One of my early goals on StackOverflow was to collect enough up-votes that I no longer cared much about down-votes on my own questions or answers. Saves me from having to use sock-puppet accounts.
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iOS Alternatives to StackOverflow?
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Or you could just ask and answer questions... No gaming necessary.
If you're asking good questions and providing good answers, you'll get upvotes easy.
If you'd like to discuss the website where "you'll be heard" (it's not run by mysterious gods or anything. I'm right freaking here. Numerous others who have moderation privledges are right here, too. If you spent less time complaining and more time contributing useful content you'd probably have moderation privledges by now, too), then the proper venue, as I previously mentioned, is meta.stackoverflow.com.
I kind of hate these forums because we allow pointless back and forth, and complaining, and ranting, like this.
If you're asking good questions and providing good answers, you'll get upvotes easy.
If you'd like to discuss the website where "you'll be heard" (it's not run by mysterious gods or anything. I'm right freaking here. Numerous others who have moderation privledges are right here, too. If you spent less time complaining and more time contributing useful content you'd probably have moderation privledges by now, too), then the proper venue, as I previously mentioned, is meta.stackoverflow.com.
I kind of hate these forums because we allow pointless back and forth, and complaining, and ranting, like this.
Possibly, but the odds seem to be getting worse. e.g. not easy.
I've been seeing a higher percentage of up votes on bad answers (including some of my own early attempts at answering), and down votes and close votes on better ones. There are seem to be more and more people with moderator privileges who do not read very carefully. Very few people vote contrary to the masses of other voters.
Thus gaming of the system may be required (as in game theory for optimization of statistically expected results).
That's what I love about stack...I can get answers quickly there and no drama. As a beginner I did ask rookie questions that they were sassy about and I did learn from this. You have to prove that you have tried ways to fix your issue.
I enjoy it
I'm surprised that Apple's forums wouldn't have more on mobile dev considered it's such a prominent thing. OTOH, makes sense that documentation should cover some of it. However, it can be difficult to find stuff sometimes. I've worked in and heard of plenty of environments where they would rather the new guy just ask something and have it explained in 5 to 45 minutes than for him to hunt and peck for the solution himself and take from hours to up to the whole day.
This thread is interesting in where I don't recall any message boards for mobile developers. Plenty for handheld device users, for developers, but NOT both together. I'll have to revisit this thread for more updates, and to provide any myself.
Answering questions is difficult. Unless you're amongst the first to answer, then they won't take anymore answers. You may have a better answer, but in most cases, you can't improve upon it. Great for keeping responses low, but bad for those who are trying to up their rep (as this venue was suggested by you).
Asking questions... may work. I've read blog entries about folks who got frustrated with SO. One guy who was a "so-so" developer ended up racking up a lot of points by asking typical Java questions. Ironic thing is he got far more rep points then folks he knew who were actual Java programmers/devs and knew the language very well.
It's all a tradeoff IMO. Some of the strengths of SO are the weaknesses of "typical forums", and some of the strengths of "typical forums" are weaknesses on SO. You do get a lot of "waste of space" posts on "typical forums", but on SO, someone can post a good response that gets approved by many SO users, but someone with high rep can just come in and quash it all.
If a question doesn't belong, half the time, folks have suggested trying Stack Exchange instead, or some other board that's part of the "Stack/Exchange family". Other times, not too helpful. That said, I do use it to find questions on code specific problems. Also for conceptual questions (which mostly get flagged for not belonging there, but no alternatives are provided.)
This thread is interesting in where I don't recall any message boards for mobile developers. Plenty for handheld device users, for developers, but NOT both together. I'll have to revisit this thread for more updates, and to provide any myself.
Answering questions is difficult. Unless you're amongst the first to answer, then they won't take anymore answers. You may have a better answer, but in most cases, you can't improve upon it. Great for keeping responses low, but bad for those who are trying to up their rep (as this venue was suggested by you).
Asking questions... may work. I've read blog entries about folks who got frustrated with SO. One guy who was a "so-so" developer ended up racking up a lot of points by asking typical Java questions. Ironic thing is he got far more rep points then folks he knew who were actual Java programmers/devs and knew the language very well.
It's all a tradeoff IMO. Some of the strengths of SO are the weaknesses of "typical forums", and some of the strengths of "typical forums" are weaknesses on SO. You do get a lot of "waste of space" posts on "typical forums", but on SO, someone can post a good response that gets approved by many SO users, but someone with high rep can just come in and quash it all.
