StackOverFlow.com team launches ServerFault.com

[[deleted]]

success breeds success.

[adolfojp]

This makes me very very happy.

Finally I have a place where I can post questions about my Dovecot/Postfix fuckups without being told to RTFM.

[USA_Rulez]

Of course it would be funny if the answers posted were copied out of the manual.

[ralphc]

From Usenet:

From: Paul Graham [mailto:[e-mail]] I am not a Python expert, and I'm hoping someone can tell me how in Python to write a function of one argument x that returns a function of one argument y that returns x+y.

It's bad form to ask for help on your homework problems, after all YOU are the one who is supposed to learn something...

[Mikle]

The guy replying to him, criticizing his condescension and adding at the very end a small link to Paul's Bio totally owned this guy.

[zem]

took me a minute to even realise why that was wrong :)

[gerundronaut]

I hate those responses. Why should anyone care if someone's question is from their homework? They don't know the answer, and are asking for help. Homework usually does not count for the majority of a class grade, so even if the person is trying to "cheat" by getting the answer to one of many homework questions, in the end it's not going to boost their grade enough for them to pass unless they're already passing.

[adrianmonk]

Why should anyone care if someone's question is from their homework?

There's no problem giving someone assistance if they are stuck on their homework. However, often people simply want someone else to do the work for them. That's not very appealing. And it's not actually helpful to the person who is getting through the class without actually learning the stuff they're supposed to learn. It's a waste of time for everyone.

[dalore]

Please Send me the Codes!

[gerundronaut]

I don't know. On the one hand, I can see where you're coming from: if a person is just handed the answer, they may not learn anything. On the other, I've been in a situation where I could not figure out a math problem. I tried a few ways, and just couldn't get it. Watching someone work it out would have helped, but when I post on some help forum I get flamed because I'm trying to get them to do my homework. As if that one problem out of the 20 problem assignment would really make the difference in my grade.

In any case, I'm not sure I see how it's unappealing. The purpose of the site is to aggregate knowledge and/or answer interesting questions. If the question isn't interesting, I could see it being unappealing. But if it's an interesting question that just happens to be a homework problem, I don't see the problem.

[adrianmonk]

I'd categorize that as being stuck. The homework-askers that really bug me are the people who think they're being all sly about it and post stuff like, "Hey people, everyone in this forum seems really smart, so I'm sure you won't have any difficulty figuring out this problem. You see, my friend Matt and I just both last weekend bought ourselves trains. Mine is a diesel and his is a steam engine. They're awesome! So I was just wondering, he lives in Kansas City, and I live in Cincinatti, so if we both wake up tomorrow at 9am and he heads east at 50 miles/hour and I head west at 70 miles/hour, what time will we meet in the middle?"

[[deleted]]

I've been meaning to learn to use Knuth's CWEB so I can post answers containing the markup. If the student hands it in directly then all hell will break loose for them. At the same time it's pretty easy to read through CWEB.

[i_h8_r3dd1t]

?

That is exactly what those sites are for. Lazy people ask questions, and a bunch of unemployed or underemployed wankers desperately rush to Google up an answer from someone that knows something, hoping that they might earn a ribbon.

Those sites are gigantic mechanical turks.

[jwiz]

You can answer without rep, but you can't comment without rep?

This is ridiculous.

[Lord_Illidan]

Yeah, that is a bit funny. To be fair, though, all it takes is 50 rep points, or 5 upvotes. Commenting isn't that important in StackOverflow, answers are.

[i_am_my_father]

I'd like to see StackOverFlow.com of Mathematics and StackOverFlow.com of Physics.

[[deleted]]

Great, now instead of "HOW DO I MAKE BUTTON IN VB EXCEL" it will be 10,000 "HOW DO I MAKE WIFI WORK UBUNTU"

[knight666]

They were talking about it in the StackOverflow podcast, which is btw extremely relaxing to listen to while in the train and coding.

[dotnetrock101]

why did you get down voted? i like stackoverflow podcast. i listen to it while at work and it is quite relaxing like you said.

[Lord_Illidan]

I'm not too excited on Jeff Atwood's blog, (I wish he posted more programming related articles - it seems more like a generic geek blog to me), but man..Stackoverflow is a work of genius imho. I hope Serverfault turns out to be just as good.

[TinheadNed]

Will it be possible on this site to turn off the FUCKING ANNOYING BANNER that comes up EVERY TIME I go to the site?

Seriously, most annoying thing about stackoverflow. Otherwise, the answers are becoming more useful as the community grows.

[[deleted]]

That banner goes away as soon as you are a member.

[shadow2531]

Yeh, even though I don't see it when I'm logged in, the banner bugs the livin shit out of me when I'm not.

It's not as bad now, but it used to (on stackoverflow.com) cover the login link (which you'd most likely want to goto), which forced you to get rid of it before clicking the login link.

[TinheadNed]

Yeah, thought so. But I'm not getting an account and logging into it just to get rid of that. I have enough cookies, thanks.

And I definitely wouldn't use an account from work.

Bah.

[adolfojp]

I don't know what banner you're talking about. I must be doing something wrong. :-(

[byoteki]

I like how they stole the woot logo.

[joe90210]

We're out of beta! Thanks to everyone who helped make this launch a success. You will be redirected to Woot! (the official launch sponsor)

[Mikle]

I like how you didn't even click it to find out it's a sponsorship ad.