When reading the assignment, I thought I would be visiting a new site that I had not seen before. Only after noticing the design of the page I understood that I had read Stack Exchange already without knowing what the name of the site was. I had stumbled upon it when looking for answers to problems I couldn’t solve for my engineering classes. Nevertheless, I somehow always perceived it as a weird forum, where people do not provide each other with legitimate answers. Therefore it was a surprise to see how swiftly people answered my question.

The question I asked incorporated some real life advice I need right now. As for the past couple of days especially Solar Decathlon has taken most of my time, I asked a question relevant to our project and one issue we are facing. 

I knew the answer would be that filing is not the solution before I asked the question. Nevertheless, at this moment I do not have a better plan, therefore I hoped that someone would approve my idea. Unfortunately, the community deemed that my solution is not great (which I totally agree with).

After using Stack Exchange I am still slightly confused for why people leave very extensive comments to questions that random people have posted. Is it just a good deed they are doing? I am more than confident that I will use this site again in future to at least gauge answers to simple questions. I am curious how accurate the answers are for more sophisticated questions, but that I am yet to explore

My only interaction with Stack Exchange prior to this assignment were the questions that would pop up whenever I googled an engineering problem that I was stuck on. For that purpose, the website has always been useless to me since most questions are extremely specific and irrelevant to my own inquiries. I never thought of posting in fear of asking something too trivial for such a knowledgeable community. Basically, I didn’t know much about the website, and I was a bit intimidated by it.

I already knew going in that the answers provided would be incredibly well-researched, complex, and detailed compared to many other Q&A platforms. On top of that, the questions are rarely easy to answer, as they are often obscure or require someone with expertise. I spent some time going through the different communities, which to my surprise included more than just engineering, coding, and math. The communities varied in their levels of user interactions and even strictness, but all followed the general rule of “just questions and answers” as well as the same voting process (most voted answer goes to top). I think it’s a very interesting take on eliminating distractions and off-topic discussions that appear in any other forum, as both the person asking the question and future readers can directly access the answers they want. Also, some light discussion can occur in a non-distracting manner as comments. I ended up joining the Woodworking, Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and French Language communities.

I know very little about Woodworking, but there was a genuine question that Raitis and I had during our work on SDME (building a house): is this expensive power tool going to blow up? I rephrased that into a proper question and initially got a comment telling me to add more information on the tool, which I provided to the best of my ability. That same person then provided a detailed answer complete with technical jargon and concepts that I never even knew existed. Needless to say, after some googling to clarify the answer’s terminology, I ended up learning a lot about saw blades from a complete stranger who had no incentive other than an urge to help other strangers on the Internet (and maybe earn some fake pixel points). I ended up selecting that answer as the best one.

Edit: the post ended up attracting more attention than I thought, with more than just one solution to my issue.

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After that, I took a quick look at the Engineering community and it crushed me. The questions were much more practical than my experience in university and far beyond my level of knowledge, so I moved on hoping that one day my education will amount to something. I then decided to post a past problem from one of my engineering courses to Electrical Engineering just to see how quickly users can solve a difficult problem, but was relieved to see that a commenter was as confused as I was. This wasn’t as positive of an experience as the woodworking one, but because of its technical nature it might take more time to answer.

I then tried to find a question that I could answer myself, which took a while, but eventually I answered a French language question on how to reserve a table at a restaurant, which was relatively straightforward. The post did not have any other interactions and only 12 views at the time of writing this, possibly due to the simplicity of the question (maybe Stack Exchange users prefer to be challenged than earn easy points?) or the relative lack of activity in that specific community.

As much as I loved learning about saw blades, I enjoyed “lurking” around communities more. Some questions are genuinely interesting with informative answers, and others are just weird/fun. It was difficult to impress anyone enough to get upvoted, probably because I’m not a woodworker, a practicing engineer, or good at French, but I was able to learn something and teach something in return. It definitely sounds like a rewarding loop, and I see myself coming back every once in a while whenever I have an impossible question to ask or to one day find an engineering question that I can answer, but not much else.

