Re:StackOverflow unwinding?
by excuse-me on Tuesday June 19, 2012 @10:15AM
(#4131914)
There needs to be an embargo period where votes don't show up for the first 15-30mins to stop the snowballing effect of the first answer - like with real election results
[ Parent
| on HN ]
This was actually discussed to death on StackOverflow's Meta site in the "old days".
The reason they stick to this system: They prefer people answering quickly. This is the perfect incentive to get people to answer ASAP.
And to the argument "but I have a much better, more thought out answer", most people will say "Yes, but I want my answer now. I don't care about the history behind git, I want to know how to stage removed files".
But in the early days there were fewer people asking and answering.
Now there are a larger number of answerers and a bigger pool of people wanting/needing to gain rep by writing the quickest (but not necessarily correct) answer. This leads to a state where people don't bother clicking on questions with an answer on the front page - because they are already 'behind' in the race