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It seems to me that this site should be folded back into Stack Overflow. This site is little known, and because of a lack of reviewers, it does not serve its purpose well. Instead, requests for code review should be marked with, say, a tag on Stack Overflow. Anybody who does not want to see review requests can filter them out easily.

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If you're unhappy with the lack of answers to your recent review request, I suggest posting a smaller amount of code, starting a bounty or sharing it on social media rather than proposing that the site should be shut down. – codesparkle Oct 29 '13 at 13:06
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I agree with @codesparkle. Seeing that much code just made me fringe immediately, and not bother looking any further than the line count. Posting the most questionable bits, and a link to the full file is probably a better approach. And I usually post the code at other forums if I don't get a response, and if I at some point do get a response, I then update my post with a thorough answer. – oligofren Nov 1 '13 at 10:59
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One key point in asking a good question on StackOverflow, is to read your post and ask yourself "would I want to answer this question if I came across this post?" - CR isn't any different. Put yourself in the answerers' shoes before you hit that "Post your question" button! – Mat's Mug♦ Nov 1 '13 at 18:28
    
I kind of a agree. Having browsed about for a bit it seems code review is not a good fit for a Q&A format. I find myself thinking, I'm in work, to review this code is going to take more time and effort than I'm prepared to put in. Maybe this just isn't for me? – Liam Nov 5 '13 at 13:24
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@codesparkle: Posting less code than what I have posted would be pointless. – wilx Nov 5 '13 at 13:33
    
@oligofren: I do not have any questionable bits in there that I can think of. As I have written in the post, I am asking for a review regarding C++ streams behaviour conformance. You need to see the whole thing to do that. Also, I have later linked to a BitBucket change set that can be used for the review as well. – wilx Nov 5 '13 at 13:38
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@Liam: Code Golf SE is even further from Q&A format, yet they're still up and running. Also, Tim Post himself has shown no interest in shutting down CR right away. But anyway, it probably isn't for you. That's very understandable. Some people like churning out answers, and others like sitting down and reviewing. – Jamal♦ Nov 5 '13 at 15:17
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@wilx: You could also split that one block into more blocks. That is quite alright, especially if the code isn't best split into different questions. – Jamal♦ Nov 5 '13 at 15:20
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@Liam If you don't want to answer questions on Code Review, that's fine. I don't see how folding the site into Stack Overflow would change that, though. – 200_success♦ Nov 6 '13 at 2:18

3 Answers 3

up vote 16 down vote

StackOverflow is an amazing resource for getting answers when you're stumped on a specific problem in your code and everything you've tried still doesn't make it work, and Google isn't helping you either.

Posting working code on StackOverflow is likely off-topic, because there's no problem to solve.

So you've posted your specific issue on SO, got some great answers, you've upvoted some and accepted the best, and now you've got working code. You got fast and numerous answers because there are hundreds of thousands of highly-qualified users roaming SO for questions like yours, and because several of these people have been there before and know the solution to your problem.

With the help of people who are willing to spend a little bit more time to answer a post, CodeReview is an amazing resource for getting your working code to work better and be easier to maintain, and also to spot that subtle I never realized it could have been a problem issue that your eyes alone haven't seen.

This site is little known and because of lack reviewers it does not serve its purpose well.

This is where you come into play.

1. Spread the news

Indeed, not everybody on StackOverflow knows about CodeReview. Good reason to leave a comment on a SO post along the lines of "This question is likely off-topic on SO, but you could try posting this question on (or rather, have it migrated to) CodeReview.StackExchange.com to get your code reviewed, people there will strive to point out everything that can be improved".

2. Participate

Indeed, the CodeReview community is much smaller than that of StackOverflow. Join in, you're more than welcome!

  • By reviewing others' code, you're showing the world that you can sit in front of anyone's code and see stuff that they didn't. Isn't that rewarding already? Guess what, you can even earn rep points and badges, so keep reviewing!
  • By posting your own code for review, you're giving yourself an opportunity to learn something you didn't know, maybe some optimisation tricks you would have never thought of, or who knows!
  • By browsing the site and VOTING, you're rewarding the people here that put effort into their questions and answers, and you're helping towards getting CR enough hi-rep users to finally graduate as a full-fledged grownup member of the StackExchange sites.

