The Fall of Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#421

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

technion wrote: post #395

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…

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'…

> These scam sites load megabytes of junk, load slowly, have text interpersed with ads and modals that render right on top of them

Only if you're not googlebot. The crawler sees a much nicer site.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#422

Post by Henk0815 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

Stack Overflow was the "what is wrong with the api?" "What api to use?" "How to improve api usage/syntax?" place.

"Whats is wrong with the api?": moved to github, because its the source. "What api to use?": stackoverflow is still the place to go (or chatgpt). "How to improve api usage/syntax?" stackoverflow / chatpgt.

Github could really dominate with its own LLM in the web and Stackoverflow could regain some shares with an integrated LLM.

PS: I don't like Github Copilot because of UX and code upload.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#423

Post by pasc1878 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:20 AM UTC

devjab wrote: post #374

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…

For me personally it’s the rise of good documentation. 12 or 13 years ago I needed to build something for our sharepoint 2010 in a world where sharepoint 2013 was out. I’m not a share point developer, at all, it was my first time with it. I am of the old school however, so figuring out how systems work by reading the manual or specification isn’t foreign to me. I’ve worked with the bitmap format, I’ve worked with sol…

This is odd as my view is that documentation was much better pre 2000 and SO was needed because official documentation got so bad.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#424

Post by makeitdouble » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:22 AM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #363

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…

Which is the correct response to this question? > How do I shoot myself in the foot? I’m pointing the gun at my foot and pulling the trigger, but nothing is happening. Is it: > A common reason for guns not firing is that they aren’t loaded. Try loading the gun and trying again. …or is it: > Woah, hang on a sec! What are you trying to achieve exactly? It seems like you are doing something very wrong here. I’m sure the…

When a user is describing exactly how they're aiming at their foot and pulling the trigger but nothing happens, I'd assume they actually want to shoot themselves in the foot...

Thus, the first response is the correct one.

On preventing people from doing what they intend to do...I think the main issue is the world is a large place, people face many situations, and most advices given in good faith only have an extremely limited view of what people might need to do. And it's kinda awkward to ask for someone's whole life to decide if they are right in wanting to straight rename a table column on their live production DB.

Something could be a bad idea 99% of the time. But that leaves millions of people in the 1% for whom it's the best course of action.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#425

Post by blockchainZaid » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:22 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#426

Post by pittmajp » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:23 AM UTC

winrid wrote: post #379

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that I cannot and do not trust either of those for anything.

Really? For programming they are immensely helpful! ChatGPT 3.5 even rewrote Rust code for me that compiled with borrowing issues, replacing iter() with itermut() and other things. I also had a question about specific configuration w/ an old version of Chart.JS that I could not find an answer on Google, and ChatGPT figured it out.

I had it write an ansible job to enable a service with a specific name, and I got what I expected: something that looks correct a first glance, but with some subtle errors.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#427

Post by Etheryte » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:24 AM UTC

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…

The answer can only ever be accepted by the asker, not even mods can change that. It's actually not that rare that the accepted answer is not the one with most votes in which case the accepted answer is somewhere further down, not the first one on top.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#428

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:26 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#429

Post by rmbyrro » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

hans_castorp wrote: post #240

I left SO because I was downvoted to oblivion for an answer that took me 2 minutes to write - but I had answered a similar question several years before (which I actually didn't remember). Searching for my own answer would have taken way more time than it took to write a new one. When I pointed out that it's not the responsibility of the one answering to search for dupes, but for the one asking, I was told that I sho…

That's why most developers now prefer ChatGPT. It's way faster and more convenient. Like a super smart search engine.

SO will remain as a library for unseen problems, which is what's supposed to be good for.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#430

Post by Modified3019 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

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…

uBlacklist can help by culling the spam results, while it's mostly a manual thing, it's fast, easy, and a little effort goes a long way I've found.

Unfortunately it still doesn't solve the issue that sometimes the good results are still buried pages away or simply not come up at all due to google's shitty algorithm.

I really need to look into SearXNG or something.