We're humbled hearing from folks like you - your willingness to give back is what makes it all work. Keep your money. But here's how you CAN help, right now: Sign up if you haven't, create a developer story, and when you ARE job-hunting, try Jobs. We I think you'll find it to be the most developer-friendly offering on the planet.
Regarding point 1, blowing off that question was an inside joke. I get why it comes off as dismissive and rude without context - it was originally an internal presentation - but the asker was Michael Pryor. He's Joel's co-founder at FogCreek and the CEO of Trello. It was playful banter between very senior peers.
I work at SO, and we couldn't agree more. This is one reason we're so excited about our upcoming launch of [Documentation](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/303865/warlords-of-d...). We think that together with developers like you, we can do for docs what the last generation kicked off for Q&A.
To your point: Today, many of the questions devs encounter are already covered, and covered pretty well on SO Q&A. This is obviously good for devs looking for solutions. But combined with the fact that most new questions - that haven't been asked before - are answered quickly,it's hard for users trying to get involved and contribute. That'll all change with Docs.
There will be tons of need for contributions, plus the system has more checks and peer support baked in, so it'll be easier to know your contribution will help, even if you're not sure it's complete, etc. We're really excited about how Docs will let more devs like you who want to pitch in be a part of it. I hope you'll give it a try.
He's my boss, so I'm super biased, but I can still share a primary-source perspective. I knew him for years before working here, and would say that both as a manager and a general human being, he's one of the genuinely best people I've ever known. From when he started Fogcreek, his and Michael's whole philosophy was to create an environment and mission that makes smart people actually love working there, and then get the hell out of their way. Here at SE, we've grown a ton since I've been here, but I can tell you our exec team spends a lot of time discussing how to ensure we maintain an environment where employees are actually excited to work. (I know that sounds goofy/cheesy/like BS, but talk to any of our devs or other employees; I think you'll find that just about all of us take great pride in what we do.)
Kind of you, but the real credit goes to all the people who donate their time and knowledge to help others. We (I work at SE) are incredibly excited to be able to use this investment to do even more for them.
The problem here appears to be that it's hard to report that the site's readability is poor with images turned off in your browser, in large part because the interface elements needed to do so (buttons) have images associated with their containers, etc.
We never want to make it harder than it has to be to share bugs or suggestions, and we do want to help as many people as we can. We especially want to help those trying to give us feedback to improve the product. The challenge is always prioritization. Today, the number of folks browsing without images is a very small percentage. We definitely want them to be able to benefit from users content, and ideally, we'd love it if they could post and report bugs, too, but it's just lower priority than some other places (where we can surely improve as well).
It sounds like what you're mainly describing is that it's hard to ask a question that isn't already answered on the site. (You can't close as a dupe unless the duplicate has answers.) From a "helping the most people learn" perspective, this sounds like a champagne problem: There's so many answers that it's hard to find something to ask that's not already covered.
From a community perspective, we do want all devs to be able to get involved in the site, so it's not ideal if the solution set is actually so comprehensive that it raises the bar for getting involved.
But I'm not too worried. SO still gets over ten thousand questions per day, which gives devs who want to contribute to the programming community a ton of opportunities to share answers and help. Plus, and new languages like swift leave a lot of blue ocean for asking new questions.
Don't get me wrong, our two biggest product priorities are focused on how we can make it easier for new users to get involved, and how we can ensure that more active users continue to feel appreciated and find it rewarding to share their knowledge on SO, where so many others can benefit from it. There's plenty more we can do on both fronts, but I'm not too worried that we're running out of ways for devs to contribute if they want to.
Disclosure: I work at Stack Exchange. I love Stack Exchange. I am not an unbiased observer of Stack Exchange. My mom says I and my company are special, and I believe her.
The term "mod" is a red herring here. The engine will auto-reverse obviously targeted voting, and the community team reverses cases too subtle for the engine to handle, but that are clearly personally targeted.
Now... I actually agree that we can do more to help with questions that are less black and white. It's harder than it sounds - being a little rigid, and downright intolerant of questions that descend into religious debate "which language is better overall?" is a key part of what makes SO and our other sites work. But, I completely agree that we could probably do more to help more with a lot of more subjective or nuanced questions, and we're devoting a lot of energy to figuring out how to do so without undermining what's working well today. In summary, I agree with your point. :)
As to Startups, the main issue wasn't just questions per day. We have a lot of sites with less activity that we think are doing really well for their communities.
We'd love to be able to take all the info we have, and make it available in every language. But here's why it's harder than it looks:
`This is probably a dumb question , but why Google Did not translate simply use ? (Or equivalent )
You do not know English , and if you did, I will automatically convert to your question . I think most of the time , and want to get the answer you are looking for. It grammatically correct is very , or not require a result , you also , to sound natural . Most of the time , you need to and get the gist of it , to get the code snippet you .
(Such as , what so that you will translate well to etc. ' space ' Portuguese equivalent of ' space ') because it was translated properly , keyword if there is a conversion method that targets the programming field I think that can help . I feel like the creation of the map of the term would be relatively easy to me.
