@Tinkeringbell Well, I don't really follow Meta SE, more SO Meta, so I may well have missed things. And I don't know "everyone", just those active on SO Meta. Just a lot of names I'd never seen before I was seeing since last fall in the various "blow-ups" here, who were (from the context of the contribution) mainly from other sites, whether they have an SO account, or not.
I have the same impression as Tink. Most of the people who shout on MSE instead of speaking seem to me to come from the SO side. Very subjective opinion though, I haven't really checked.
And I guess many of us have SO accounts even though that isn't our main site. I have some 3k rep on SO, for instance, but I don't consider myself an active SO user.
thing is all corporations have a common weakness - their primary goal is to achieve financial success, and this is what we should fight to "win"... what are we trying to win, again?
a lot of people seem to forget that there can be other places to do the same thing, and so limiting your vision to just one place is not in anyone's best interests
same as if politics get too bad in one's country of birth - you can migrate to a more peaceful country
sure there are difficulties but it might be worth it in the long run
those who have lived in places which never got terribly bad seem to think this is some kind of fantasy and nobody really thinks that, but they forget that people from third world countries routinely jump borders and escape to better countries to find any other kind of life than what they were dealt at the start of their lives
a lot of users here have been spoiled by how good this site was for a very long while, and so a similar bias is expected
it's not going to be easy to convince most to jump ship today, but we'll see about that in a couple years
If Codidact will be a success, I'm all for it. SO could use a good competition, even when it was still a good place. Competition makes you respect your users more.
reading CEO's responses now is like watching the politicians on TV... this is not the place I joined, but now I know how to rebuild it once more, or if someone beats me to it, I'll join theirs
I don't really see any alternatives as "competition" strictly speaking, more like the actual, correct implementation that was meant to be in the first place
imagine if Wikipedia was a for-profit organization and the same stuff started happening to it today, like "we need more articles and more editors, and they should all have a happy time editing" - someone would be building a non-profit version already
@JourneymanGeek That's partially why I'm not recommending codidact; it's missing a 'why', it's missing a differentiator; it's missing how we are going to evolve Q&A to make it more useful for today.
@GeorgeStocker you know.... at this point it reminds me of politics in Israel: we have two big parties: one exists for decades, and one is brand new, founded for the sole purpose of bringing the other party to lose, or more accurate to say to bring down the current PM. It's a "vote for us because the other one is bad" party, which is just wrong. They have nothing of their own.
Well, any CEO can be compared to being a politician, I guess. Both involve getting hard decisions, always running after the money required to keep the company alive, etc.
@JourneymanGeek That's partially why I'm not recommending codidact; it's missing a 'why', it's missing a differentiator; it's missing how we are going to evolve Q&A to make it more useful for today.
@GeorgeStocker heh. We have that... it's just spread through about 200 different forum threads. The biggest one is that it's community-run not corporately-run, but there's a bunch of stuff about how we're tweaking the format to make it work smoother too.
@Shadow9 "They have nothing of their own", how do you know?, have you been reading the discussions in Codidact?, their reasoning?, or are you just dismissing them outright?
Also, @GeorgeStocker, I'm sure we would really appreciate your insight and suggestions on codidact. We're sort of making it up as we go along, but there have been some very interesting discussions on how we can improve on SE's model. Your experience would be invaluable!
If you're interested in what the vision for Codidact is, have a look at this thread (I'd recommend hitting the Summarize This Topic button, otherwise it's... long)
@Lamak I talk about politics in Israel, the new party. Codidact, at this point, is like that party in the sense it's "Anti SO", created only because SO became bad. Other aspects are not the same, or can't be compared.
@GeorgeStocker honestly if you can just describe what you think a better successor to SO/SE should look like in abstract, without taking into account what the current state of any prominent alternatives is today, someone out there will pick up on that for sure and words will turn into reality later
Well here is a post that even a year ago I never thought I would be writing.
I've been part of this site for six years to the day, January 21, 2014. My interest in blender caused me to get more and more involved with BSE so much so that I was one of our first three elected moderators. Over the y...
Most of you here probably don't know my handle or haven't interacted with me personally since I've taken a back seat for a while now. I was the very first moderator here and I'm very proud of that fact and what I've accomplished in my earlier years. This post is being done off the top of my head ...
One of the main things the codidact forums have brought home to me is exactly why I was so happy to leave forums for SE way back when. And this forum is a modern, improved version, too.
I gotta say uservoice to me sounds like corporate "we hear you, post your thoughts in the comments below" and then they do what they wanted anyway and point at the comment that aligns with their actions the most and say "see? we listened!", so I have low trust of uservoice >.>
@terdon I'm not sure my answer would be palatable for you. I believe a public Q&A should be community run; but I also believe it needs a sustainable business model to stay around -- not a "get big and go public" business model; but something that delivers value people are willing to pay for.
@GeorgeStocker Palatable or not, in my experience your answers are well formed, and clearly expressed. We may disagree, but that doesn't mean yours wouldn't be a useful perspective to hear.
