Well, they don't want Stack Overflow to be a social network. But like Soylent Green, it's made out of people. In SO's case, inconveniently alive people.

Humans are inherently social, and the amount of effort SO staff and moderators have to go to trying to stamp that out is a sign that SO really is a social network.

I always think it's a bad sign when product designers think they know much better than their users what they want. I think that's what killed Friendster. I think that's why Google Plus is kinda sad and sterile. If you're going to go to all the trouble of making a product for people, I'd rather you listened to them from time to time.

We do listen to the people! No other site gives so much power to regular users, up to and including moderator elections. The problem with listening to the people too much is that popularity becomes the most important metric, with predictable results:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popul...

It's a balancing act. What people actually want, and what they think they want, are often two different hings.

Listening to people is entirely different than electing moderators. Nobody here is complaining that you aren't serving insiders. But I do see a lot of grumbling from people who feel like they have been forced out.

In the link, you seem to be basically making a slippery slope argument. I am sure a lot of people agree that they don't want a sea of memes. But a lot of reasonable people feel you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. A modestly subjective question like "What are the relative merits of frameworks X, Y, and Z?" is not anything like a rage comic. Neither is a reasonable discussion on programming mistakes.

Your "opportunity cost" argument strikes me as entirely wrongheaded. You pretend there are only two things people can do in the world: subjective questions and the objective ones. Your worry that a topic expert is spending 10 minutes on something he enjoys rather than the thing you want him to do is paternalistic and controlling. Every real community bonds not just over the practical stuff, but the fun stuff. It's as if you're saying that Golden Gate Park should be removed because those people should be out picking up trash or working to pay taxes.

I'm saying that Golden Gate Park is not the same as your office building, or school campus. I don't begrudge the park the right to exist, but places of learning aren't places of pure entertainment, at least not in the Stack Exchange worldview.

The analogy I was making was to the city of San Francisco.

If you want to make an analogy to a place of learning, consider a college campus. People are encouraged to do things there beyond studying. Areas are set aside just for having fun. That kind of community bonding doesn't take away from education; it enhances and supports it.

Also, nobody here is arguing that SO should be a place of pure entertainment. As far as I can tell, that's a straw man. Or perhaps more accurately, the imaginary bogeyman SO is fleeing.

so what should I do with my most recent post? http://serverfault.com/questions/400268/profile-long-running...

Should I submit the same question to SO instead?

I'm one of the moderators on Stack Overflow. It's not my goal to stamp out any sign that SO is a social network, but I do want to prevent it from turning into Yahoo! Answers. Some level of moderation is necessary to maintain quality. Just because some users want to use Stack Overflow to ask off-topic questions doesn't mean we should let them.

Has anybody here complained about wanting off-topic questions? The linked article sure isn't.

Your definition of "on-topic" is not the same as ours, therefore you do want off-topic questions.

Saying that our definition of the topic is wrong, does not mean you aren't asking for off-topic questions to be allowed. It's the same thing.

I agree that the definitions are different.

However, look at what you're saying. You've divided the world into us and them. It's you, the defender of the one true definition, versus the ignorant outsider fools. It's utterly close-minded.

It's your bat and ball, naturally, so you're welcome to keep on driving off the people who have different views. But don't go around saying you listen to your users when you talk like this.

From the linked article:

> ...throw out the gazillion-sub-site silliness and broaden allowed topics for discussion.

Right. That's a sign that people disagree about what exactly is on-topic. Not a sign that people want to turn it into an anything-goes meme factory.

He is complaining about wanting to ask off-topic questions, which is exactly what you denied was in the article.

No, he has a different view of what on topic means than the people who currently hold the power.

No, I think you're being willfully ignorant. He explicitly says "broaden allowed topics for discussion." He understands what's on topic and what isn't. He wants a place to have discussions that are off topic for Stack Overflow, but doesn't want to go to one of the many sites that already exist for that purpose. I don't think asking users to take off topic discussions to one of those other places is asking too much.

You're demonstrating the problem.

There is a disagreement about which topics should be allowed. Broaden means increase the number of topics considered to be on topic. He understands your definition of "on topic"; he just thinks it makes for a poor user experience. And I agree with him.

The problem here is that you and others confuse your view of "off topic for Stack Overflow" with some sort of universal truth. You get away with that not because you're right in some academic sense but because you have the power to drive off people with differing views.

