Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#11

Post by Macha » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #9

fabian2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which means they need to grow 10X in the near future. They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are paying 1 mill…

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/

At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in people's minds at that time for hiding answers behind signup walls.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#12

Post by Wowfunhappy » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #11

tmpz22 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in peo…

They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#13

Post by NobodyNada » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

Stack Overflow has been trying VERY aggressively to monetize the site lately. In just the past 12 months:

- They’ve backpedaled on their formerly strict ad policy, now allowing animated ads [0] and trackers [1], and their quality control has become very poor [2].

- They changed the homepage to market their new SaaS product instead of the Q&A site [3]

- They replaced their CEO (who was a cofounder) with a new one who they described as “ someone who could foster the community while accelerating the growth of our businesses, especially Teams, where we are starting to close many huge deals and becoming a hyper-growth enterprise software company very quickly” [4]

- They fired and defamed a well-liked and well-respected volunteer moderator without cause, in a misguided attempt at virtue signaling, and refused to make any attempt to rectify their mistakes until the moderator in question got a lawyer [5]

- They fired/laid off two longtime and very well-respected Community Managers (employees whose job was to manage and work alongside with community) [6]

[0]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/213770/258777

[1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/332297/258777

[2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=“Inappropriate+ad”+i...

[3]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/386505/3476191

[4]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/24/announcing-stack-overf...

[5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/333965/258777

[6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/342039/258777

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#14

Post by fabian2k » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #11

tmpz22 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in peo…

They can only kill the license for future content, not for the existing content. And that would be a very clear sign that they're going to put up a paywall, and create a huge amount of pushback.

But the most convincing argument that they won't put up a paywall to me is that there simply isn't enough money in it. You won't get enough people to pay for it, and it will cripple the amount of answerers.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#15

Post by Macha » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #12

Macha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in peo…

They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.

They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#16

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

NobodyNada wrote: post #13

Stack Overflow has been trying VERY aggressively to monetize the site lately. In just the past 12 months: - They’ve backpedaled on their formerly strict ad policy, now allowing animated ads [0] and trackers [1], and their quality control has become very poor [2]. - They changed the homepage to market their new SaaS product instead of the Q&A site [3] - They replaced their CEO (who was a cofounder) with a new one who…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#17

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #15

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.

They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.

Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data, similar to how you can run Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap locally (or from anywhere, really).

Good timing considering Distributed Web efforts [1]. Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF [2], word is Twitter's team focused on the same goals will be in attendence.

[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/

[2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets...

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#18

Post by dx87 » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

Zamicol wrote: post #8

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment might be a duplicate of one made two months ago in a post about photographing cabbages in Sri Lanka.

Doesn't that just drive you nuts? Cabbages just sneak up on you like that. I've had plenty of genuinely unique questions marked as "duplicate".

Most annoying to me is when I find someone asking a question that's exactly what I'm looking for, but it's locked and says "This question is too specific and is unlikely to be useful to anyone else." Last time that happened was with gdb, and looking through the code wasn't helpful because all it said was "unless you're a gdb developer, these header files are unlikely to be useful".

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#19

Post by irrational » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #9

fabian2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which means they need to grow 10X in the near future. They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are paying 1 mill…

I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?

It wouldn't all be bad. So very many of the web development answers use jQuery. At least a clean start would mean a lot of those would go away.

Re: Stack Overflow is forming a moderator council

#20

Post by brailsafe » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

> What became apparent in my conversations is that software development has evolved rapidly, and successful companies are evolving their own cultures and practices to keep pace.

Clearly a discerning eye