The Fall of Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#221

Post by seanthemon » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 5:58 AM UTC

Eduard wrote: post #137

djbusby wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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. Nevertheless post the question and provide an answer. Everybody wins: you reap the upvotes, and everyone else benefits from the shared knowledge.

"marked as duplicate" pointing to a 5yo answer with links that 404

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#222

Post by tunesmith » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:01 AM UTC

Eisenstein wrote: post #168

JohnMakin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is that oftentimes people who want to do 'X by Y' are actually asking how to accomplish Q. They think 'X by Y' is the solution and get hit by a roadblock, not knowing that it will not help them and they are wasting time. This is called the XY problem and is extremely common on tech related forums and mailing lists. * https://xyproblem.info/

Part of this is because problems (X) are complicated and people just as commonly demand the "simplest possible example" (Y) that demonstrates the problem. So people ask how to do Y, and then others ask why on earth they would do that.

One common example I've run into lately, as I've been reading about state machines, is people asking how to implement a simple react component as a state machine, and others objecting to the premise of the question since using a state machine for a simple react component is obviously a bad idea.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#223

Post by techdragon » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:01 AM UTC

axblount wrote: post #176

Eisenstein wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that oftentimes people who want to do 'X by Y' are actually asking how to accomplish Q. They think 'X by Y' is the solution and get hit by a roadblock, not knowing that it will not help them and they are wasting time. This is called the XY problem and is extremely common on tech related forums and mailing lists. * https://xyproblem.info/

The issue is that sometimes poeple just want 'X by Y'. To get a question answered, you shouldn't have to list every constraint and design descision that led you to that point. Comes up all the time when people ask how to do things in bash/sh. I know there are better tools for the job, but this is the one I have.

Oh god that just reminded me how often people ignore the question asking for posix shell or “/bin/sh” or other specific shell scripting language… and processed to answer the question using bash, zsh, Perl, python, or even the slightly less wrong (because it is kinda weird to be shell scripting without a moderately normal unix environment) of using a bunch of Unix binary programs to do the requested job without actually solving the core problem of the question, because the tools made it easier…

And then to ice the cake you find the question because your question has been marked as a duplicate of the older question where they answered using unix binary tools… and you specifically asked about doing something in “pure shell script” or something similar to that phrase.

Stack overflow is fundamentally a system design that breaks down at scale due to misalignment of incentives that are necessary for it to work well at smaller scales (as can be seen in the successful operation of various smaller Stack Exchange sites for various topics such as Law, Aviation, Physics, etc)

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#224

Post by heisenbit » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:02 AM UTC

abathur wrote: post #13

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

And, IME, these scraped sites often manage to rank above the canonical source.

It is both infuriating and sad that Google can‘t figure out a way to compensate for this SEO spam. Is there an easier problem than doing it for SO (and yes, coding is a big enough problem for Google imho to be worth investing a little here).

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#225

Post by asaddhamani » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:02 AM UTC

orangussyy wrote: post #210

monkin wrote: post #166

I think Discord has had a huge impact on Stack Overflow as there are many communities created for specific technologies, languages, frameworks, or topics, where most users can get answers from direct contributors or people who have the best industry knowledge on the topic in question. Not to mention how beneficial it is for brands and products to create such closely-knit communities for their users. There's no need t…

Yeah except Discord is toxic as fuck and should be banished...

Not to mention unsearchable, poor discovery, a chat platform is not a replacement for message boards. SO is well suited to the Q&A format and Discord just isn’t.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#226

Post by mananaysiempre » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #194

dehrmann wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drops like that are either due to how bots are tracked, a Google algo change, or a major internal design change.

or else bad measurement. the post doesn't explain where they got these traffic numbers, and it seems unlikely they have access to stackoverflow's real traffic stats. they're using some sort of estimation here. there's always a chance that their estimates are wrong - especially if they're showing implausible shifts like this.

> it seems unlikely they have access to stackoverflow's real traffic stats.

The question and user profile view stats (among other things) are public on the Data Explorer and included in the dumps:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/database-schem...

Not sure what they’re counting as a “visit”, though.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#227

Post by PeterStuer » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #121

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

That was before the decline. Straight ChatGPT is getting more useless for coding by the day.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#228

Post by firefoxd » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

Eduard wrote: post #159

JohnMakin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I may be missing something, but the top answer is pretty good. And the comments even explain why searching for an answer on google might be difficult, and suggests how to.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#229

Post by philbo » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

fishtoaster wrote: post #20

Interesting that this seems to have started around Spring 2021 when posts + votes started tailing off, followed by traffic starting to decline around spring of 2022. I can think of a few theories that I don't think hold water: 1. The rise of ChatGPT to answer many questions that StackOverflow would previously have been used for. This seems unlikely, since the timing doesn't really work out. 2. The perennial complaint…

This sounds right to me.

If I were building a Q&A site that genuinely wanted to encourage high-quality answers, I'd implement something like a 1-hour window where all answers are invisible immediately after the question is posted. This is to give people time to work on a good quality answer, without racing to be the first and gain those precious early upvotes. The UI could still indicate how many other people have answered / are answering, and if answer volume became a problem you could perhaps block new answers during that window after the first 20 or so have landed. When the hour is over, answers are displayed in random order and the existing site mechanics around upvotes etc kick in.

It feels like that could potentially address the problem of low-effort answers killing off the good ones.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#230

Post by Rapzid » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #177

paradite wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you are talking about XY problem? https://xyproblem.info/

They're talking about the XY problem-problem. The problem when other programmers mistakenly think you have an XY problem and ignore your words. Sometimes, the original poster is not mistaken. Especially when an expert asks a question, there's a reason for it. Assuming the expert to be a beginner who hasn't tried easier solutions is degrading, and forces experts off the site. Actively insulting your userbase, especial…

I was learning Golang nearly a decade ago while participating in a performance competition.. Asking questions about unsafe in Golang Nuts was nearly rage inducing.

IMHO Copilot Chat has picked up on these bad habits.