If a question doesn't belong, half the time, folks have suggested trying Stack Exchange instead, or some other board that's part of the "Stack/Exchange family". Other times, not too helpful. That said, I do use it to find questions on code specific problems. Also for conceptual questions (which mostly get flagged for not belonging there, but no alternatives are provided.)
I would't recommend answering a question that was asked within the first ~15 minutes. A lot of easy questions end up getting deleted within the first 15 minutes as duplicates. Other questions will have other people posting answers at the same time as you, so it's a crapshoot who will end up getting +25 rep for the right answer.
Instead, I would look at stuff older than that. If nothing happens within ~15 minutes, it's good enough that it wasn't deleted and it's hard enough that no one else immediately knew the answer. If you know the answer, go for it.
Alternatively, you'll find questions via DuckDuckGo (or one of those inferior search engines) which get you started, but you end up with a much better solution. Post your much better solution as a new answer and over the months you'll steadily rack up rep.
I have 10 or 20 answers that once a month get an upvote, so I pretty steadily get 100-200 rep per month.
Keep in mind that StackOverflow is nothing more than the world's largest FAQ on programming. Something different about it from most FAQs is that the Questions and Answers actually come from separate people on a regular basis - but it is completely okay to enter a more normal FAQ kind of entry where you know a Question that people will ask, and you also know the Answer, and you can post both at once (near the bottom of the form when submitting a q
Question is a checkbox to provide the Answer concurrently.)
It is a resource with an eye towards, not just the person asking the question right now, but towards the hundreds (or thousands or more) of people who will find the questions and answers in the future via a search engine. I think this was the inspiration, in fact, for the website - all the old posts you come across on other forums via Google, where the answer has rotted somehow. Part of the discussion was archived while the rest was discarded. The answer has a dead link in it (this is why link only answers are burned with fire on StackOverflow. Linking to docs or extra, optional reading, is fine. Saying your answer is on another website and just linking to it is not acceptable.)
Every edit, delete, or close can be undone, if you have sufficient rep. If you have inadequate rep to do it yourself, you can bring it to the attention of someone who can do it via:
1 - meta.stackoverflow.com
2 - Flag the post and use the custom reason box to say whatever. I frequently use this to mark questions as protected, since I only have 4K rep so far (protecting questions requires 15K.)
There's a lot of gray area here. I wish there was a flow chart for how to pick which exchange to put your question on.
Here's my process:
If you have made an attempt at coding a solution yourself, but it didn't work, your question belongs on Stack Overflow. Be sure to include what you tried (the code), an explanation of what you wanted it to do, and what it actually did.
If you have made an attempt at coding a solution yourself, and it does work, but you want it better, it probably doesn't belong on Stack Overflow. There's another stack exchange dedicated to optimizing code which already works... I don't remember which.
If your question is just about an equation and is only tangently related to programming, it may belong on the the math stack exchange instead.
If your question is about using your command line or another program that could be used with no knowledge of programming, it belongs on Super User.
If it involves hardware you built, it probably goes on the Engineering Stack Exchange.
I'm not sure what the following stack exchanges are for, but I imagine some of them might be where your question actually goes if you might think it goes on Stack Overflow: Server Fault, Ask Different, plus one on Linux... Not sure what the name is.
If none of the above apply, Stack Overflow might be the right place to put it.
What I dislike about Stack Overflow is the question ban. To get out of one, you basically have to fix your questions and then hope to get enough upvotes to get the ban lifted. For me, those questions are so old that I have to cross my fingers and hope for three upvotes, let alone the number I actually need.
Chances are, those questions will get answered long before they can be found, so you can't count on those for rep. All folks want to do is have enough rep so they make comments, upvote, and be a part of the community.
Stackoverflow is not a forum. It's a Q&A. SO assumes you know how to program and present the case clearly with a solid flow of data through the code. If you can't get that across, it will be down voted.
If you want to get across that you don't understand something out of the documentation then ensure you include links to it. You should read books to understand concepts and then read the documentation of the language you are learning.
I feel like most people trying to learn how to code forget how useful books are at explaining design patterns, concepts and architectures. That or look for videos on YouTube if you don't learn well from books. Also, Ray Wenderlich is great for tutorials to begin to understand the tools (functions, design patterns and more) of the language. They also do a good job at explaining deeper concepts of Computer Science.
If you're looking for deeper understanding of computer architecture, SO is not the place to go. Go to RW.
Honestly, you come off as you are looking for a mentor. Maybe you should look at LaunchCode.
I must say - I have 92 reps on SO but, due to some "bad apples" in my question basket,am unable to ask questions there. I have gone back and done some edits, but it could be a while before the system lets me ask more questions.