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. 

For class, we had to pick a stack exchange site and engage with it throughout the weekend. I’ve had some exposure to Stack Overflow, which is the exchange for questions on computer programming but not with any of the other exchanges offered on the site.

I was surprised by the sheer number of different exchanges to select from. I felt that in order to get a full appreciation for the website, I should try engaging in more than one exchange. I started off with “English Language & Usage”, as I felt like the area where I could help with the most. After answering a few unanswered questions on grammatical rules, I decided to view a few of the top questions of the month. I noticed that I was not as much of an expert in English as I initially thought.

In addition to “English Language & Usage”, I also joined “Personal Finance & Money”. I follow r/personalfinance on Reddit, so I wanted to see how different the two platforms were. After spending some time on the exchange, I felt like the technology was not conducive to any spirit of community. It just all felt very bland. Reddit fosters amazing discussion with nested comments, and it emphasizes what’s “hot” that day, week, or month. I felt like, unless I was looking for a specific question to ask, the Q&A format for Stack Exchange did not generate a desire in me to keep returning to the site.

I have a few issues with the way Stack Exchange is currently organized. It definitely feels like Stack Overflow is the main feature of the site and the rest is an afterthought. For instance, the Stack Overflow logo was even on the “Sign Up” section of the Personal Finance exchange, which is meant to be an entirely separate part of the website.

Although I see myself to continue using Stack Overflow for any quick programming questions I have, and perhaps also using a few other exchanges, I would not recommend it as a place to keep coming back to if you’re a “Science Fiction & Fantasy” enthusiast.

I have never used Stack Exchange before (besides google searches that lead me to Stack Overflow) so my expectations were a little bit too high I would say. My initial assumption about Stack Exchange was that it seemed like it was Reddit, just different. I went in face-first and just opened different Stack Exchange tabs that aligned to my interests/skills.

I looked around a lot of the sites that I thought I could be useful in (Game Development, Arqade, SciFi, etc) only to realize they were either dead or had questions that were way too complicated for me to actually answer.

I dug through countless tags on Arqade just trying to find something I could contribute to as I thought that’s where most of my knowledge was. (spoiler alert: turns out I’m not knowledgeable enough). Most of the posts on the front page were all about Minecraft, something I never got into while anything else was months old which lead me to believe that the page is somewhat dead. I decided to check back later for new posts, as I might be lucky and find a new question that was not about Minecraft and I did.

Someone had asked a very detailed question about creating video games for the elderly and how from his experience they were always geared towards a certain genre of videogames. This person had asked a question that did not quite belong on the Arqade page but rather the Game Development one. So, I took it upon myself to redirect them to the other page because they are more likely to find a response there and it was mainly off-topic.

After profusely refreshing the page waiting for those points to start pouring in, I was hit with a downvote.  Needless to say, I was both angry and confused, I just helped out this guy immediately after he asked for help, but I was being downvoted instead of thanked? I checked and found that he had responded with something along the lines of “good idea.” A couple minutes later and I got another downvote. I am still both confused and angry but mainly confused as I clearly helped someone out who acknowledged my help, yet I was still getting downvoted. I got a notification that warned me that my post would be removed if one more person downvoted me, and they did. I was hit with the 3 downvotes and my answer was removed (Which is why I can’t post a screenshot.)

I carried my anger and confusion over to another page, Seasoned Advice which is meant for culinary work and found myself just digging for anything I could answer. I eventually stumbled upon someone who was looking for a specific fried egg recipe, with the information he had given it took me seconds to find the exact page he was looking for. As I commented on his post with the link(response seen below), I found myself eagerly waiting for his response, his approval of my comment. I needed to redeem myself from what happened at Arqade.

