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deceze Mod
deceze Mod
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Who would that new site be for? If the split is along the axis of "experts" vs. "newbies", then let's examine these two camps:

Expert

  • has experience and knowledge
  • knows how to do their own research, asks very little
  • is mostly looking for interesting questions to answer
  • prefers to "get the kids off the lawn"

Newbie

  • lacks experience and knowledge
  • wants to get their problems solved by asking someone
  • posts any sort of question that comes up
  • is frustrated by being yelled at by old-timers

Since that's obviously a spectrum, somewhere in the middle there is really the sweet spot for non-trivial questions which are answerable by the same class of people. It's only the extreme ends that clash with each other.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level [..] while Open SO would be as open to users of all levels of programming experience as it wants.

So you want to split it right down that middle, where the sweet spot really is. You get an accumulation of experts on Advanced SO, and a school of newbies at Open SO. The rest in the middle are left to wonder where exactly they fit in. Naturally the self-selection will be far from perfect. You'll get a whole lot of newbies posting on Advanced SO, and a whole lot of people that could post on Advanced SO will post on Open SO.

If the self-selection process were perfect and everyone properly stayed in their respective ghettos, you'd mostly get very very low quality threads on Open SO, and very very low activity on Advanced SO because experts tend not to ask a lot. Should Advanced SO manage to survive regardless, eventually the Open SO users would catch on to the fact that their site's quality isn't great, and that there's this gathering of experts going on over there, and they'd start migrating. And you have the same problem all over again.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level

That is a slippery slope in itself. Who's going to set the standard and keep it? You'd be constantly battling to set and keep the lower boundary. People being turned away would be grumpy and start complaining (🤔 where have we heard that before…?!). And besides, eventually people migrate from being a newbie to being an advanced programmer, so what's the exact procedure for reinstating users that have previously been turned away?

As I see it, separation just generates a bunch of new problems without ultimately solving any of the existing ones. Eventually those will all catch up to you again. For a short period you may have some utopia, but that won't last. We already had that when SO was new. SO is now fighting the issues of its own success. Presumably you'd want the new SOs to each be successful too, so those problems will all reappear eventually.

It's better to find solutions that work within the existing SO, rather than starting separatist movementsstarting separatist movements. In terms of software development: you ain't gonna successfully rewrite a decade old legacy project in a new shiny framework; you gotta keep refactoring the existing code little by little.

Who would that new site be for? If the split is along the axis of "experts" vs. "newbies", then let's examine these two camps:

Expert

  • has experience and knowledge
  • knows how to do their own research, asks very little
  • is mostly looking for interesting questions to answer
  • prefers to "get the kids off the lawn"

Newbie

  • lacks experience and knowledge
  • wants to get their problems solved by asking someone
  • posts any sort of question that comes up
  • is frustrated by being yelled at by old-timers

Since that's obviously a spectrum, somewhere in the middle there is really the sweet spot for non-trivial questions which are answerable by the same class of people. It's only the extreme ends that clash with each other.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level [..] while Open SO would be as open to users of all levels of programming experience as it wants.

So you want to split it right down that middle, where the sweet spot really is. You get an accumulation of experts on Advanced SO, and a school of newbies at Open SO. The rest in the middle are left to wonder where exactly they fit in. Naturally the self-selection will be far from perfect. You'll get a whole lot of newbies posting on Advanced SO, and a whole lot of people that could post on Advanced SO will post on Open SO.

If the self-selection process were perfect and everyone properly stayed in their respective ghettos, you'd mostly get very very low quality threads on Open SO, and very very low activity on Advanced SO because experts tend not to ask a lot. Should Advanced SO manage to survive regardless, eventually the Open SO users would catch on to the fact that their site's quality isn't great, and that there's this gathering of experts going on over there, and they'd start migrating. And you have the same problem all over again.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level

That is a slippery slope in itself. Who's going to set the standard and keep it? You'd be constantly battling to set and keep the lower boundary. People being turned away would be grumpy and start complaining (🤔 where have we heard that before…?!). And besides, eventually people migrate from being a newbie to being an advanced programmer, so what's the exact procedure for reinstating users that have previously been turned away?

As I see it, separation just generates a bunch of new problems without ultimately solving any of the existing ones. Eventually those will all catch up to you again. For a short period you may have some utopia, but that won't last. We already had that when SO was new. SO is now fighting the issues of its own success. Presumably you'd want the new SOs to each be successful too, so those problems will all reappear eventually.

It's better to find solutions that work within the existing SO, rather than starting separatist movements. In terms of software development: you ain't gonna successfully rewrite a decade old legacy project in a new shiny framework; you gotta keep refactoring the existing code little by little.

