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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#281

Post by abdellah123 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #150
choppaface wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot and ChatGPT have taken a lot away from StackOverflow.

This is true for me. I wanted good ways to deal with pointers to 2D arrays in C, which aren’t hard but you need to remember that [] has precedence over *, so (*pointer)[x][y] is needed to deference. It’s not the hard to mess it up. Ultimately GPT had an OK answer but… it had that immediately without searching and the didn’t have to craft some well written example, it picked up my dirty explanation no problem. I have…

very good insight. Integrating AI into stackoverflow as a question refiner is a very good idea

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#282

Post by catsarebetter »

I used to rely on StackOverflow to stay plugged in to the developer world. But now with newsletters, developer influencers, and more forums with code block formatting, it's just not necessary anymore. I think the status of having stackoverflow points has been translated to twitter followers.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#283

Post by Sosh101 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #251
Sosh101 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those answers are >50% total junk though.

Well if they served up a high quality site it you'd just go there and might not have ads even. Where the dozen SEO garbage sites they do serve up are all hosting ads google gets a cut of.

That's a very short sighted business strategy if true. Simply liquidating their reputation. Those junk AI results have certainly led to me using Google less.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#284

Post by lelanthran »

Rapzid wrote: post #230
dragontamer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've noticed a similar tendency in ChatGPT (answering a question that was never asked), but at least in ChatGPT it doesn't act all condescending towards you.

I literally cannot remember when last SO was useful time, due to the false positive identification of the XY problem.

At least with ChatGPT, it's much faster to get it to answer the question asked and not the question that was not asked.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#285

Post by Tao3300 »

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.

Anecdata: I've started asking Bing these questions instead of SO. E.g., it recently gave me a very helpful answer for debugging a Spring issue and cited its sources. What it didn't do was present me with a whole lot of moderation cruft.

I can ask for recommendations for tools and libraries, which IIRC SO disallows.

I also don't have to pray my question will get enough vote attention or worry that I posted it at the wrong time of day.

On the whole, going the GPT route has been more satisfying in all ways.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#286

Post by berkes »

anticodon wrote: post #172
Lazare wrote: post #134

I feel like the moderation culture of Stack Overflow became toxic and counterproductive years ago. It's like the worst parts of Wikipedia, but squared. Just endless arguments over what is or isn't a duplicate or is or isn't relevant, while every interesting question somehow ends up closed, good answers are downvoted, and spam drifts to the top. I'm sure everyone involved actually wants the site to be useful and pleas…

I think moderation culture changed for a reason. About 8-10 years ago quality of answers started to decline because HR started to source SO for candidates. This created incentive for posting thousands of answers moments after the question is posted that were simply not right. More often than not those wrong answers were upvoted anyway. And HR won't check the quality of answers, they are concerned only with your total…

The "opened up and downvoted" rings so true.

I've a rather high account. So I can revert mod decisions and sometimes do. E.g. reopen a marked-duplicate that isn't duplicate on closer inspection.

I don't do it often (can't be bothered too much) but when I do, I sometimes almost feel the hate radiation over the web. Indeed, people on a rage-tantrum going through all my answers and questions and downvoting those. Lol.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#287

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

hans_castorp wrote: post #276
meddlin wrote: post #271

With such a stark barrier to entry, why would I spend much time on there? Also, at the beginning of my career I got much more value from "explaining articles", and much less from ultra-specific answers. Later on when I had more experience, I wanted to give back: - try to answer -> "you need cred" - okay, upvote -> "you need cred" - try to comment -> "you need cred" - Ask a question -> "Duplicate. You should RT(Free)M…

I never understood why it's allowed to post a question (even without an account), but not allowed to add a comment.

Comments are not searchable and difficult to moderate. A lot of people asked follow up questions in comments.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#288

Post by revskill »

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…

Yes, it's stupid af. Rather to keep silence, than to answer indirectly the quesiton. Or even if you want to suggest "another problem", make it as indirect (not the accepted answer).

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#290

Post by CodeCompost »

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…

The impression I get from commenters is that somehow they think their careers are tied to StackOverflow points. Trying their best to downvote correct answers and promoting their own in order to further their agenda.
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