About a month ago, I decided to give the various (several hundred(!)) flavors of the StackExchange forum-family "the old college try."

That lasted all of about three weeks, and left me quickly shaking the dust off the soles of my shoes as I passed the gates of their city.

It didn't take me long at all to realize some of the reasons why LQ works for me as a participant, and why SO doesn't. Here are just a few of them ...

LQ has a well-segmented group of subforums:
All of the various StackExchange sites have only one list, to which many dozens of posts might be added each-and-every minute. There is no taxonomy other than "tags," which presents you with the fairly-impossible quest of trying to figure out the right way to find what you want.

SO allows anyone to edit anything:
Don't like what someone else wrote in "their" post? Why, go right ahead and edit it. Rewrite the damned thing, if you want to. Although the edit will be subjected to crowd-based moderation, anyone can be a part of that crowd. The same principle also appears to be true of replies and comments.

The net effect of these things, IMHO, is an extremely important (negative ...) lesson for a technical forum: "it encourages participants to focus upon other participants," instead of remaining focused on the true mission of a technical-answers site: "the poor soul who wandered here in search of an answer." I found myself in a room filled with "self-absorbed proofreaders," while most(!) of my questions never received what was to me a satisfactory answer. [i](But I did get plenty of "sniping" ... and "rewriting" ... of precisely how my question had been posed, by people who never offered an answer.)

Down-Votes:
Easily my pet peeve. I routinely observed posts that had not been "on the air" for one full minute that had already received one or two down-votes. I read numerous protesting comments, added to their questions by the same people who had asked them, demanding that the downvoters reveal themselves. I wondered how long their questions "survived." I also wonder how many of the petitioners bothered to remain there as long as I did.

Trust me on this: when people receive electric shocks, they react negatively before walking out of your room (forever). (Whether or not they actually signed up for "Psychology 101," or had the misfortune of being a graduate student.)

SO seems to use "crowd moderation" (unsuccessfully ...)
Authority Has Its Privileges.™ And, as every business owner quickly learns, you must be damned-careful about just who you give it to. IMHO, a public forum cannot be effectively managed by its own constituency. As Dr. Richard Feynman once said (in his book by the same title): "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" No, the actual psychology of the situation requires that these necessary powers be confined to a very small set of very trusted, and very dedicated, hard-working, individuals.

(No, I'm not trying to butter you up. But: "thank you.")

---
So... "here's to you, LQ!" Has it really been twelve(!) years since I first joined your company?

By observing first-hand what other forums "do and do not do," I must say that I am rather surprised at myself at just how repugnant my visceral reaction turned out to be, and how very-quickly I swore never to set foot in their city again.

While I do still use SO from time to time, if my understanding of the intended use of SO is correct, some of the things I find surprising about it are:

1) No matter how ambiguous or unclear a question which is asked might be, people are not supposed to ask the Original Poster for clarification of a question.

2) A person who asks a question is not supposed to thank someone, if someone's answer helps solve a problem the question "asker" is experiencing.

3) A question which is asked in the proper forum/site/etc., can be considered "off topic", if it asks for an opinion. That use of terminology originally struck me as very-very surprising. If I've posted a question in the proper "subject area", given that the question being asked defines the topic of the question, saying it's off topic seems a very questionable use of the phrase "off topic". If you poke around the site enough, I believe you find a description of what they mean by "off topic"; but at first blush, when someone labeled a question I asked as "off topic" even though it was asked in the proper forum/etc., I had a very intense "HUH?!" reaction.

In that context, LQ often seems a great deal more effective for everyone involved!

i once asked a question on one of those sites, was downvoted, which baffled me, and did not get a useful reply.
the whole points/voting/editing system is not transparent to me, and reading some comments it really makes me wonder.
never again.

but i often find solutions there, without participating in any way.

+1

I don't like the format used by StackExchange and other sites either, partly because it makes it extremely difficult to get clarifications and answers needed from an OP to successfully resolve their issue, as rigor mentioned.

Regards...