He is yet to respond. Instead, I had a mod and another random person just scold me for giving a link as an answer. That it was not acceptable to just post a link even though the person was looking for a link, instead I am expected to rewrite the information from the link to an entire post just in case that link dies one day. As much as that argument makes sense, I don’t understand why that responsibility falls on me, the person answering rather than the person asking the questions. Mainly I do not see why I should be responsible to make sure HIS post is archivable through my answer.

I also checked out the chatrooms in hopes of finding a place to have some sort of discussion rather than just answering or posing questions, but I was not allowed to participate in any chat rooms due to not having enough points; which I found to be counterproductive as I lost my inclination to be involved on that platform.

One thing that struck me about Stack Exchange in general is that it is not really a place that allows for discussion, something I did not know before using it. The lack of freedom to discuss made me uncomfortable, I constantly felt like if I had half an answer or my answer was wrong then there was no room for me to exist on that platform without being heavily scrutinized.

As much as this experience was valuable, I don’t think I ever want to use Stack Exchange again, people are too mean. (Feel free to try convincing me otherwise.)

Until the class assignment I have never heard about Stack Exchange. As I registered, I decided to use the “Physical Fitness” site, as other options didn’t seemed to focus on particular subjects that I had no knowledge and interest in. So, I posted my first question: “How to get my boyfriend to workout?”. I wasn’t sure if it fitted the category right, but I posted it anyways. Not surprisingly, my question migrated from “Physical fitness” to “Interpersonal skills”.

What surprised me most is how quickly people started commenting on my question asking for more details. For example, other users would ask :”would you be able to give examples of some things that currently take up his time?”, “Does he give any specific reasons why he doesn’t want to engage in physical activities? Are there any specific physical activities he’s ever expressed any interest in?”, “It would help to be more clear about your motives here, is this about you wanting him to be more active or expressing concern about his health? Is your boyfriend concerned about his health in general? Does he have health issues arising from not exercising?”

 Then, very soon I got my first (and super large) answer.

This kind of deep analysis and the willingness of others to figure out a solution to my problem was certainly unexpected.  Why would anyone care to write such a long answer, if they don’t even know me personally? In any case, my question got viewed 549 times and got one vote. The long answer got 5 votes, and I marked it as the best answer.

Next, I decided to answer a few questions in “Physical Fitness”. I searched questions with a tag “yoga”, as I wanted to share the knowledge I actually have. So, I answered to the following questions:

1. Does yoga help in weight-loss?
2. Is doing yoga in regular socks okay? Are the yoga toe socks better, the same, or worse than doing yoga barefoot?
3. Is an “active lifestyle” enough for maintaining health?
4. How can I get rid from feet pain?

When I was writing the answers I felt like I seriously wanted to help. I even googled some stuff in order to make sure my answer contains correct information. Two of my answers got one vote each, and one was accepted as the best answer – that made me feel so proud of myself.

Then, I asked another two questions on the topics that I genuinely wanted to know more.  One in “Physical fitness” :“What kind of workout I can do in the sea?”. Another one in “Interpersonal relations”: “How to make decisions quickly and not regret afterwords?”

For the first question I got an answer that was a bit off-topic and thus useless. But my second question was “voted to be deleted”, which made me upset. The issue was that I described personal anxiety arising from decision-making, and other users commented that this questions is a personal issue that should be addressed to a psychologist. I deleted the question, realizing that I made a mistake by posting a PERSONAL question in “INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS”.

To conclude, I had fun using Stack Exchange, it got me feel very excited and willing to help others. It made me feel like I’m part of the community where everyone is there ready to lend a hand to everyone. However, I don’t think I will continue using Stack Exchange as I do not see how it is any better that regular forums (except for the required depth in asking and answering as well as strict moderation). Maybe in other sites, that deal with more concrete topics, such as Stack Overflow, this system makes more sense.

P.S. My reputation numbers: Physical Fitness – 36; 1 badge “Teacher”. Impact: 380 people reached.  Interpersonal Relations – 19; 3 badges “Student”. Impact: 622 people reached.

