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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#391

Post by geysersam »

sznio wrote: post #349
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…

Your first point seems to be most important. > - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago SO might be horrible now, but it still holds years worth of answers that were just fine a few years ago - so why aren't they showing up now? Google's current recommendation of going to w3schools or - even worse - geeks4geeks or any other content farm is and always wi…

There are browser extensions for blacklisting domains from your Google searches. I've been so incredibly happy using one if them. If I see one of those despicable content farms I just blacklist it and move on. Often when I search on Google for technical stuff I only get 2 visible results on the first page, 1 SO and 1 documentation. Soooo relaxing.

The business reasons why Google doesn't take steps to remove the bad content and make their product pleasant to use again is so far from my understanding it might well be aliens running the company for all I know.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#392

Post by stavros »

gpgn wrote: post #390
sznio wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point seems to be most important. > - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago SO might be horrible now, but it still holds years worth of answers that were just fine a few years ago - so why aren't they showing up now? Google's current recommendation of going to w3schools or - even worse - geeks4geeks or any other content farm is and always wi…

I have noticed that Wikipedia is often pushed to the bottom of the page compared to a few years ago where it would always be at the very top.

And it's always the result I want.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#393

Post by josu »

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…

>keeps ban on LLM-generated content.

How is this being enforced? It's either bots banning bots in a digital game of whack-a-mole; or humans arbitrarily trying to asses whether something has been written by an LLM or a human.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#394

Post by pasc1878 »

cowthulhu wrote: post #336
newaccount74 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very popular Zalgo answer is a perfect example of this problem [1] The user asks a question that can be answered quite easily, and dozens of people post answers claiming that this is the wrong way to do it and that they should use some other tech to solve the problem. Some people on Stack Overflow care more about showing off how smart they are rather than answering questions, and I think the point system attracts…

Hilariously, the accepted (I assume by default, not by the asker) answer is flagrantly breaking, like, half a dozen rules and guidelines… but because it’s cynically and unhelpfully crapping on a newbie, it stays up. Or maybe there’s a good reason for it to stay up, but at a glance it sure isn’t a good look. I actually think SO is a great site and resource, but I also think a lot of that is despite the bitter old time…

No accepting an answer can ONLY be done by the person asking the question.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#395

Post by technion »

sznio wrote: post #349
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…

Your first point seems to be most important. > - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago SO might be horrible now, but it still holds years worth of answers that were just fine a few years ago - so why aren't they showing up now? Google's current recommendation of going to w3schools or - even worse - geeks4geeks or any other content farm is and always wi…

This whole situation just shows as a lie everything we hear about SEO. Stack Overflow has the exact text, it loads incredibly fast (should be commended more for this), doesn't require ten meg of Javascript to render as far as I know generally meets HTML standards.

These scam sites load megabytes of junk, load slowly, have text interpersed with ads and modals that render right on top of them, if you open devtools you'll often see pages of warnings about deprecations and/or invalid html, and despite having the same scraped text always score higher on Google.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#396

Post by borland »

cowthulhu wrote: post #336
newaccount74 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very popular Zalgo answer is a perfect example of this problem [1] The user asks a question that can be answered quite easily, and dozens of people post answers claiming that this is the wrong way to do it and that they should use some other tech to solve the problem. Some people on Stack Overflow care more about showing off how smart they are rather than answering questions, and I think the point system attracts…

Hilariously, the accepted (I assume by default, not by the asker) answer is flagrantly breaking, like, half a dozen rules and guidelines… but because it’s cynically and unhelpfully crapping on a newbie, it stays up. Or maybe there’s a good reason for it to stay up, but at a glance it sure isn’t a good look. I actually think SO is a great site and resource, but I also think a lot of that is despite the bitter old time…

That answer is only there because it's really old, from the early days of S.O. where people were allowed to ask questions that weren't super serious binary yes/no style. It'd get moderated and deleted in a heartbeat today. A forlorn monument to the cool place that S.O. once was

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#397

Post by 3LazTjBv-f »

julianeon wrote: post #47
krackers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO games resulting in SO clones ranking higher than SO itself?

As much as SEO experts would love to do that for their clients, I don't see any way they could've realistically crossed that moat. If you had a programming question, and you went to Google to answer it and found some answers - would you choose Stack Overflow, or PythonIsSuperFun.com? I think the behaviour of Google searching for programming issues decreased overall, and I don't think Stack Overflow suffered more than…

> would you choose Stack Overflow, or PythonIsSuperFun.com

I would choose first result - people are lazy. The problem comes and goes but it is true, spam sites, with content copied from SO, are ranking higher than SO itself. And it is often hard to tell you are viewing a copy on first glance, the layouts are usually more like a forum.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#398

Post by bunga-bunga »

raincole wrote: post #122

Every time I posted on SO(or other SE sites) I always have to clarify my question with something like "I know it's probably not good idea to do A, and I understand B could be a better solution, but in my specific situation I really want to do A." Then people will still try to close my question because it's a duplicate of B.

People just skip that part. The flow is: read title, skim code example, post answer.

Then you point out that they completely disregarded what you wrote and blame you for misdirecting them. Then you get the downvotes.

The SO way.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#399

Post by stavros »

underdeserver wrote: post #375
cowthulhu wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilariously, the accepted (I assume by default, not by the asker) answer is flagrantly breaking, like, half a dozen rules and guidelines… but because it’s cynically and unhelpfully crapping on a newbie, it stays up. Or maybe there’s a good reason for it to stay up, but at a glance it sure isn’t a good look. I actually think SO is a great site and resource, but I also think a lot of that is despite the bitter old time…

Oh come on, it's not crapping on a newbie. It's a funny comment that serves as a reflection of the days and weeks this guy spent debugging these kinds of systems. As someone who was a newbie at the time when it was posted, who was looking for a way to parse HTML, I took away that it's just really the wrong way to go about it. I didn't feel crapped on at all.

The question isn't looking to parse HTML (or XML). Regexes are inappropriate for HTML because they can't adequately match the starting and ending tags, not because of black magic. The OP isn't looking to do that, so regexes look like a perfectly acceptable way to go.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#400

Post by pasc1878 »

jason-johnson wrote: post #381
underdeserver wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Doing things the right way is BETTER. If you can't, you should add a bit to your question saying "I know the standard way is to do Y, not X, but because of reason Z I can't do it."

Again, you’re not answering the person who asked but every person who ever will . Some of them will be asking because the “right way” is not an option in their situation.

Yes but the right way should be the answer unless it is explicitly stated why they can't use this.

Most readers will be able to use the "right way".

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