That's just repeating the SO dogma, which I think is suspect in most cases.
> Answers that just recommend a 3rd party library optimize for solving the immediate problem an answerer is having asap but they don't work very well at creating a long lasting resource and they also give answerers a hard time.
I see no problem with this. Furthermore, if you can ask a question about using a particular library, you should be able to give that library as an answer.
IMHO, any problems around "3rd party libraries" could be solved from a combination of improved culture (e.g. explain the solution with a library reference) and technical tools (e.g. tagging with library version, result/answer ranking tweaks, etc.)
> Opinion questions can get outdated very quickly and it is hard to tell if you come from a google search if the answers are still applicable.
SO could solve that problem rather than giving up. For better or worse, SO is the watering hole for programming questions. As long as dups are kept under control, competent people can find the old questions and provide new, updated answers that will converge on completeness. Also, "outdated" answers can still have value, since not everyone is using the latest stuff.
What SO needs is features for fixing the practical problems you outlined:
> They also don't work well with the site format because you cant summarize the solution into one accepted answer. Instead, you get hundreds of tiny small disconnected answers, which cant really be edited to consolidate or keep them up to date, and no room for discussions (SO comments don't work well for long discussions)
I would say some form of extra curation, answer clustering, and old answer decay would go a long way towards addressing this, and it would be a great improvement on the existing situation of digging through old forum posts or making new ones (to an audience that may or may not have good opinions).
> Answers that just recommend a 3rd party library optimize for solving the immediate problem an answerer is having asap but they don't work very well at creating a long lasting resource and they also give answerers a hard time.
I see no problem with this. Furthermore, if you can ask a question about using a particular library, you should be able to give that library as an answer.
IMHO, any problems around "3rd party libraries" could be solved from a combination of improved culture (e.g. explain the solution with a library reference) and technical tools (e.g. tagging with library version, result/answer ranking tweaks, etc.)
> Opinion questions can get outdated very quickly and it is hard to tell if you come from a google search if the answers are still applicable.
SO could solve that problem rather than giving up. For better or worse, SO is the watering hole for programming questions. As long as dups are kept under control, competent people can find the old questions and provide new, updated answers that will converge on completeness. Also, "outdated" answers can still have value, since not everyone is using the latest stuff.
What SO needs is features for fixing the practical problems you outlined:
> They also don't work well with the site format because you cant summarize the solution into one accepted answer. Instead, you get hundreds of tiny small disconnected answers, which cant really be edited to consolidate or keep them up to date, and no room for discussions (SO comments don't work well for long discussions)
I would say some form of extra curation, answer clustering, and old answer decay would go a long way towards addressing this, and it would be a great improvement on the existing situation of digging through old forum posts or making new ones (to an audience that may or may not have good opinions).