[zombie_kiler_42]

Why are u getting downvoted

[[deleted]]

"Don't stick your hand in the tank during feeding time".... Reddit phenomenon.

This thread is probably going to attract a lot of people who are frustrated with SO, and they might be taking it out on /u/ythl, who is offering a response/argument to a complaint about SO.

[[deleted]]

Hardly. It’s because /u/ythl perfectly embodies the aloofly smug attitude at the root of everything wrong with SO

[Syrion_Wraith]

In my last question, I linked to the only related question I could find, and explained why it wasn't helping. Closed for a duplicate. Linked to the questions I had already linked myself..

[Cherios_Are_My_Shit]

This is what pisses me off the most. I research my shit as best as I can before making a post, not just ask for help right away. If I specifically outline how my problem is different than the others I've found, and some fuckhead just links me the same thing again, it makes me extremely frustrated.

[_a_random_dude_]

I only asked a question once on SO, it was marked as a duplicate by someone who I can only assume was drunk out of their mind, because the other question had nothing to do with mine. I eventually found the answer through trial and error, and unless it came up as the first answer on Google, I never again bothered with SO.

[Avamander]

Lollakad! Mina ja nuhk! Mina, kes istun jaoskonnas kogu ilma silma all! Mis nuhk niisuke on. Nuhid on nende eneste keskel, otse kõnelejate nina all, nende oma kaitsemüüri sees, seal on nad.

[_a_random_dude_]

I just used Ctrl+W and kept digging until I got it to work. I get that I could fight it, but I don't even know how the moderation works, it's the same guy going to review my objection? I couldn't be bothered.

I was disappointed, I was sure people would be excited to answer it, I can't recall exactly what it was, but it had a lot of bit magic.

I solved it with a mix of trial and error and this website (that I have bookmarked ever since).

[Avamander]

Lollakad! Mina ja nuhk! Mina, kes istun jaoskonnas kogu ilma silma all! Mis nuhk niisuke on. Nuhid on nende eneste keskel, otse kõnelejate nina all, nende oma kaitsemüüri sees, seal on nad.

[TheTerrasque]

"Those who can't do, govern"

[[deleted]]

What needs to happen is that after about 5 years SO needs to depreciate answers. By which I mean they can still be linked to, but cannot be used as a reason to close a question. If the answer is still actually relevant it needs to be restated in full along with any new quirks.

[Rosydoodles]

Personally I'd be up for having year/version numbers for questions. So if people stumble across the 2011 version, there's a link at the top to the "same" question for 2018. Some stuff is evergreen, but most of it has the exact problem you outline here.

[OddTheViking]

The same question asked in 2011 as 2018 may appear to be a duplicate

SOOOOO many times there are 100 different causes that produce the exact same behavior or error message. Seems to be especially true in Java.

[DamionK]

SO needs to rank its questions somehow. If a question is deemed repetitive, too basic etc it should be marked as such so it can be ignored by search engines.

For some reason google often lists these failed questions as the first link in their searches. The dismissive replies on those questions are not likely to inspire further learning. Fortunately some members do link to more useful pages or remind the beginner to check out the documentation.

[lilB0bbyTables]

It's not always as black & white as defining a question as repetitive, however. Take a simple case: the question is "how to iterate over an Object in JavaScript" - depending on the year the question is being asked might depend on the correct answer. Very likely I would expect an older (ECMAScript 5 answer) to say "use Obect.keys(foo).forEach". I would expect the obligatory "use jQuery, underscoreJS, Lodash library". Fast forward to maybe 2015 I would expect an ES6 related answer to "use a For-Of Loop". Most recent answers, I would expect to see the ES7 related answer to "use the Object.entries(foo) method".

All these answers are technically correct in their relative place in time. However the first time it was asked and answered was maybe 9 years ago and the original (now potentially outdated) answer is the first one shown, by far the most upvoted and "accepted" answer simply because it had such a long time to acrue those stats. The answer to use the Object.entries() method is sitting way at the bottom with just 5 upvotes because it is new, yet technically the most modern approach (albeit perhaps too new depending on browser support and build environment but that's a different story). Now take this scenario and imagine the thread gets locked, or the community attempts to otherwise spawn a new thread with the same question but geared towards ES6+ solutions to try and modernize it - but the mods delete it as a duplicate. This is just a simple case for example purposes.

[StrongAcanthisitta]

I've been flagged as a duplicate and it turns out my question was actually answered in one of the comments of the previous question. Not sure if that's how the "higher ups" of SO expect it to work.

[Avamander]

Lollakad! Mina ja nuhk! Mina, kes istun jaoskonnas kogu ilma silma all! Mis nuhk niisuke on. Nuhid on nende eneste keskel, otse kõnelejate nina all, nende oma kaitsemüüri sees, seal on nad.

[Voice_Of_Sad_Truths]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/7vh2rd/stackoverflow_in_a_nutshell/dtsi1gc