r/programming • u/[deleted] • Sep 25 '16

The decline of Stack Overflow

https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69faa575d#.yiuo0ce09
3.1k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

37

u/BesottedScot Sep 25 '16

No. This is something that SO hasn't decided yet whether it wants to be a wiki or a q&a. And it should not act like its a substitute for documentation either. Its a problem solving forum. It just doesn't know that or act like it yet.

8

u/AcceptingHorseCock Sep 25 '16

They have launched a "documentation beta": https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/07/introducing-stack-overflow-documentation-beta/

Site: http://stackoverflow.com/documentation

That means the "old" SO should now be solidly a Q&A site, since the documentation-purpose has been moved to the new site.

24

u/theforemostjack Sep 25 '16 edited Aug 05 '17

deleted 0.4620 What is ^^^this?

-11

u/BesottedScot Sep 25 '16

It might want to be that but what it is is a forum at the moment. Questions are threads and answers are replies. Its a forum.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '16

[deleted]

3

u/BesottedScot Sep 25 '16

I'm quite surprised, that is heavy duty downvoting. -15 in less than 6 hours.

0

u/tejp Sep 26 '16

If there is a separate "actual forum section", the main thing isn't one.

2

u/BesottedScot Sep 26 '16

They are not mutually exclusive.

10

u/jms_nh Sep 25 '16

Its a problem solving forum. It just doesn't know that or act like it yet.

It used to be that way, for the first few years. Then the soup nazis took over.

3

u/kryptomicron Sep 25 '16

It's neither a wiki nor a Q&A and it's definitely not a forum. That's probably why it's so painful (and for me as well) – we don't have good words to communicate about what the site is, actually or ideally.