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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#411

Post by lolc »

geysersam wrote: post #391
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…

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 c…

My understanding is that Google has an incentive to send people to content farms because those farms will show Google's ads. Stackoverflow doesn't. So they can increase ad exposure.

Thinking of it, it would be an interesting test to compare the ranking of two similar sites, one with google ads, another with ads from another provider. Might be good evidence for antitrust litigation. But what do you do if they just prefer sites with more ads? Because due to their market position, that benefits them, but it isn't anti-competitive against other ad-pushers.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#412

Post by collaborative »

sedatk wrote: post #209
jb1991 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was about whether hacker news allows you to remove your content? It does not. You can send an email just to have your content anonymized, but it will remain forever.

That’s appalling. I thought they honored deletion requests. Terrible look on HNs side too. Edit: It seems like there’s a wiggle room, but still terrible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293237

I happen to have tried this multiple times. Every now and again I want to erase all trace of me on the internet. HN doesn't allow it. They tell you that you can give a spreadsheet with comment ids and how you want to rephrase things in case you've given TMI about yourself (in order to anonymize). I just don't have the time to go through my entire history to do this. So I attempt to post less, knowing I don't own my comments and I can be tracked

Reddit is actually a lot better in this regard

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#413

Post by lloydatkinson »

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...

You should see the discord server for the C# language. What a mess.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#414

Post by makeitdouble »

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.

Anecdotally Wikipedia is often the top result for me ... with the twist that it's the Google widget, with the side bar and related videos.

Only way below this block (which takes about 120% of my whole screen's height) come the "organic" results, that aren't great, but probably match what Google assumed I wanted to see.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#415

Post by EspressoGPT »

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…

Absolutely. Google search results quality has declined and I often find myself prefixing search queries with "site:reddit.com".

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#416

Post by ACV001 »

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…

It is not about SO at all. This is about chatGPT.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#417

Post by netmare »

SCdF wrote: post #385
anticodon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This incentive was always there, from day one. It was a classic thing to put the most basic answer as possible in as quickly as possible just to get it out the door and then refine it later, because whoever posts the answer first would have theirs shown first presuming no upvotes.

This is exactly the reason I gave up on SO. It was so disappointing to see the "frist!" answer get votes, even when it was factually incorrect. By the time it took me to think and write a half decent phrase the original answer had been edited dozens of times. The site was also eager to interrupt me every time to tell me that an existing answer had been edited. They did everything possible to allow the system to be gamed and, well... they succeeded.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#418

Post by jazzabeanie »

geysersam wrote: post #391
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…

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 c…

This is good to know. I refuse to click on a geeks4geeks result even if it looks like it has exactly the answer I want.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#419

Post by pasc1878 »

casenmgreen wrote: post #326
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…

Seconded re moderation. Also, the site itself - the ethos of the owners; I used to have an account, became disenchanted with the mods, decided to delete my content, close the account. I then discovered; 1. You cannot delete answers which have been accepted. 2. The mechanism for deleting your own content allows you to delete a max of something like five replies per day. I then took the time to look at the T&C, and SO…

Read the T&C. The answers are all licenced under creative commons with attribution so anyone can copy them. They are not owned by SO. This is why sites can copy all of SO to get better Google SEO also this is why ChatGPT etc can build their answers based on SO.

So remember it was never your property.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#420

Post by pasc1878 »

sznio wrote: post #355
kentrado wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the EU, you could do a GDPR request to delete all your data. https://meta.stackexchange.com/legal/gdpr/request

I mean, they will remove your personal information from their databases. Your answers will most likely stay, just anonymized.

The answers will stay they are licensed through Creative Commons Attribution licences so anyone can copy them.
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