helping people learn:
achievable with very high reward
Creating a catlogue of perfect questions and answers: impossible and of limited resource as every answer only caters for a specific set of back ground knowledge
And what is funny is that with option 1 done right who needs option 2? why scrabble around in the dark when i could be connected with someone who actually wants to help me.
i think that software dev is saturated with people who like to learn lots of things by themselves (excellent work, this is a form of hero), however this is not a good representation of most people. if we want IT to be more inclusive we need systems that can handle people who dont want to read several textbooks before getting some code working.
the questions are THE MOST VALUABLE PART of stack overflow. I think the issue is that the answerers refuse to accept this -> they are worthless without a question first :D
also blocking opinion questions and open-ended ones is silly, just have a tag for it and let people filter them out.
i have learned a lot for the discursive and open-ended questions, meh its just trying to apply to many rules.. huge communities are not going to be that aligned
stockoverflow inherently enables and supports the absolute worst elements of the tech industry.
the correct answer for a novice just starting is not the same as the correct answer for a total expert, the novice wont even know what you are talking about.
It panders to those that think there is a right and wrong way to do things and that they know the right what and the correct way to educate someone is with a public humiliation.
The whole site is totally un-inclsive, its great for like the 50-100 people who prefer elitism over education, and also already know what they are talking about.
IMHO they should split the site and create a new one for professional programmers, that does exactly what SO says it wants to do now, but be very clear its not for hobbists. then vet first questions to ensure they understand the rules etc. before interacting.
But honestly i think this vision that some have of it being a perfect data store of problems and solutions has an over simplistic idea about how the world works.
helping people learn: achievable with very high reward
Creating a catlogue of perfect questions and answers: impossible and of limited resource as every answer only caters for a specific set of back ground knowledge
And what is funny is that with option 1 done right who needs option 2? why scrabble around in the dark when i could be connected with someone who actually wants to help me.
i think that software dev is saturated with people who like to learn lots of things by themselves (excellent work, this is a form of hero), however this is not a good representation of most people. if we want IT to be more inclusive we need systems that can handle people who dont want to read several textbooks before getting some code working.