I'm not the one who's confused. Moderators don't set the policy for what's on topic at Stack Exchange sites, the communities who use those sites do. The place to argue what is and isn't on topic isn't on that guy's blog, and it isn't here.

I believe the guy can say what he wants on his blog, and it's arrogant of you to think otherwise. And your notion that Hacker News users can't discuss what they want on their own site is crazed.

My point, and I think his, is that the ever-narrowing topic definitions may be what the participating community wants, but it is driving off people with different ideas.

If you're happy with that, fine. But insisting that outsiders aren't allowed to comment on it is just another symptom of the drive for orthodoxy that I think is ruining it in the first place.

I never said the guy couldn't or shouldn't post on his blog about it, nor did I say it can't be discussed here on HN. If you want something to actually be done about what you perceive as a problem though, you need to join in the community discussion at the site set aside for that purpose. Decisions about SE policies are made by the communities on SE sites, not on HN.

I fully disagree when you say that if you want things to change you have to go to discuss this on SE. The entire point is that SE is not just "SE policies" and "SE moderators": SE is first and foremost users and these users have their right to read criticism about SE on HN / reddit / blogs / etc. And the day a topic shall pop-up on meta saying that some introspection from SE may be needed, the more users have read well-articulated blogs entries and great comments explaining what they find very wrong on SE, the more likely they are to upvote these suggestions on meta. You're not an island and you to realize your most important users have a very vocal voice outside of SE and that this voice does have an influence.

This isn't my opinion, so I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Would you expect HN to change because of comments you read on Stack Overflow? Of course not. Everyone is perfectly welcome to discuss things where and whenever they want, but ultimately the ideas need to be discussed by the community of people who actually use SE sites. So yeah, I fully agree that you can go ahead and discuss things as much as you want here on HN and on blogs. I join in that sort of thing all the time. But if you want things to actually change, those ideas need to be posted and discussed among the community of SE users.

I would absolutely expect HN to change because of discussion about HN on StackOverflow. Why? Because a lot of smart nerds talking about it could have something useful to say. Smart product managers don't wait for their users to come to them with suggestions.

Honestly, I don't need to do that. Having been driven off by what I consider bad moderating, I'll spend my time elsewhere. The same apparently applies to a number of people posting here.

If you guys are happy to lose users in that fashion, by all means keep asserting that the only way you'll listen is if people put the right cover on their TPS report and submit it to the proper forum.

Whether you like it or not, SE users and former users are going to keep on discussing SE policies where they please. You guys can learn from it and even engage with it. Or you can just keep defining it as illegitimate, putting your hands over your ears, and going "la la la".

I didn't try to define anything as illegitimate. I don't make policy at SE, the community there does. There are thousands of active users who discuss policy issues on SE. Most of them are never going to see random blog posts and comments on HN. If you put ideas in front of them where they're actively discussing SE policies you might have better luck at changing what you don't like about SE.

You seem to be very insistent on not getting what I'm saying. Here's my last try:

If the community and/or SE's owners are interested in serving the public, then they should engage with people where they are. Some of those people are on SE; most aren't. That's especially true for people who have gotten fed up with SE and left.

It's not my job to fix SE's brokenness. Nor is it that of the blogger whose article is linked at the top. Making SE better is the job of SE's owners and moderators. So if somebody should be putting forth extra effort here, it isn't the people who have never used or have given up on Stack Exchange. And even if it somehow should be those people, it won't be, no matter how much you suggest otherwise.

Personally, there's no way I'm going to go put my ideas in front of the SE community. From my experience there and the behavior of SE reps in this article, I have no reason to believe anybody will do anything but argue until I leave. I'm a little sad to think that SE's on the slow road to doom, but I've got better things to do then to try to sweep back that particular tide with my very modest broom.

If you want your complaints to reach people who can actually do something about them you'll go where those people are. If you don't really care, that's fine. Keep posting your complaints on blogs and in comments on sites other than the one you're complaining about.

I'm glad this guy's complaints got some attention by staff and volunteers at SE, but that's only because it got to the front page of HN. How many others are out there that will never be found? Post them in the right place and people will read them.

(its a bit late, but as blog author, I can confirm your interpretation of what I meant)