Before this class, I had no idea that there was such a thing as Stack Exchange. I knew Stack Overflow was a network, but I had no notion that Overflow was just one part of a larger component. I was surprised to see so many forums, especially ones like “Skeptics” and specific ones like “Role-playing Games”. Since my creativity levels were at -10 because I was also studying for my Linear Algebra quiz (for tomorrow) – I decide to post in Mathematics.

I’ve never engaged in these sort of forums as a “poster”. For Stack Overflow, I always tended to look at questions that were already asked and guided myself from there. Therefore, I was unaware of HOW DEMANDING this forum was. I tried to post a question from my Linear Algebra Homework and was specifically asking for explanations for the answer. Here are my conclusions after this experience:

1. Annoying – Its posting requirements are very demanding – If someone is in a hurry and urgently needs something answer but is not familiar with the requirements, it might take a try, two, or five to understand what Exchange wants from this whole post. The requirements of having a question that is minimum of 15 words, a different description AND a tag that HAS TO BE POPULAR really slowed me down when posting.
   
2. Annoying – The People are SO demanding and quite harsh– MY POST EVENTUALLY GOT PUT ON HOLD because it was “off-topic”. Apparently my question was missing context, which includes “my thoughts on the problem” – it was just a math problem question… I also heard from some of my peers that asking the “wrong” question can get some pretty heavy negative feedback, almost jumping into personal attack. This is however more characteristic of normal forums, and therefore expected.

3. Nice – Replies were quick and effective. I got replies within minutes, of people who were not just giving me an answer but were also guiding me through the problem. Some even had some nice LaTex encoded in the question for visual purposes. It seems like people on this forum are really dedicated to providing you with elaborate answers. Even more so, I got to see that this is also a community of very smart people – it’s not just a random dude who does nothing with his life but scrape the internet – in Mathematics, it’s actually people who are well versed in their areas. Pretty sure the rest also applies to other forums.

Going off point 3, as someone who doesn’t really engage with these forums, I always find it bizarre how some people are willing to go out of their way and take time from their own lives to write essay-like answers on a forum full of strangers, to help someone they don’t know. Do they have too much free time? Or are they better people than I am? The nature of these forums is powered by these type of people, and apparently, they make up a significant proportion of this world. Else, there wouldn’t be such a thing as Stack Exchange or Reddit. It really makes me go back to Clay’s description of the organization of masses. During his TED Talk a  few years ago, he mentions Flickr. As someone who never used Flickr, I could not fully comprehend the impact of these forums. However, now that I know more about Reddit and Stack Exchange, I can grasp how truly incredible is is that these masses have organized themselves within a medium and have managed to create a massive collection of strangers who are willing to dedicate several hours of their lives to answer random questions that pop up on their feed.