Folding CR back into SO and closing the books here, would do no good to anyone. CodeReview is fairly unique in the SE family of programming-related sites:

  • From the StackOverflow help center:

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.

Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers…

  • a specific programming problem
  • a software algorithm
  • software tools commonly used by programmers
  • practical, answerable problems that are unique to software development
  • From the Programmers help center:

Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...

  • algorithm and data structure concepts
  • design patterns
  • developer testing
  • development methodologies
  • freelancing and business concerns
  • quality assurance
  • software architecture
  • software engineering
  • software licensing

Now consider this (emphasis mine):

Code Review Stack Exchange is for sharing code from projects you are working on for peer review. If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code from your project in the following areas…

  • Best practices and design pattern usage
  • Security issues
  • Performance
  • Correctness in unanticipated cases

Code Review is the only site on the StackExchange network where asking for feedback on a specific working piece of code is clearly on-topic. As Jamal's nice answer mentions, StackOverflow's scope is well defined and absolutely unlikely to be modified to take what CodeReview takes.

As for not enough reviewers, ...what makes you say that?

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Bottom line, if you find there's not enough activity on CR, ...then participate more!

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Great answer. I'm not sure how much the OP thought into the argument, but it seems to read like, "Code Review is beta and SO is not, so everything should just be done on SO." Overall, I don't like the idea that other sites should try to conform with SO. I think SO, being the leader, should help related code sites prosper. And it already does that by having its users telling authors of off-topic questions to move the question to the other site. – Jamal♦ Oct 28 '13 at 20:34
    
"Posting working code on StackOverflow is likely off-topic, because there's no problem to solve." One year and nine months in, and I never thought of it this way... till now. – h.j.k. May 8 at 7:53
up vote 10 down vote

Sounds more like a for MSO. Plus, you'll likely only receive biased feedback here. We're just trying to grow, same as any other beta site. We can use all the help we can get, especially from users on SO. Due to the overlapping of ideas, we owe much of our success to them.

We're also here because we love reviewing code, namely to help anyone improve their already-working code. You cannot quite do that on SO, especially when "shotgunning" answers is the norm over there. Here, you can take your time to write a great review, or you can just write a small one. The one advantage of a smaller site like this is that your answer will very likely still be seen after any late changes. On SO, it may just be buried under all the newer content.

To be more technical, this would mean establishing new topic-oriented policy for SO, which may not happen since SO is already established. Plus, if SO users were interested in code reviews at the present time, they would just come here. If that's a hesitation, then it may mean that the answerer would prefer rep on SO, which could indicate a sole desire for more rep from answers. Not all regulars on SO choose to answer only on SO, though. Here's one of these users.

Lastly, would you consider helping out around here? You have a decent amount of rep on SO, which tells me you'd make a great reviewer. The more, the better. :-)

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up vote 5 down vote

I think you miss an important point of view. Stack Overflow was probably the first and only site of this Q&A format. As time goes on, the site adopted many users and had a tremendous variety of topics, most of which seem to belong to more-specialized domains.

The SO team and community are obviously having hard time moderating and maintaining a such variety of information put in one place, and the decision to split the site into more specialized domains seems to me as a natural solution.

From a technical perspective this is probably harder done than said. As you said, new Q&A sites are not popular in their early stages. Code Review is still in its beta phase. It requires time for users to switch to it with their code-review related askings, and even more time for moderators to find and migrate code review questions from Stack Overflow (or elsewhere) into this site.

Basically, there is nothing like a button which when pressed will automatically move all review-seeking users from SO to this site, neither will migrate automatically all the questions. This is a process of development, and what is being developed is not just another platform, but a community-driven environment and user base. These things take a long time to evolve and mature, especially for more specific domains, like code-reviewing.

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