Let's give a standing ovation for this needed criticism of SO. I just hope SO opens themselves to hearing it.
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- the creators of StackOverflow don't know what made the site successful in the first place.
SO is successful because it's an experts-exchange.com clone without the pushy subscription model plus a few social voting features added in.
THAT'S IT.
The problem also is that the site was essentially complete within the first year. But there are still people on staff and they took a bunch of VC money. The people on staff need to do something and the VC money needs to be spent.
So of course they start meddling with their already completed product. Editing is now seen as an Important Thing and many red herrings like "keeping the site from becoming Reddit" are trumpeted in order to justify this meddling.
Nonsense like "Gorilla's vs Sharks"[1] are trumpeted in order to justify this meddling.
And even worse than the meddling on the new stuff, they go back and close old questions, even ones that have been quantifiably validated by the votes of hundreds of people. I'd actually bookmarked many of them, only to find them mysteriously closed months later.
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- the creators of StackOverflow don't know what made the site successful in the first place.
SO is successful because it's an experts-exchange.com clone without the pushy subscription model plus a few social voting features added in.
THAT'S IT.
The problem also is that the site was essentially complete within the first year. But there are still people on staff and they took a bunch of VC money. The people on staff need to do something and the VC money needs to be spent.
So of course they start meddling with their already completed product. Editing is now seen as an Important Thing and many red herrings like "keeping the site from becoming Reddit" are trumpeted in order to justify this meddling.
Nonsense like "Gorilla's vs Sharks"[1] are trumpeted in order to justify this meddling.
And even worse than the meddling on the new stuff, they go back and close old questions, even ones that have been quantifiably validated by the votes of hundreds of people. I'd actually bookmarked many of them, only to find them mysteriously closed months later.
Holy shit, are you fucking kidding me, guys?
[1] http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/