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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#151

Post by adnmcq999 »

ezconnect wrote: post #135
svachalek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 110% replaced it with ChatGPT. Perhaps SO would still have a chance back in its glory days but there's no comparison to having a direct, specific, instant answer vs having to fight against SEO or moderators for hours.

I always read here ChatGPT is amazing. Can you give a link on how to use it? Every time I tried to google it returns lots of different results and when I tried it it:s not even usable for basic things I want. Is the ChatGPT you:re talking about on their website? Do I have to pay for it?

https://chat.openai.com/auth/login

Ask it how to use it

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#152

Post by andirk »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #114
Nonlin wrote: post #102

I wonder is this is the cannery in the coal mine for the internet as a whole. Will the internet grow more and more quite as folks chat with local AI bots.

But what will ChatGPT 10 be trained on, if no one is posting blog posts, answering questions on stack overflow, or updating Wikipedia? OpenAI will have to change the logo to a snake swallowing its own tail.

We're already losing ton of indexable, searchable content from knowledgeable people due to the content being created and shared via private chatrooms, and now that chat bots can collect a handful of results and put it in a cute spoken language format, I worry that this "information highway" is about to get seriously gate-kept and dwindle into a pay-to-play public library.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#154

Post by choppaface »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #97
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 bett…

Matt Cutts was instrumental in community outreach and helping SEO differentiate from spam. When he left, Search pivoted to stuff like using Twitter data and lifting content directly from websites into results. While it’s probably hard to attribute all the changes to one person, Matt Cutts made a huge impact on the product.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#155

Post by Semaphor »

djbusby wrote: post #115
Semaphor wrote: post #104

The most help I ever got from SO for questions not already there, was because of their (perceived) strictness. The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it.

Rubber Duck. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Pretty much, yeah. Forgot about that term despite only encountering it in a novel 2 days ago :D

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#156

Post by thomasz »

fzeindl wrote: post #143
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

This issue of having the answer in the comments definitely wasn't there 5-10 years ago and makes the site much more difficult to skim and read hence provoking more hapless questions. Maybe they should expire comments or remove them alltogether.

That would remove a good percentage of correct answers. The obvious solution is to fix their weird and completely dysfunctional moderation.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#157

Post by Semaphor »

lispybanana wrote: post #147
Semaphor wrote: post #104

The most help I ever got from SO for questions not already there, was because of their (perceived) strictness. The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it.

I hope you still posted (and self-answered).

I probably should have, but I never felt the question was worthy.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#158

Post by gsky »

I used to answer questions until they kept telling me that answers should not be short but long with examples. I didn't want to waste my time so i stopped answering all together

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#159

Post by Eduard »

JohnMakin wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

sprinkle in a 100K+ reputation user commenting "this is easily answered with `man Y`" — oblivious to the fact that Y's manpage is a 188 page monster, and manpages being awkward to search in.

Case in point: https://stackoverflow.com/q/19622198

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#160

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

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…

I couldn't figure out how to gain any points other than answering my own question, but I needed points to contribute in any way. It's like SO is set up to be difficult to use. I can't imagine why anyone keeps using it.
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