Stack Overflow is documentation, not Q&A, and that's bad

Re:Stack Overflow is documentation, not Q&A, and that's bad by shawn_w on Thursday April 11, 2024 @01:43PM (#40004783)

Thinking the accepted answer is the "right" answer is a common mistake made by people who aren't aware of how Stack Overflow works.

>Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for them personally.

https://stackoverflow.com/help/accepted-answer

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Re:Stack Overflow is documentation, not Q&A, and that's bad by mtlguitarist on Thursday April 11, 2024 @07:05PM (#40007758)

Okay but is this a failure of the user or an unintuitive UX? We can't just expect to pass cognitive burden onto users in a million places. UI affordances and conventions exist for a reason.

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Re:Stack Overflow is documentation, not Q&A, and that's bad by renewiltord on Thursday April 11, 2024 @07:19PM (#40007850)

I imagine that's what causes the confusion. The big green check is a Q&A site model ("this worked for me") but the site is intended as a documentation site ("this is how you do it"). It's a bit strange to have one question closed as a duplicate of another one that has an answer that only worked for the other question asker.

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