First of all, I was amazed by how many different kinds of platforms were available on stack exchange. I’ve only ever used stack overflow so I took a while scrolling through the page checking out the various topics being covered.

I decided to contribute to a platform that I was knowledgeable in, so I first went into the Korean language (also because it was very fitting considering my paper was on Hangul).

Once I was on the page, I was surprised by how difficult the questions actually were. For some reason, I assumed it would be foreigners posting questions so they would be very simple and straightforward, but I found quite complex ones instead that needed a lot of thinking (and even researching on my part).

After looking through all the questions, I noticed there were also some Korean users asking questions about how they would describe the Korean language in English. This meant that the user was assuming that some people on this platform were knowledgeable enough about the language to be able to help with translation. Thus, I think this website as a whole would then work well for both groups (Koreans and non-Koreans) to have a fruitful discussion about the language. I also liked the function of voting up/down a question, but at the same time I felt like it would make people more wary and conscious about their posts. This is good in that people wouldn’t be posting inappropriate questions, but at the same time may make them feel insecure about whether it is too easy of a question to post online.

I’ve answered the some questions regarding pronunciation of some Korean words, and I hope they’ve been helpful. (I look forward to my up-votes :3… on this note, I think this is a good function also because it encourages people to engage and contribute more.)

Intro Music

Sohail: Hello! And welcome! You are listening to Nightly Neanderthal – If you’re tuning in now.. Before the break, Lateefa and I were discussing how the hunting and gathering routes are getting obstructed by rainfall.

Lateefa: Yeah it’s crazy. By the way, I’m loving your new sweater! Is that from the new mammoth fur collection?

Sohail: Yeah, you know what they’ve been saying about this global cooling thing. I guess I better get a headstart.

Lateefa: This ice-age stuff sounds scary man, at least you’ll be chic going through it.

Sohail: Also, about this whole ice-age thing, we’ve got a special guest for you all tonight who says he’s actually discovered a solution. Hear this, he says he can recreate fire. I know what you all may be thinking, I’m thinking it too. We thought of giving him a platform to give him a chance to speak about his invention.

Let’s go to our nightly news correspondent Yero who’s live with OGGOG, the alleged inventor.

Yero: Good morning, listeners. So as I am approaching the scene, and there is a funny smell near the cave. So, we are here on site with our man, Oggog, who claims to have recreated something revolutionary, something that will change the course of humankind. Hi Oggog, and thank you for letting me join you in your cave.

Adam: I am very pleased to meet you. This is a very exciting day for all humans around the Neander Valley.

Yero: Oggog, can you tell us more about what you just discovered? What were you doing?

Adam: So I was hunting for meat, and then I hit two stones and created a spark. I was thinking to myself, what if I started putting these sun sparks over chunks of wood. And then, believe it or not, the fire started.

Yero: Could you try to recreate it for us?

Adam: That’s definitely something that I’m looking into right now. I can show you how it’s done *Begins hitting two rocks together*

Yero: Hmm, okay, you can stop now.. What are your hopes with this fire thing?

Adam: I really want to spread it. I want to bring fires to all caves in the Neanderthal-Valley. No ones gonna do it unless I do it. It’s going to make people happy, and the gods will be pleased.

Sohail (Interrupting): Wait, wait, Yero – If I may – So far Oggog, you’ve made a lot of claims but you haven’t been able to show us anything tangible.

Adam: Here in our Neandert-Valley, I am here breaking my back, busting my ass off to try and advance my species.

Sohail: *Continues arguing*

Lateefa: Hey hey, guys  – Apologies for the behavior of my partner, let’s keep this civil.

Sohail: Shut him off Thank you Bye bye

Sohail: Thank you Yero. Sorry to all our listeners who had to listen to that. So Lateefa, that was something huh?

Lateefa: Yeah, just a shame it had to end like that. I mean, if he’s created what he claims to have, I really think this is the start of something new. I mean, you won’t be wearing your amazing coat.

