Let’s All Learn from Stackoverflow, Please
I tried to leave feedback on Soma’s most recent post, but apparently the comment system thought I was long winded. After being redirected to the home page a few times (without any indication if the comment submission was successful), I reentered most of my thoughts in multiple short segments. Well, the end result was not exactly what I wanted, and I do own a blog, so here they are in full with a little extra elaboration. 
My recommendation for user content? Copy Stackoverflow!
Forums such as http://forums.asp.net/ could really use an upgrade, otherwise the communities might just migrate to stackoverflow.com. It is already a far better application than the MS hosted forums I’ve used. Please take a serious look.
Maybe you could just buy the source and incorporate it into MS sites, or maybe it will go open-source. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Developers spend a great deal of time digging through forums and A LOT of time is spent reading messages that are not helpful. Sometimes the threads are dated. (How many times have I found “a solution” only to realize that the discussion applied a beta version that is now RTM?) Sometimes they are junk. (How much bad programming advice is scattered throughout every programming forum?) Sometimes a great concept is poorly worded from a non-native English speaker. Sometimes the thread jumps around from one topic to the next and the “real answer” is on page 5. Sometimes the answer doesn’t come up in a web search because the forum is not SEO. Sometimes a meta-discussion (comments about the thread) clouds the real topic at hand. Etc, Etc.
The design at stackoverflow has solved many of these issues, and I wish MS forums would do the same. Effective documentation needs effective organization and that is one thing that stackoverflow has really nailed when it comes to user generated content.
It’s great that we are seeing performance improvements in tools like VS 2010. Better organization of user generated content and .Net community discussions could be an even bigger productivity boost for all of us. Please spend just as much effort in this area.
Do you agree?
So what is so great about stackoverflow?
- It’s CC-wiki (And now a data dump torrent)
- It’s fast. (But they only use a few servers)
- No sub-forums. (Just tag your questions and everyone (including Google) will find them just fine)
- Reputation earns privileges. (The site gains more administrators the more it is used)
- True OpenID support. (Not a provider-only half implementation)
- No stupid signatures at the bottom of every post.
- No “please mark this as the accepted answer” posts. (You’d be modded down for that)
- Meta-discussion and clarifications have a clear home. (comments)
- Good answers bubble up, bad ones are pushed down.
- Other (trusted) people can clean up your post. (Its a thing of good if u speak new to englissh)
- and lastly …
All programming questions are fair game. Today you can ask “how to setup Tomcat 5.5 for ArcIMS 9.2″ and tomorrow you can ask “what’s the big deal about Dependency Injection” after answering a few questions about LINQ and C#. No one will ever say “Excuse me, you are on the wrong forum and I’m moving (or closing, or ignoring, or down modding) your question. “
Maybe Microsoft shouldn’t try to keep up with stackoverflow.
Come to think of it, maybe Microsoft **shouldn’t** try to keep up with stackoverflow. I’d much rather have those forums dry up and move to an open site like stackoverflow. Now that would be awesome!
What do you think?