[chrsig]

Perhaps it's a solution that does better at a large scale than at a smaller scale.

At a smaller company, it becomes much more evident that the contributions are being made more for self-promotion than for anyone's benefit. Either because you know the person making them and their personality, because the volume:quality is out of alignment, or because the person posting the question/answer wasn't actually having the problem and were just posting it for points.

Also the volume of organic questions is on the lower side, and could get easily drown out by what amounts to astroturfing. So in my experience, it never really gained adoption, and withered shortly after it's introduction.

[ratww]

Were their answers wrong, or were the questions completely unnecessary? How do you know it's "not for everyone's benefit"? I don't announce to the world when I consult the documentation. Are you measuring the reach of these answers or is it just a gut feeling?

I really fail to see how this is a negative thing. If anything, it's the people not doing it that caused the whole project to fail.

[chrsig]

As I recall, largely unnecessary. I can't divine someone's intent, but I can surmise based on having worked with them for multiple years.

Measuring reach? certainly not. It was just setup as a confluence plugin by the corpit team and left as a free-for-all with no direction.

> I really fail to see how this is a negative thing

It discouraged engagement. You can argue until you're blue in the face if it should have or not.

If there's something to take away here, I imagine that it's not "internal stackoverflows are doomed to fail", and more "unstructured adoption of internal stackoverflows don't go as smoothly as one fantasizes"

Had we made some set of individuals as having been responsible for the adoption and moderation of it, it may have gone better.

[e9]

Even if question seems unnecessary at the time, more often than not some junior dev will find it helpful once your company grows. It’s about preserving knowledge and no question is dumb at that point.

[yesiamyourdad]

I don't question their premise, I believe that it happens. So remove clout, it's a feature to create network incentives for people who need an incentive.

[e9]

That's right. Most people need incentive. That's how humans operate unfortunately and you have work around that to get anything done. That's why being good manager is hard. For example, if you make a competition to give some prize for most fixed bugs, they will get fixed. Yes some won't be fixed completely and you have to redo them but I guarantee you there will be more bugs fixed than if you don't have the incentive.

[ratww]

Yeah, sorry but I’m not buying. It all seems to me like projection, a lot of speculation and a bit of pent up anger for people getting reputation for doing documentation work.

“People doing a lot discourage people who don’t do anything” isn’t a very compelling narrative.

Really can’t see a problem here. I wonder what you’ll say when you find out those people are working for money.

[chrsig]

shrug what you buy or don't is your problem. I don't really stand to gain anything by arguing my lived experience with you.

> “People doing a lot discourage people who don’t do anything” isn’t a very compelling narrative.

Who said the people being discouraged didn't do anything? It seems like you may be reading things that aren't there.

> Really can’t see a problem here.

ok? why are you posting then?

> I wonder what you’ll say when you find out those people are working for money.

pent up anger and projection of your own, perhaps?

[ratww]

I never met your co-workers so I have no axe to grind, nor am I accusing them of anything. But yeah neither of us has anything to gain here so let’s stop?

[Nowado]

Again, what's the issue with that? How is organization suffering from it?