I think maybe they should at least clarify what "positive contributions" means - if I have 92 reps, I am clearly a positive contributor.
Crap like that is why I don't ask questions on stack overflow. The mods are a joke and are on a permanent power trip.
The meta site is no good either. You post there and the post goes missing.
Without links it's difficult to help you at all. You didn't give a link to your account, and you didn't link to your questions.
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Crap like what? He didn't even post a link for you to know whether the questions he asked were any good or not. You're instantly assuming that there are no bad questions. "There are no bad questions" applies to situations where you're being lectured in real time. On a forum where all content is permanently available and readily available via a simple search, there are many situations where whatever you're saying is a waste of time for everyone reading it.
The mods are elected on a regular basis. The most recent elections were just a few weeks ago. Hundreds of members compete for just a few mod positions. If you don't like the current ones, vote for other ones.
Right now though, you're just mudslinging with zero facts to back yourself up.
For example...
?
Your anger on here is only proving my point. You're constantly getting over-defensive of stack overflow. The site has real problems caused by its overly aggressive mods but no one on SO wants to admit that.
I've never been able to ask a question there under any of my logins because despite me clearly stating I already searched, and showing the links I'd already looked at and explaining how my situation is different, their stupid mods (and yes I absolutely mean stupid) would close the thread, mark it as a duplicate, and link me to the exact thread I said I already looked at (hence why I said stupid).
When I would edit the thread explaining it wasn't a duplicate you'd of swore I murdered a baby. A group of them would chime in freaking out saying not to ever edit a thread again or I'd be banned (multiple mods would say this mind you).
When I posted about it on the meta site the complaint vanished.
So yes, there ARE problems with stack overflow and its mods whether you wish to see it or not.
You should delete this. Nobody will ever have the same problem you did, and it definitely didn't have anything to do with what your title said it did:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13865295/nslog-not-showing-anything
This one is WAAAAAAAY too broad:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5967901/how-do-i-build-a-location-based-nws-radar-app
Right from the title it's immediately obvious that that's too broad. I'd probably also delete that one.
The other five questions are pretty low quality. You don't have any code in them when you're asking code questions, and when you ask UI questions, you have no screenshots or diagrams showing what you have in mind.
I also notice that you have very few tags. Why is that? If it's a question about iOS UI, Storyboard or Xib is probably a relevant tag, for example, but you never use it.
I know you're trying to help, but:
1) Deleting questions won't help
2) All those low-quality questions are from a few years ago. At this point, adding code would mean going through old files to get code that I should have posted back when I wrote the question, and/or maybe doing something funky to reproduce the problems I had.
At this point, what I'd like is for the system to overlook the poorly-received questions I posted, as they were from a few years ago and my reputation on the site has increased significantly.
1 - Yes it will. That's why you are given a badge for deleting poorly received content. The badges all exist to encourage good behavior.
It removes your question from future search results. Think of how often you find useful results on StackOverflow. Why does that work and you don't find anywhere near as much useless results as you do on other websites? It's because the lower quality content is deleted. Also, any penalties you received from having posted the content are undone.
2 - You're not understanding StackOverflow / the Stack Exchanges yet if you think age of the content is important. It's a Q&A. It is not a forum. The questions you post are not just for yourself - they're for every person who will ever have the question in the future (it's why questions which will never occur in the future are discouraged. IE, a typo like the one you had where you were missing a space.) Answers are not just posted for the person who posted the question - they're posted for every person who will ever have the question. There are badges for editing (and hopefully improving) old content. As I stated previously, it's to encourage good behavior.
Nope. Every time I go to delete a post, I get a message that says "Deleting this post will not help you regain posting privileges."
Yes, I understand that. Thanks, though.
I love SO. I don' think any other forum of this type comes close to how great SO is. But there are some questions you cannot ask there, and rightly so. Is there any forum where you can ask questions you aren't allowed to ask on SO? For example, maybe I want to ask how to replicate the native photos app. Or maybe, I want to ask how a certain app created a certain UI component. These are both questions that are not allowed to be asked on SO.
That's way to vague to ask anywhere.
This question could be valid on SO, if it were more specific. If the question was whether a certain component is appropriate, or which component is best for a given situation, it might be best to ask on the UX Stack Exchange.
I agree its extremely vague, especially for SO. But shouldn't there be a place where people can ask this question?
I know it can be answered.
SO being only about specific coding questions is nice, as those do pop up for many of use.
For what you mentioned, I seek other forums. For example, which Python IDE to use, compare and contrast them, more abstract programming questions, etc.