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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#91

Post by thackerhacker »

jodrellblank wrote: post #67
glaucon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Gamifying reputation was one of the worst things Agreed and I don't know this for sure but the points lust, it seems to me, is not limited to questioners and answers, some of the behaviour I've seen from mods seems to be driven by that too. Just to repeat, I don't know that because I don't know what gets you points but the behaviour is hard to understand otherwise. I had a question where I had finished with a one wo…

> " I had a question where I had finished with a one word sentence "Thanks." . A mod had removed that part of the question, when I looked at their record they had an awful lot of edits which consisted of similar, tiny, non-substantive changes. It did make me wonder about their motivation. " https://stackoverflow.com/help/behavior " Do not use signature, taglines, greetings, thanks, or other chitchat. " Every post you…

I asked about this 10 years ago and look at the sarcasm I received in response.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142703

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#92

Post by svieira »

brodouevencode wrote: post #34
readingnews wrote: post #3

I was promoted to one of those "mod" type people who reviews new answers, first posts, etc, a few years back. I can tell you that I quit in the last 6 months. All new answers are answers on questions from first time posters, answering questions that have good solid answers from 8+ years ago (mostly 10 years), and it is pretty obvious, they are just doing it to get points. The question/answer is not something that has…

> and it is pretty obvious, they are just doing it to get points Gamifying reputation was one of the worst things we've done. I was part of this in previous positions and after a while it became apparent that it brought out the worst in people. There are better ways of incentivizing usage rather than stupid internet points.

What are the best ways of externally incentivizing usage that aren't numeric that you know of or think would be worth looking into?

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#93

Post by maxlin »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #86
maxlin wrote: post #43

Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT, I sincerely hope it keeps operating, stays strict (even if it causes collateral) and keeps ban on LLM-generated content. The wheels of this kind of stuff turn slowly, but obviously ChatGPT was trained partly with data only gainable from a healthy StackOverflow-kind of site with users actively asking unique questions and enough people ans…

> Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT Claim asserted without evidence.

It has for me, and several developer friends, and considering the fame ChatGPT has gotten, and that StackOverflow's fall has accelerated, it's obvious the milkshake's migrating. Not all of it of course, as I stated, "for the common use case"

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#94

Post by newshorts »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #33

"How to do A?" Comment: "You shouldn't do A, it's better to do B" Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". Yeah sure, in the beginning, there were many more basic questions (how to increase number by 1, how to get division remainder, how to check if file exists,...), and if you're coding in Perl, you can still find all the answers... if you're working in python, you'll find answers for python2, some for python3, some spec…

I was equating this to the rise of chatgpt

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#97

Post by iJohnDoe »

is_true wrote: post #6

I think the problem is google losing the fight with spammers. It's being a while for me that I have to put "stackoverflow" in the search query to avoid sites with scraped content

What’s interesting is that Google was known for how hard it was to figure out the Google algorithm.

Remember, when people were hired because they knew the secret sauce on how to get the best Google ranking. Google experts?

Well, it turns out that the person at Google that was responsible for keeping the algorithm fresh and the search results fresh retired and everything went to shit when they left.

Actually, I’m betting that person did leave the company, but the real damage happened when someone came along and convinced everyone they knew the real trick to better search results and we have the shit that is now Google. Nice work new guy! Let me rephrase that. Nice work to the guy that thinks they are smarter than everyone else and still thinks their approach is the best, yet evidence to the contrary.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#98

Post by th3byrdm4n »

pentagrama wrote: post #78

I remember trying to learn front end development around 2013, was fascinated by responsive web design and twitter bootstrap. Asked some questions on that site, was mostly ridiculed for my amateur questions several times, never touched the site again and also never learned front end. So this is my story with that site.

There is some barrier to entry.

My friend, a much less skilled developer, was much better at the craft of SO. I just lurk/solve my own issues

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#99

Post by culopatin »

lawgimenez wrote: post #83

My SO account is almost 12 years, with just over 2k reputation and I don't really care. Until now I am still somewhat helping answer some basic questions in the mobile development area tags, my only gripe with SO is the hostile nature of some mods with large reputation. Some seem to get a kick out of this and forgot that reputation does not translate to expertise. For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New…

I think that with the rise of push notifications, no one really goes to a site to check notifications anymore. So the new user may have not developed the muscle memory to go back to SO and participate. I suspect this also has something to do with the decline of forums. Reddit still works because the app sends 200 notifications a day, but without it, I don’t think it would be as popular.

Also SO is participation hostile unless you’re a pro, so as a newbie I’m not going to do anything other than ask and lurk, because I’m not worthy

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