Is it moral to switch from one Q&A to another one

[castajiz_2]

I've started here at DANIWEB almost 3 years ago. Helped a lot of people altough most of them did not give any feedback (votes, mark question solved ect.). I must say that DANIWEB created me as a programmer in one way. I still remember spending 3 and half hours on a thread helping someone whom I don't know and eventually made a solution. These type of threads put a lot of knowledge into my mind. I would rather have spent my time solving threads at Daniweb than building some kind of project for someone or myself. Every spare time I had was given to this forum.

Things have changed, more and more projects came, university tasks which were related and non-related to programming, less time for solving online forum problems.

Going back in time, time when I actually started actively programming (4 years ago, altough first encounter was long time ago, done some html, css as a kid). Today, every thing seems so trivial (built a lot of big projects for various platforms, made "impossible algorithms for me" possible and still not thinking that I'm a great programmer and never became ridged (full of my-self) in any way, but I can definetly say that I can build things.

Sorry for the introduction and Of course, this is not what the question is about.

Someting bothers me. I ve switched to Stackoverflow, the most popular programming Q%A. Things are hard there, I believe that most of you know how things function and how hard is it to get a rep because this Q&A has been here for a while and a lot of question have been answered already so there aren't easy threads. You must be a pro on your field or try very hard and even then it is hard to give valuable answers, you also have to produce answers very quickly if you don't want someone else to take the reps, so pressure is also high. Anyway, I managed to get some reps and involved myself. You get easily adicted to Stackoverflow. I don't have a lot of time but when I do I rather spend it on Stack than on Daniweb and I feel bad for that. This community made me rise and now I am not giving my spare time to it anymore. If you ask why I switched? The answer would probably be because it is more appreciated and has a higher value among developers and other people as well than Daniweb. They have built a enormous community "stackexchange" which is destroying any other Q&A on the Internet because of the unbelieavably great answers on any topic and rigorous rules which do actually make the community better.

What are your toughts on that? Should I be ashamed of myself or is it normal and legible that I've done something like that? I do however come to Daniweb but rarely maybe twice a month.

Sorry for the long post.

[Reverend Jim]

I agree with you on the first comment. If I was just left to my own programming I'd get better in only a few areas at the expense of many others. By answering questions on Daniweb I stretch myself in other areas and keep current in areas (like SQL) that would otherwise atrophy.

has a higher value among developers and other people as well than Daniweb

I don't know if that is entirely true. Due to a change in Google ranking, Daniweb search results got royally hammered. This had (to my knowledge) nothing to do with the quality of the answers. It was a purely arbitrary decision by the programmers at Google.

I've been to Stack Overflow and I didn't stay, for one, because I really hate the user interface, and for another because I found the general attitude to be snarky and rather unfriendly.

I any case, I don't consider your choice to be either moral or immoral. It's simply your preference. If, however, you started copying solutions from Daniweb and posting them on Stack Overflow, or anywhere else, I would probably be of a different opinion.

[deceptikon]

Should I be ashamed of myself

Certainly not. I spent a number of years on cprogramming.com before moving to Daniweb. The choice was obvious: cprog had a lot of experts at the time and Daniweb did not, I could offer more by switching. Do what's best for you, my friend. If you find StackOverflow more rewarding, then rest assured your contributions to Daniweb thus far will be appreciated far into the future.

[Dani]

I agree. You shouldn't feel ashamed of yourself. However, as the owner of DaniWeb, your feedback goes a long way to making me want to try harder to improve the site to make people like you want to use DaniWeb more than SO. Your feedback is much appreciated.

[Dani]

Plus ... are you aware of our rewards points system where you get paid in real $$$ for answering questions here?

[castajiz_2]

Tnx to all of you for replying to my post.
@Dani, I'm aware of the reward points and the money, but I can't help myself. StackOverflow (StackExchange) just took me.... Altough I think you and your team made this community so much better than it was 3 years ago not to mention the repliers who give wonderful answers.

[~s.o.s~]

You have got nothing to be ashamed of. Like mentioned elswhere, it's just your preference. If you have seen my posts on the subject of other Q/A sites, you will know that I am a big fan of the SO concept. It is indeed a revolutionary thing which has happened to the developer community by providing answers to almost all trivial/moderately difficult questions on a single website.

But, I still post to Daniweb because it operates in a completely different manner as opposed to SO. I remember helping a guy long time back solve his problem which spanned around 10 forum pages! This is something which you would absolutely not see in SO; it's a "targeted" Q/A site with no room for subjective opinions/questions. I would say Daniweb has a less "mechanical" feel given that it promotes discussions as opposed to a single correct answer.