The graduate scheme of things , I hope knowledge is connected in English really . It is a common language in the world , and it also , it 's one of the most expressive language . I spend some time working in Japan , and the knowledge of many , they were crowded world away from the B / C was trouble they will learn English very effectively . ( They are large enough , they're advanced enough that you can afford to maintain the online technical community and trade press in Japan )`
I translated your text above to Japanese and back. (To be fair, that's two "lossy" transfers, not one, but it's pretty clear that you couldn't possibly have a two way discussion that way.
Fragmenting has always been a concern, but eventually, we realized that there are LOTS of good developers who are much less likely to participate (type) on a site in a language other than their primary one.
(Japan is a great example of a place where there are very few devs who even want to consume programming information in English, let alone exchange it that way.)
As a native English speaker, I imagine myself at a professional meetup or cocktail party where everyone else is speaking French (which I studied in college). How many jokes would I tell? How many would I even understand?. The point is, I can function, and understand all the words, but I can't really feel like a fully-integrated part of the group, and the whole thing is hard work. Can I get mission critical information? Yeah. Do I want to hang out there and try to help others? No - even though I may have mastered the topic, the language gap makes me feel less excited and less qualified than I would in an all-english group.
People making individual decisions. All else equal, we'd slightly prefer to have people in NYC, because we think the in-person time is a plus for the casual interaction that happens in between "getting things done". But we've set our selves up to make real work and official team collaboration work almost entirely online. We've learned that the in-person benefit is more than outweighed by how much you get from being able to hire the best talent that loves the product anywhere, not just the ones willing to live in the city you happen to be in.
DON'T TRUST ME BLINDLY: I work for Stack Exchange, so I'm totally biased. On the other hand, I left a lucrative career in finance for a lot less money here because I believe in what we're doing, so there's that.
MOST IMPORTANTLY:
I appreciate Michael's feedback, and he worries about a lot of the same things I do. Moreover, we are incredibly grateful for all he's done over the years - my honest belief is that his contributions (even when they were just fish) helped a ton of people finish a project that may have been what made them LOVE programming. And those people did take the time to learn the fishing techniques underlying those fish, so they could do it better next time.
ON REWARDS:
Points aren't the point. Let's be honest. We reward people for helping others with points that essentially convey nothing other than the ability to help in new ways (as you unlock new privileges). No one in their right mind is spending time on the site with the empirical goal of getting points.
The real reason people answer questions is that they like helping people. The points are important, but only insofar as they give you actual feedback on how many people appreciate your effort. The points aren't the reward; they're just a way to measure the real reward people care about: knowing how much of a difference you've made.
So when Michael worries about his points going up even after he's stopped posting, that's the system working. It's not about ensuring the right person is "winning" it's about showing how many people got help.
And he's still helping others today. I respect his decision to leave, but truly think he should be proud of what he's done for the programming community to date. In any case, we're grateful.
I work at Stack Exchange, and contacted Samsung as soon as this was brought to our attention last night.
1. The company engaging in these tactics was not hired by Samsung; they appear to have been sub-contracted for some promotion by the company they did hire. Now, it's obviously possible that they turned a blind eye, or don't want to know what methods are used, but in fairness, there's no evidence that they had any idea this was happening. And given the directness of it all, I suspect they'd have objected, if only because it looks so bad.
2. Everyone who was contacted due to being a user on our sites has now received a follow up communication from the company that sent the first message redacting the offer and apologizing for the inappropriate contact and request.
None of that makes any of this... lovely, but it does help clarify that any potential harm or noise this might cause seems to have been contained.
No offense taken, and thanks for the overall support!
As to:
> "Do you have any evidence that your site is the reason the USPTO found this?"
Well, the office has told us directly that examiners are reviewing the site. So, when they then reject an application, based primarily on art posted on the site, that was asked for and posted there just prior to the actual review, it makes me highly optimistic that it's not all a coincidence, although I suppose that's theoretically possible.
The USPTO explicitly asked us to set up this site to help get the public involved in getting prior art to the examiners. (Press release:http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2012/12-60.jsp.) So, while it's entirely possible that the examiner might have eventually found this without us, which is far from certain, it seems reasonable to assume that they saw it on the site. Which means that even if you assume they would have found it without help - again, questionable, given the number of weak patents out there - at a minimum, we probably saved them a lot of time, which frees up more resources to look for prior art on the next crappy patent. And that reduces the odds that the clock runs out without them finding any, which leads to a lousy issuance.
DISCLOSURE: I wrote that blog post, I work for SE, I AM biased.
Thanks for the general support.
You raise two concerns, though:
1. Upvotes - this is tricky. The problem with never allowing questions with lots of upvotes to be closed is twofold:
- Sometimes, what's allowed changes over time. Communities start out allowing almost anything "What's a good snack to help programmers stay awake?", but eventually decide that they need to limit things to a narrower focus. If communities who do that can't close those questions, they'll attract more like them.
- Some popular things are way off base to start with. You might be able to attract a ton of upvotes for an xkcd post, but you really wouldn't wan't the site full of them just because they're broadly loved.
2. opinion based questions - the changes are designed to help a little with what you're worried about: "primarily opinion based" now explicitly acknowledges that many good answers incorporate some expert opinion. But you still want some limit, no? "Which is better, Ruby or PHP?" isn't good for anybody, and the new reasons are designed to make it clearer that some opinion is ok, if it comes from expert experience or can be supported by facts, references, etc. Where that line belongs is for each community to decide.