Sohail: You’re too flattering.

Lateefa: But real talk though, I’ve heard some crazy ideas in the Neanderthal community on mixing fire with food, which has been really difficult to do with current technology.

Sohail: I can’t wait to see what comes out of this,  just imagine – global cooling will be a thing of the past.

* Long Pause *

Well! That’s our time tonight! Join us tomorrow night for more of the same fun.

Outro music

I’ve never signed up for a Stack Exchange site (or any other similar platform) before, so the process was quite new to me. As I browsed through the available sites, I noted which ones seemed particularly interesting/relevant, such as Travel, Expatriates, French language, Parenting, and English language. The process of choosing which communities to join, however, took longer than I expected. Although there were several sites that interested me, I found that the questions that were asked required highly specific knowledge/expertise. So in the end, I signed up for Lifehacks and Puzzling (for fun).

Since I was a completely new user, I started out with only 1 reputation point, which limited the types of interactions I could engage in. For instance, after browsing through some questions on the Lifehacks site, I wanted to upvote answers that I found creative or practical, but could not do so since I lacked the points. Thus, the gamification of an open, user-based information system was highly effective for me, as it motivated me to try and accumulate these points.

I started out by answering a few questions in Lifehacks. I strategically chose questions that only had a few answers, with the hopes of increasing my chances of being upvoted. Nothing changed for the first few hours after my responses. Eventually, I received a notification that I had gained +15 points because the original user who had asked the question selected my answer as the best! (Best out of 2, but still felt good nonetheless). Although my answer wasn’t that innovative or exciting, I had noticed that other answers with links to resources tended to have more upvotes, so I incorporated that technique into my own response. 

I also submitted a few edit suggestions to previously-posted questions, mostly correcting grammar mistakes (since I still did not have enough points to upvote/downvote or comment).

I wanted to ask some questions on the Lifehacks site, but found most of my questions had been asked already in some other form – perhaps I’m just not creative enough to think of an entirely new question for this? 

I enjoyed seeing the types of questions and answers that were already posted on these sites. Some of them were unexpectedly specific and detailed, especially on sites like Parenting and Travel. The posts on Puzzling were also quite interesting, as users built off each other’s answers to solve/decrypt puzzles that others had created and posted. Overall, the experience highlighted the power and potential of such platforms for enabling individuals to easily form and participate in new groups (at minimal cost) – principles that were highlighted by Clay Shirky in ‘Here Comes Everybody’.

It was an interesting experience. I always check stack exchange sites whenever I have questions regarding my homework assignments, and math problems; it is the first site to appear on my google search and I find it quite reliable when it comes to technical questions. This time, I was excited to actually join it for the first time and comment, ask a question and just go over different sites. I decided to stick with the site ‘Pets’ because I have 11 cats at home and I was eager to read some cat-related questions and discussions. I commented on a couple of them and got instant replies. However, it took me some time to find the ones I felt comfortable commenting on; the site has questions rearding different pets and finding ones specifically about cats took me a bit of time. Here’s an example of one of my comments and a reply from someone else:

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I did not know one has to be at a certain level with points to be able to comment –  I tried to open the frequent questions, and once I clicked on ‘Add a comment,’ the system did not let me do so with the explanation I do not have 50 credits/points. I realized I will have to spend more time on the site to get to that level and then be able to comment.

When I tried to add a question, I did not pay close attention. Clicking ‘Submit’ gave me error in return – I did not meet the general guidelines on adding the Topic/Question. Then I read more careful and the next time I tried it worked out. I still have not received any comments on the question that was ‘How do I give away some of my cats?’ with the explanation that I have many cats at home and they have settled down, are attached to our family, and would be hard for them to live on their own. I earned the Student badge and scored +5 for this activity (in just a few minutes after posting).

Overall, an interesting experience. I am going to use the sites more often from now on!