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I noticed a question on Stack Overflow today:

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I found it to be kind of humorous because a question with the exact title was asked a few years ago, and it was listed under "Related".

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However, "Related" Follows "Careers", so I'm guessing the person asking the question did not see it (or the other related questions).

If "Careers" is not revenue related, maybe it would be helpful to users of the site if "Related" was more prominently displayed.

If "Careers" is revenue related, then I believe a recent study shows the ads are better served if on the left of the screen for readers who read left-to-right. Cf., How We Look at Online Ads.

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  • That's not what the page looks like when typing up the question in the first place
    – random
    Apr 1, 2014 at 3:09
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    When you're entering a question Stack Overflow helpfully trawls its database looking for questions that might be related and prompts with a list of likely candidates. In many cases, though, the questioner ignores all of this and ploughs blindly on, submitting a question that may have been answered dozens of times before. It's a persistent problem.
    – user226287
    Apr 1, 2014 at 3:14
  • If the senior folks on Meta could help me out, what is so bad about this question? Related reading did not uncover the reasoning for the placement of the "Career" and "Related" widgets; and did not discuss if the "Careers" was revenue generating. Or is this that classic case of "you're view is different so I'm going to down vote you"? You could also use that other trick of closing as a duplicate even though the dup does not answer the question.
    – user173448
    Apr 1, 2014 at 5:55
  • The Careers ad is revenue generating. It's advertises our site at careers.stackoverflow.com. As far as placement, that's out of my hands; hopefully someone else will come along and answer it.
    – Juice StaffMod
    Apr 1, 2014 at 13:35

1 Answer 1

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As commenters have noted, the main line of defense here is the results that show up when you are typing your question:

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Unfortunately in this case, it looks like the period is being stripped as punctuation and it's being interpreted as "rJava" which is incorrect. That's probably why the user didn't find the identically named question. We'll see if it can easily be fixed.

Update: a fix for the unnecessary stripping has been built out, the behavior should be much better now.

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    @Nick you let David get all the fame and glory (and rep) for your fix? ;)
    – Shadow Wizard Strikes Back
    Apr 3, 2014 at 12:01
  • @ShadowWizard Clearly Nick recognizes that I did all the difficult management work of reproducing the error, capturing relevant screenshots, and managing the overall development process.
    – David Fullerton
    Apr 3, 2014 at 16:50
  • This, or he's just looking for a raise. :D
    – Shadow Wizard Strikes Back
    Apr 3, 2014 at 17:31
  • @ShadowWizard You think we pay Nick? He worked 80 hours per week for us answering questions before we even 'hired' him. We just gave him commit access and set him loose.
    – David Fullerton
    Apr 3, 2014 at 17:38
  • You know David, I can believe that! ;) By the way, since I got your attention I feel comfortable enough to ask about something that I'm curious about... as the head of development you have any idea why the minimum comment length is 15? Am I right in my assumption, or is there a real reason?
    – Shadow Wizard Strikes Back
    Apr 3, 2014 at 19:28

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