@GeorgeStocker I don't think those are at odds, actually. I think that's viable if (as is planned) you set up a non-profit around the organisation, and reinvest its income back into the site (somehow) rather than focusing on making profit.
So I'd do away with upvotes and downvotes completely; as well as accepted answers; I'd replace it with something that is specialized towards "finding the answer I need for what I'm trying to do"
Yes. I've long been thinking about a scheme where votes age away. You should have a minimum threshold you can't fall below, so if you've passed +10 say, then you can't age back to 0, but you can age back to +10 from your max of +30.
And unfortunately; a completely 'democracy' run Q&A site will fall under its own weight. We do need a charismatic leader type that can help to drive that vision and relentlessly hone in on that vision
fwiw I'm investigating showing the time graph of votes over time for my personal Q&A project kinda like Steam reviews has, so it would be immediately visible if the post was popular in the past, but later started receiving negative or "outdated" flags/reactions cdn.neow.in/news/images/uploaded/2018/10/1540207850_capture.jpg
@GeorgeStocker On the other hand, there's a degree to which we need to compete, at least to start with, because that's where a lot of our initial userbase will come from.
Pitch it and position it as programmer collaboration software, or software devleopment collaboration software; something that takes it out of the gartner quadrant for Q&A.
Collaboration I could go with, but it needs to be pitched as not just software - that's the problem SO is having right now, and potentially another source of people.
afaik the plan with Codidact is to create a basic Q&A platform and then expand that to fit the needs of each specific community, without porting ALL the features to ALL communities, just the ones that request them
@GeorgeStocker Why would we lose? First of all, what would losing even mean? All we need is a critical mass of users, we don't need to get everyone or even more people than SO. And there's no reason why SO would be the main thing. If anything, I would personally prefer it isn't, and we don't focus on programming as the first subject.
All pointers indicate that the first Codidact community, as soon as development reaches the point where it's possible to actually use Q&A, will be Writing.CDCT.
@GeorgeStocker I think you are thinking of this too much as a for-profit venture. The objective here isn't to be profitable, it's to build something that we can use. If anyone else wants to as well, so much the better.
Either way, I certainly don't see SO as the model to follow. SE, perhaps, but not SO.
I think the "someone" I personally would like SE to serve today is every user who's not paying a dime for their paid Teams or other services they sell, simple as that. But let is be a separate division in the company, with just that goal. Right now it seems like they're trying to minimize the expenses on public-facing sites and maximize profits from private projects.
@terdon servers aren’t free. Bandwidth isn’t free. Time isn’t free. I want the site to stay around. If you rely on good will and donations you will burn out.
@Shadow9 eh, at worst, that's not that different from the the period just before and after the 2017 issues. Its just that we had a glorious thaw, and a monumental let down since
@GeorgeStocker that is one possibility, yes. I don't see why I should assume it will happen though. And coming from the open source world, I know there are many long-standing projects that have managed.
And if we start looking at it as something we need to be able to sell, I don't really have any interest in participating. I'd much rather it died than that it get tied to some entity forcing us to make the profitable choice.
if the data exchange is mostly going to be text, I don't think the bill will be too high at the end of the month, especially with a conservative user base at the beginning
What I'm worried about myself is how they'll attract enough people, i.e. marketing. If it's meant to be small site and replace non-SO sites then it's great, and it will be a sure success, but if it's meant to replace SO... it's a whole different level.
Or it turns into the "Stack Overflow rejects" pile. Not trying to rain on parades, I've just seen too many Internet community splits that wind up like that
I don't see Codidact as being meant to outright replace SE. It's meant as an alternative for those who don't want to use SE for whatever reason, and to try to do stuff better. But that doesn't mean that it will necessarily have to become bigger than or really anywhere near the scale of SO.
@Shadow9 The way I see it (and I'm a nobody in codidact, this is just my 2c), I dont' aim to replace anything. I want a place where I can have fun and learn by asking and answering questions, without feeling that my work is benefiting an ugly corporation. So if it stays tiny, but with an engaged userbase, that's fine by me.
Honestly, I want SO to succeed and start listening to it's users again, or, pull its hands away from the community and focussing on selling their stuff to who ever will take it and let the community manage itself
All this making new TOS, revaming homepage, relicensing forced down throat, firing mods, every decision without any community consultation has been chosen poorly
@GeorgeStocker Sure, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. I don't think anybody really wants to make a living out of this. It's certainly not an official goal of the project.
I need to be clear about this: none of what I'm saying is meant to change your mind on codidact's formation, how it runs, or any of that. I have no horse in that race. All I'm saying is that I see governance issues that would cause me to be concerned about the future of the project; as well as branding and positioning issues that would compel me or others to dump Stack Overflow for it.
And all I'm opining on is if I would try to solve a problem in this space; I'd be picky about who I'm solving it for; what the success criteria is; and how a business model ensures that this provides lasting, sustainable value.
@GeorgeStocker As I said before, I think this perspective is useful and needs to be heard. I happen to disagree, but that doesn't make your points any less valid or helpful.
It would be next to impossible to follow a conversation (way too many threads), some people will be sure to be obnoxious and unpleasant, the whole thing would be a mess.