Who would that new site be for? If the split is along the axis of "experts" vs. "newbies", then let's examine these two camps:

Expert

  • has experience and knowledge
  • knows how to do their own research, asks very little
  • is mostly looking for interesting questions to answer
  • prefers to "get the kids off the lawn"

Newbie

  • lacks experience and knowledge
  • wants to get their problems solved by asking someone
  • posts any sort of question that comes up
  • is frustrated by being yelled at by old-timers

Since that's obviously a spectrum, somewhere in the middle there is really the sweet spot for non-trivial questions which are answerable by the same class of people. It's only the extreme ends that clash with each other.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level [..] while Open SO would be as open to users of all levels of programming experience as it wants.

So you want to split it right down that middle, where the sweet spot really is. You get an accumulation of experts on Advanced SO, and a school of newbies at Open SO. The rest in the middle are left to wonder where exactly they fit in. Naturally the self-selection will be far from perfect. You'll get a whole lot of newbies posting on Advanced SO, and a whole lot of people that could post on Advanced SO will post on Open SO.

If the self-selection process were perfect and everyone properly stayed in their respective ghettos, you'd mostly get very very low quality threads on Open SO, and very very low activity on Advanced SO because experts tend not to ask a lot. Should Advanced SO manage to survive regardless, eventually the Open SO users would catch on to the fact that their site's quality isn't great, and that there's this gathering of experts going on over there, and they'd start migrating. And you have the same problem all over again.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level

That is a slippery slope in itself. Who's going to set the standard and keep it? You'd be constantly battling to set and keep the lower boundary. People being turned away would be grumpy and start complaining (🤔 where have we heard that before…?!). And besides, eventually people migrate from being a newbie to being an advanced programmer, so what's the exact procedure for reinstating users that have previously been turned away?

As I see it, separation just generates a bunch of new problems without ultimately solving any of the existing ones. Eventually those will all catch up to you again. For a short period you may have some utopia, but that won't last. We already had that when SO was new. SO is now fighting the issues of its own success. Presumably you'd want the new SOs to each be successful too, so those problems will all reappear eventually.

It's better to find solutions that work within the existing SO, rather than starting separatist movements. In terms of software development: you ain't gonna successfully rewrite a decade old legacy project in a new shiny framework; you gotta keep refactoring the existing code little by little.

Source Link
deceze Mod
deceze Mod
  • 518.2k
  • 26
  • 139
  • 141

Who would that new site be for? If the split is along the axis of "experts" vs. "newbies", then let's examine these two camps:

Expert

  • has experience and knowledge
  • knows how to do their own research, asks very little
  • is mostly looking for interesting questions to answer
  • prefers to "get the kids off the lawn"

Newbie

  • lacks experience and knowledge
  • wants to get their problems solved by asking someone
  • posts any sort of question that comes up
  • is frustrated by being yelled at by old-timers

Since that's obviously a spectrum, somewhere in the middle there is really the sweet spot for non-trivial questions which are answerable by the same class of people. It's only the extreme ends that clash with each other.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level [..] while Open SO would be as open to users of all levels of programming experience as it wants.

So you want to split it right down that middle, where the sweet spot really is. You get an accumulation of experts on Advanced SO, and a school of newbies at Open SO. The rest in the middle are left to wonder where exactly they fit in. Naturally the self-selection will be far from perfect. You'll get a whole lot of newbies posting on Advanced SO, and a whole lot of people that could post on Advanced SO will post on Open SO.

If the self-selection process were perfect and everyone properly stayed in their respective ghettos, you'd mostly get very very low quality threads on Open SO, and very very low activity on Advanced SO because experts tend not to ask a lot. Should Advanced SO manage to survive regardless, eventually the Open SO users would catch on to the fact that their site's quality isn't great, and that there's this gathering of experts going on over there, and they'd start migrating. And you have the same problem all over again.

Advanced SO would be free to turn away users whose technical knowledge and experience is below a certain level

That is a slippery slope in itself. Who's going to set the standard and keep it? You'd be constantly battling to set and keep the lower boundary. People being turned away would be grumpy and start complaining (🤔 where have we heard that before…?!). And besides, eventually people migrate from being a newbie to being an advanced programmer, so what's the exact procedure for reinstating users that have previously been turned away?

As I see it, separation just generates a bunch of new problems without ultimately solving any of the existing ones. Eventually those will all catch up to you again. For a short period you may have some utopia, but that won't last. We already had that when SO was new. SO is now fighting the issues of its own success. Presumably you'd want the new SOs to each be successful too, so those problems will all reappear eventually.

It's better to find solutions that work within the existing SO, rather than starting separatist movements. In terms of software development: you ain't gonna successfully rewrite a decade old legacy project in a new shiny framework; you gotta keep refactoring the existing code little by little.