That would be my experience. I don't understand the nasty rules or conventions they use, it's near immediate. My first question was downvoted and someone asked me to add a comment, I could not comment because I was at negative reputation or something similar. They are very relentless at pointing out duplicates, however some duplicates are close but not exact, plus some duplicate identifications point to another question which was not resolved. Thanks for the circular nothing.

I do agree that I find a lot of answers without asking my own questions.

I agree with what has been said already. It seems, to me at least, that many who post on SO do that for one reason only: to gain 'points' and status.

That said, I too find good answers to questions on SO. If they could just stop being so d*mn elitist.

Having previously been a minor contributor to StackExchange, I have to say that I prefer the community here, but most certainly wouldn't have anything bad to say about StackExchange because they probably remain my number one source of resolving problems through searching on the internet, particularly when it comes to Python. LinuxQuestions is my number one source of resolving problems that I ask myself (customised questions, so to speak) and I also feel a greater part of the community and like to give back when I can.

For me they're apples and pears. I eat both and I'm glad that LinuxQuestions and StackOverflow both exist. However, LinuxQuestions is my apple and an apple a day keeps the doctor away...

Makes one (constantly) wonder why jeremy feels rep is an important metric. And post count for that matter ...

I'd be happy to see both evaporate.

2 members found this post helpful.

Hmm... I don't think rep and post count in themselves are a bad metric. What bugs me is if they become the goal itself, instead of actually helping people and contribute to the community.

Best regards,
HMW

3 members found this post helpful.

To me, any technical site should be focused upon ... "the customer."

This "customer" is a harried programmer ... experienced or newbie ... who is at his/her wits end, and who has posted a question that needs an answer. The entire site (and, all of its participants) should be focused upon being damn-sure that this customer is made to feel very welcome, is treated with respect, and is promptly provided with a meaningful answer (and/or, as the case may be, with links to other external resources that the respondent has actually just checked).

One thing that I absolutely like about LQ is that it does not have a system of "down-votes." You can say that "you found this post to be helpful," but you can't speak negatively about the post ... and you can't speak at all (so far as I know) about the poster.

The site is also regularly and attentively patrolled by a hard-working group of moderators ... ... who are extremely serious about the utterly-thankless duty that they do in the name of quality control. This site does not assign this duty to the participants themselves, "and wisely so." The moderators consistently show that they are: attentive, fair, and prudent. (Any "long-running successful stage show" relies utterly upon those who never step beyond the proscenium arch, but who instead concern themselves with seeing to it that said arch is spotless and entirely free of dust, such that the audience never imagines that it could possibly ever be otherwise ...)

(No, I do not expect you to "take a bow." You know who you are.) @>--+---

The sensible subdivision of the site into groups, subgroups, and topics ... buttressed by a very fine search engine ... allows our customer to find(!!) their post again.

And, last but not least, there is "the community, itself." This group is professional. The General section is set aside as a water-cooler, and, within that section, there are long-running threads about "Windows" (ick ... ) and about "Religion."

... and ... it all works.

1 members found this post helpful.

for me the third important "sidebar thing" is when they joined.
plus all the other things, like what they write for example?
anyhow, it's just one more thing to assess.
it's also a little fun (like health points in a game, or what level you are), and a little phallic.
i like to see my green bar grow...

Disabling reputation as you know is an option we all have in our individual LQ settings and options.I think it's helpful, and this has been discussed a lot in a different thread, or threads(s). However, also if you just concentrate on the questions and being helpful, plus also reading others' advice and adding to the discussion, the reputation eventually does grow. However there is no "top" value to achieve and I certainly hope that there will never be a grave marker saying "Here Lies, so-and-so, StackExchange Guru, Rep 5595. LQ Addict, Rep 2319"

It's an ego stroker. Some people feel better with them and it's meant to encourage posting. Some think higher post count or rep equates to higher competency.

Maybe both should be used to arrive at another metric. Also the ip address of the poster should be listed since the server has that info already.

Why? The server also has our email addresses and passwords - should they be given out too?

IP address should stay private, but the country could be displayed. It would help when advising hardware purchases, sometimes also with internet connection issues.