The above is of course my personal view of things but to back it up, I have been a prolific contributor to both the sites at different points in time. I have a pretty good rep on SO (13K or so) and a co-admin on this site.

You really need not pick one or the other, just do what you feel comfortable with and enjoy the most. Good luck.

I'll never post on SO, I think the place is over-rated. Don't get me wrong, I reference most questions to SO as it is concise and to the point, but the style...

Sometimes a problem is solved chronologically through guidance, this is where Daniweb is different. And the whole idea of closing a thread down because it is an opinion/subjective is stupid.

Aren't more questions a matter of opinions, why not discuss these opinions?

The only thing that I've found is constant is Q&A forums are addictive. Someone might start by only answering questions in c++ but you gradually grow to cover all other subforums, daniweb covers all bases for me.

Well, except my questions regarding blender but then that's one particular example that very specific.

[djjeavons]

Firstly, no you shouldn't be ashamed, if helping others out and learning at the same time is your goal then who cares what platform you use. I personally post on three forums. I do however disagree with the comment regarding community at StackOverflow.

I'm new here but already I feel that it has some great members that really care about DaniWeb. Whenever I look at StackOverflow for research I find most of the people to be a) very good in there area and b) very full of themselves. I am a mod at vbCity which once upon a time had a fantastic community and I would argue probably one of the best in the VB forum world, unfortunately that is lost now due to places like StackOverflow so I was well chuffed to find that DaniWeb does have a community feel which I hope to benefit from.

Bottom line, you volunteer your time and knowledge to help others and if you get rewarded for that by learning more and being part of a community that feels right for you then that's all that matters.

[mike_2000_17]

I would echo the same sentiment as others have, no one could question the "morality" of choosing to participate (voluntarily) more to one forum or another, or none.

I also visit SO regularly and post on occasion. But I feel that I wouldn't be able to keep my sanity if I spent too much time there. There are way too many "Wheaton's law infractors" over there (for lack of using a more explicit word that wouldn't pass the bad-language filter). I've been scolded too many times over there for being too "daniwebby" with my answers, i.e., being helpful, opinionated, nuanced and original. I think they very much prefer answers that are short, black-or-white, peddle preconceived notions and play in their echo chamber, and they are really quick with the "copy-google-click-copy-paste-post" automatism that just produces uninteresting junk answers. Some of the highest profile members on SO are really living in a bubble, and I sometimes fear for their mental health. Especially since my interest is C++, some of the guys over there are just fanatical about standard guarantees and stuff like that, and they seem to have lost all notions of real world programming (e.g., I've even had someone prominent tell me that it is undefined behavior to pass an integer to a C function from another C library, which is technically true but a completely ridiculous notion in real world programming, this is the kind of la-la-land stuff you constantly have to put up with on SO).

But if this stuff suites you, then that's fine. But, make sure you hold on to your sanity and don't become detached for reality like many of those uber-intense SO members.

[castajiz_2]

But, make sure you hold on to your sanity and don't become detached for reality like many of those uber-intense SO members.

Your last sentence is absolutely true. I feel like this reality detachment is slowly rising in me.

I feel I'm a little late to this party but I'll give it a crack.

SO and DW are totally different animals. DW is where I cut my teeth in real world programming being a DIY fumbler for most of my life. DW helped me learn. Not just from the eventual solution, but from the healthy discussion and debate about why "this or that" wouldn't work and why an alternative was better. Very rarely was a key tapped in anger or self-righteous indignation. Contributors were extremely generous and patient. It got to the point where I was able to contribute something back.

SO kills discussion. The disagreements in the comments are nothing short of petulant rants. If that's how one should act as a professional programmer, then dog help the profession. If you post a thread that even vaguely resembles something else, you get a curt 'duplicate of ...', which may not actually be the case. Beginners often can't see the relevance of a related thread as it is far removed from their use case - so for them it is certainly far from a duplicate.

I use SO quite a bit, but usually only to search for edge cases. The rest I get from online manuals. I don't think that SO nurtures its members as DW does. I'd like to think that DW provides more of a supportive learning environment. Obviously, as your skills improve, you need to ask fewer questions and using such platforms inevitably decreases. That's where switching to contributing more comes in (in my case anyway). I've learned more from posting ridiculous drivel as a putative solution and being shown the error of my ways than asking a straightforward question. Of course my errors are there for all to see and serves to help the OP and others to avoid that approach. Would SO tolerate my well-meaning but flawed posts? I'd get flamed, I'd be ridiculed and probably neg-repped to hell and back. Scared to post? Pretty much.

Heh heh. Use what you want, when you want.