Stack Exchange solves to a good extent the use cases:points of view. It is a big open question if we can actually substantially improve it.
- I have a very specific question, type it on Google, find top answers
- I have an answer, and I put it here because it has a much greater chance of being found due to the larger PageRank than my personal web page will ever have
Major shortcoming are mentioned at idiotic Stack Overflow policies:
- Scope restrictions can lead to a lot of content deletion: closing questions as off-topicThis greatly discourages new users, who might still have added value to the project.On our website, anyone can post anything that is legal in a given country. No one can ever delete your content if it is legal, no matter their reputation.
- Although you can answer your own question, there's no way to write an organized multi-page book with Stack Exchange due to shortcomings such as no table of contents, 30k max chars on answer, huge risk of deletion due to "too broad"
- Absolutely no algorithmic attempt to overcome the fastest gun in the West problem (early answers have huge advantage over newer ones): meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/404535/closing-an-old-upvoted-question-as-duplicate-of-new-unvoted-questions/404567#404567
- Native reputation system:
- if the living ultimate God of
C++upvotes you, you get10reputation - if the first-day newb of
Javaupvotes you, you also get10reputation
- if the living ultimate God of
- Randomly split between sites like Stack Overflow vs Super User, with separate user reputations, but huge overlaps, and many questions that appears as dupes on both and never get merged.
- Possible edit wars, just like Wikipedia, but these are much less common since content ownership is much clearer than in Wikipedia however
Nothing personal, just Ciro Santilli strongly disagrees with the moderation philosophies of these users.
One particular type of user Ciro particularly dislikes are those who do more moderation than content. Ciro finds it very hard to understand why some people spend so much time moderating. Maybe that's how politicians exist, some people just like that kind of activity.
The moderators tend to have lower intermediate rep. They spend too much time moderating and too little time coding.
- Users who are publicly against the ability to criticize the character of politicians, shown after "I think Trump is disgusting as a person" was removed from Ciro's profile: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/stack-overflow-forbids-criticizing-the-character-of-genocidal-political-leaders-like-xi-jinping
- Journeyman Geek:
- is also against political speech against the CCP in Stack Overflow
- deletionism: single handedly deletes opposing answers without giving any explanation TODO example;
- closurism: superuser.com/questions/248517/show-keys-pressed-in-linux
- Journeyman Geek:
- Yvette Colomb deleted a few of Ciro's answers, related: Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow suspension for vote fraud script 2019.
- chrisF: envorces Stack Overflow no duplicate answers policy: stackoverflow.com/questions/9242135/how-to-force-rsync-to-create-destination-folder/72178249#72178249
- meta.stackexchange.com/users/361484/luuklag meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18614/style-guide-for-questions-and-answers/326746?noredirect=1#comment1283471_326746Fair comment, but do you need to flag before comment, and downvote? That answer was clearly a labour of love, on a subject that will never ever make anyone any money (markup style). Too much meta rep, too little programming rep.
Flagged as spam, there obviously is affiliation between the first link and the poster, which is not disclaimed.
- Cody Gray
- Charcoal bot people: charcoal-se.org/
- askubuntu.com/users/10616/thomas-ward Thomas Ward deletionism:
- e.g. convert here's a bug report answer to comment: askubuntu.com/questions/1464992/cant-drag-clip-to-timeline-in-kdenlive-in-ubuntu-23-04/1469359#comment2575312_1464992
- askubuntu.com/questions/524242/how-to-find-out-which-nvidia-gpu-i-have/1469351#1469351 deleted a perfectly valid "Settings -> Details -> About" GUI answer
- Machavity stackoverflow.com/users/2370483/machavity.Deletionism: stackoverflow.com/questions/13714454/specifying-and-saving-a-figure-with-exact-size-in-pixels/64632093#64632093. Edit: reverted.web.archive.org/web/20210506190038/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13714454/specifying-and-saving-a-figure-with-exact-size-in-pixels/64632093#comment118640561_64632093. One of the comments says "wow good work".Flag raised July 2023:and then it was undeleted, so kudos for that.
Hi, why was this deleted?
- askubuntu.com/users/10616/thomas-ward Thomas Ward deletionism:
TBD:
- webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/users/88163/rubén: possible deletionist webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/149933/why-does-the-archive-org-of-most-youtube-videos-fail-with-sorry-the-wayback-mac, but: might reconsider: webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4502/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company/4503?noredirect=1#comment5167_4503. Didn't: archive.ph/wip/EyZS7
Not so strong, but bad experience:
- Zac67 networkengineering.stackexchange.com/users/36720/zac67: you cannot mention any specific device, even if it is for illustrationa purposes...That's like, the opposite of reproducibility...
Deleted answers are dumped at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io/issues
- always upvote questions you care about, to increase the probability that they will get answered
- never upvote other people's answers unless you might gain from it somehow, otherwise you are just giving other high reputation users more reputation relative to you
- only mark something to close or as a duplicate if it will bring you some advantage, because closing things creates enemies, especially if the OP has a high profileOne example advantage is if you have already answered the question (and the duplicate as well in case of duplicates), because this will prevent competitors from adding new better answers to overtake you.
- protect questions you've answered whenever someone with less than 10 reputation answers it with a bad answer, to prevent other good contributors from coming along and beating you
- when you find a duplicate pool answer every question with similar answers.Alter each answer slightly to avoid the idiotic duplicate answer detector.If one of the question closes, it is not too bad, as it continues netting you to upvotes, and prevents new answers from coming in.
- follow on Twitter/RSS someone who comments on the top features of new software releases. E.g. for Git, follow GitHub on Twitter, C++ on Reddit. Then run back to any question which has a new answer.
- always upvote the question when you answer it:
- the more upvotes, more likely people are to click it.
- the OP is more likely to see your answer and feel good and upvote you
- if a niche question only has few answers and you come with a good one, upvote the existing ones by other high profile users.This may lead to them upvoting or liking you.Even if they don't, other people will still see your answer anyway, and this will lead to people to upvoting you more just to make your great answer surpass the current ones, especially if the accepted one has less upvotes than yours. Being second is often an asset.
- always upvote comments that favor you:
- "I like this answer!" on your answers
- "also look at that question" when you have answered that question
- don't invest a lot in edits. They don't give you rep, and they can get reverted and waste your time.Why are you trying to help other people's answers to get rep anyways? Just make a separate answer instead! :-)
- if you answer a question by newbie without 15 reputation, find their other questions if any and upvote them, so that the OP can upvote your answer in addition to just accepting
- If you haven't answered a question, link to related questions you've answered on question comments, so more people will come to your answers.If you have answered the question, only link to other questions at the bottom of your answer, so that people won't go away before they reach your answer, and so as to strengthen your answer.
- if a question has 50 million answers and you answer it (often due to a new feature), make a comment on the question pointing to your answer
- if you get a downvote, always leave a comment asking why. It is not because you care about their useless opinion, but because other readers might see the comment, feel sorry for you, and upvote.
- ask any questions under a separate anonymous accounts. Because:
- intelligent people are born knowing, and don't ever ask any questions, so that would hurt your reputation
- downvoting questions does not take 1 reputation away from the downvoter, and so it greatly opens the door for your opponents to downvote you without any cost.