I never ask questions on Stack Overflow. I usually just chat with the people I know and trust in a Discord or Slack, which kind of sucks because the answers are not preserved for everyone else. I think with the toxicity of SO not getting solved, the future will be more distributed with people posting on their own blogs.
Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
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Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#22It's been hostile for years. Lately I find that I'm getting actual answers from there less and less. Not sure what can be done apart from a decisive change in community engagement from the top down.
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#23My pet Stack Overflow annoyance: the number of questions that have highly voted confidently incorrect answers or (perhaps worse?) answers that do work, but not for the reason in the confidently incorrect explanation that follows the ‘what to do’ part of the answer.
I feel like this is particularly bad for python Q+A on SO. At least it's not as bad as Quora where the top answer is invariably a grandiose answer to a different question than was asked or an excuse for some bullshit 'heartwarming' anecdote that answers nothing.
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#24[flagged]
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#25I enjoy answering questions but like the poster, I kind of hold my breath any time I do. Toxic downvoting is not just a question thing. There are people who will downvote any and every answer even a correct one to a question they feel is unworthy of an answer.
I think a big problem is voters are not shown and verified. If you upvote or downvote a post your id should show and you must provide a reason why the vote.
can you imagine if HN had the gumption to offer the same? would solve so many issues.
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#26They only gave two examples of their questions that have been closed, and the second one is obviously of a type[0] that hasn't been allowed for over a decade (long before they made their account). Nothing bad sticks out to me from their description of their first example, but the other indicates their understanding isn't as good as they think it is. [0] List questions have no single correct answer so don't work on a…
They only gave two examples of their questions How many examples would they have to post in order for you to be satisfied?
It's not the amount, it's which example they gave. They insist they understand the rules, yet their evidence is something that's obviously against the rules?
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#27my most recent attempt wasn’t downvoted or closed, instead I got an ‘typo edit suggestion’ - or something to that effect - where someone had gone through and edited in about 5 false corrections to imagined typos. I did have the option to decline the edit, but it’s another example of the weird moderation culture
does anyone have insight into the moderator process that’s encouraging these behaviours?
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#28I think SO has very distinct culture and it is a notoriously hard-moderated platform. It attracts a lot of like-minded people for the various exchanges and you can get a kick out of it if you're also extremely passionate on certain topics.
But outside of that, I treat SO mostly as a dictionary/reference. The whole points and reputation system isn't for me, but in this case that's how SO works and without this system it would be yet another lame Q&A platform that's riddled with spam and bullshit information.
I can see leaving the platform or not using it at all, but I wouldn't block it from Search.
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#29My favorite is people downvoting and arguing about answers I posted over a decade ago. "Yeah, I know that's not how you'd solve a problem in Python today. It was a good answer in 2011 when I wrote it. How bored are you, exactly, that this is how you want to spend your days?"
I don’t care about the downvotes but I hate when people make misguided attempts to “improve” old answers.
The most recent was someone who went in and removed use of the word “you” as an attempt to “depersonalize” the answer. There was some kind of recognizable idea behind the edits, but the user’s changes mostly just damaged the readability and made the answers more convoluted.
The editor argued with me and linked to a meta post—which they wrote! This was a multi-page essay which explains, in depth, the rationale for these awful edits.
The user argued that “you” is not used in good, professional documentation. This is, as far as I can tell, completely false and within seconds of pulling up various samples of good documentation I was able to find dozens of examples of “you”.
Another user, years ago, would start fights and argue with anyone, saying that “standard C” only referred to the current C standard, and any previous editions of C were no longer “standard”. The user would insist upon removing the C tag from any question about C90, for example.
The more you answer or ask questions, the more likely it is that you get into conflict with one of these horrible, horrible users.
Re: Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow
#30I would love to see the author's posts
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