<story><title>Stack Overflow Sunsetting Documentation</title><url>https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>Lately I have been writing a lot of Python and I am seeing a lot of bit rot in Stack Overflow lately.&lt;p&gt;For one thing,  it seems almost all the code snippets use &amp;quot;print-without-parenthesis&amp;quot; from Python 2,  so you cannot just cut and paste them into Python 3.  It isn&amp;#x27;t hard to fix this,  but it&amp;#x27;s a clear sign the lights are on and nobody is home.&lt;p&gt;The lack of curation is a problem too.  Often the first answer is wrong,  or less than optimal.  From the viewpoint of somebody looking for answers you don&amp;#x27;t really want 10 people&amp;#x27;s opinion,  you want one really good answer.</text></item><item><author>shagie</author><text>A core problem for Stack Overflow is the lack of people willing to curate material.  Its not an easy job and is quite thankless.&lt;p&gt;Its possible to have a site that is a mashup of &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;programming, &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;programmerhumor and &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;learnprogramming (and a few others) all on one site.  Though when all of those things are together on one site it makes the job of the people trying to curate it impossible.&lt;p&gt;Sure, Strangest language feature is interesting... and it has 320 visible answers when it was locked.  Is it useful?  It might be interesting, but it is impossible to remove the crap content from it (go to page 11 and start reading backwards and saying &amp;quot;is that useful or not?&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;Jeff Atwood wrote about this - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;the-trouble-with-popularity&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;the-trouble-with-popul...&lt;/a&gt; .  Too much interesting but ultimately not useful stuff gets in the way of finding useful stuff. This really runs up against the Atwoodian vision of Stack Overflow ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.codinghorror.com&amp;#x2F;introducing-stackoverflow-com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.codinghorror.com&amp;#x2F;introducing-stackoverflow-com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.&lt;p&gt;Interesting stuff and fun stuff may be interesting and fun - but when it gets in the way of making a site that is a library of good programming knowledge... something needs to be done about it.&lt;p&gt;Everything doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be on Stack Overflow.  There are many other sites that are better suited to discussions and fun things than the format for that Stack Overflow took as a Q&amp;amp;A site.&lt;p&gt;It may be boring and heavily controlled... but that unity of vision is necessary for trying to make it a site that provides material that I need when I search for how to deal with some programming problem of configuring Spring Statemachine or whatnot... and then interesting and fun gets in the way of me doing my job.</text></item><item><author>jon889</author><text>Ever since StackOverflow started closing strictly off topic questions that were interesting and still related to programming (closed as not constructive, or locked and marked as having &amp;quot;historical significance&amp;quot; such as &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;1995113&amp;#x2F;strangest-language-feature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;1995113&amp;#x2F;strangest-langua...&lt;/a&gt;) the sense of community there pretty much disappeared. There&amp;#x27;s not much incentive for knowledgable people to visit a site that is boring, and now StackOverflow seems to contain a lot more questions asked by noobs (I&amp;#x27;ve done this about subjects I don&amp;#x27;t know) that go unanswered.&lt;p&gt;The same also goes for questions that are almost duplicates. Or are basically but have been inactive so you want to get further information. And when interesting discussions get moved to chat. The whole place is just boring and too heavily controlled. I&amp;quot;m not surprised something that required community failed there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fovc</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s even worse with javascript. Often times there will be 10+ duplicates with legacy kludgy answers that are irrelevant now or using jquery, when the correct answer should use new APIs or less buggy browsers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stack Overflow Sunsetting Documentation</title><url>https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>Lately I have been writing a lot of Python and I am seeing a lot of bit rot in Stack Overflow lately.&lt;p&gt;For one thing,  it seems almost all the code snippets use &amp;quot;print-without-parenthesis&amp;quot; from Python 2,  so you cannot just cut and paste them into Python 3.  It isn&amp;#x27;t hard to fix this,  but it&amp;#x27;s a clear sign the lights are on and nobody is home.&lt;p&gt;The lack of curation is a problem too.  Often the first answer is wrong,  or less than optimal.  From the viewpoint of somebody looking for answers you don&amp;#x27;t really want 10 people&amp;#x27;s opinion,  you want one really good answer.</text></item><item><author>shagie</author><text>A core problem for Stack Overflow is the lack of people willing to curate material.  Its not an easy job and is quite thankless.&lt;p&gt;Its possible to have a site that is a mashup of &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;programming, &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;programmerhumor and &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;learnprogramming (and a few others) all on one site.  Though when all of those things are together on one site it makes the job of the people trying to curate it impossible.&lt;p&gt;Sure, Strangest language feature is interesting... and it has 320 visible answers when it was locked.  Is it useful?  It might be interesting, but it is impossible to remove the crap content from it (go to page 11 and start reading backwards and saying &amp;quot;is that useful or not?&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;Jeff Atwood wrote about this - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;the-trouble-with-popularity&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.blog&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;the-trouble-with-popul...&lt;/a&gt; .  Too much interesting but ultimately not useful stuff gets in the way of finding useful stuff. This really runs up against the Atwoodian vision of Stack Overflow ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.codinghorror.com&amp;#x2F;introducing-stackoverflow-com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.codinghorror.com&amp;#x2F;introducing-stackoverflow-com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of &lt;i&gt;good&lt;/i&gt; programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.&lt;p&gt;Interesting stuff and fun stuff may be interesting and fun - but when it gets in the way of making a site that is a library of good programming knowledge... something needs to be done about it.&lt;p&gt;Everything doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be on Stack Overflow.  There are many other sites that are better suited to discussions and fun things than the format for that Stack Overflow took as a Q&amp;amp;A site.&lt;p&gt;It may be boring and heavily controlled... but that unity of vision is necessary for trying to make it a site that provides material that I need when I search for how to deal with some programming problem of configuring Spring Statemachine or whatnot... and then interesting and fun gets in the way of me doing my job.</text></item><item><author>jon889</author><text>Ever since StackOverflow started closing strictly off topic questions that were interesting and still related to programming (closed as not constructive, or locked and marked as having &amp;quot;historical significance&amp;quot; such as &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;1995113&amp;#x2F;strangest-language-feature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stackoverflow.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;1995113&amp;#x2F;strangest-langua...&lt;/a&gt;) the sense of community there pretty much disappeared. There&amp;#x27;s not much incentive for knowledgable people to visit a site that is boring, and now StackOverflow seems to contain a lot more questions asked by noobs (I&amp;#x27;ve done this about subjects I don&amp;#x27;t know) that go unanswered.&lt;p&gt;The same also goes for questions that are almost duplicates. Or are basically but have been inactive so you want to get further information. And when interesting discussions get moved to chat. The whole place is just boring and too heavily controlled. I&amp;quot;m not surprised something that required community failed there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tedmiston</author><text>You can edit other people&amp;#x27;s answers to update them or fix this.  Most people are very open to it.  I do it regularly if the code isn&amp;#x27;t linted or if SQL keywords are lowercase vs uppercase to improve readability for everyone.</text></comment>