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▲ kccqzy 2 days ago

People need to read Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood to understand how to design a forum encouraging good social interactions. For what it’s worth Stack Overflow had a significantly better signal-to-noise ratio than the Apple or MS forums.

▲ndr42 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Are you citing Stack Overflow as an example of good social interactions?

▲DaiPlusPlus a day ago | parent | next [-]

(Disclaimer: I've been on SO since 2009 with almost 200k rep now)

Yes, SO has rightfully earned a reputation for being unfriendly (at best!) to software-dev neophytes; I don't want to handwave-away the problem, but I don't believe SO was intended as a good place for beginners, nor as a place tolerant of _forum faux-pas_[1]; SO was just intended as a better (and free) replacement for expertsexchange - and the disconnected, disparate collection of web-forums or Usenet groups that focused on a single language or platform.

So if I wrote the above post, I think I'd re-phrase it by saying SO was an example of "good _professional_ interaction": the site/format works great when everyone understands each other. SO would be even better if it could solve that problem, but to-date, no-one has figured-out a solution to that problem; whereas if we look at ChatGPT-as-a-replacement-for-SO, it hasn't solved the problem either, but avoids it, by not having people interact with other people anymore - this may or may not be a good thing in the long term.

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[1] e.g. the cardinal sin of posting new threads without checking for existing threads first; putting "URGENT!" in the subject-line; posting with a sense of entitlement; etc.

▲Jolter a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Not social, but technical. At some point in time, it really did have pretty good quality answers for my questions.

▲asdff a day ago | parent [-]

Only for the most boilerplate issues I would find. Actual technical discussion best I've seen is github issues. Finally here are the users who know how to peak behind the curtain of the gui and we can go right to exchanging patched forks ahead of even the maintainer pushing a change.

▲tyre a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You and I have had markedly different experiences with StackOverflow. It was better than Apple community forums, but man am I glad it’s dead.

▲kccqzy a day ago | parent [-]

Yes it’s better than the Apple forums. And if Apple put as much thought and care into their own forums, their forums could have been as good as Stack Overflow.