The Fall of Stack Overflow • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#651

Post by Calamitous » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:15 PM 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…

That’s one of the nice things about Kagi: you can lower our block content farms, and elevate sites like stack overflow.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#652

Post by post-it » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #633

gingerlime wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which should — in theory — get them penalized for cloaking. But obviously it doesn’t. Reinforcing GP’s point.

Google has gotten pretty lenient about that: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-po... "If you operate a paywall or a content-gating mechanism, we don't consider this to be cloaking if Google can see the full content of what's behind the paywall just like any person who has access to the gated material and if you follow our Flexible Sampling general guidance." I wonder if they just gave up

Hypothesis: Search, being Google's oldest product, is no longer prestigious to work in. It's in maintenance mode.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#653

Post by diemechanist » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

newaccount74 wrote: post #310

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 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…

> "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 these people"

"Some" is an understatement.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#654

Post by DarkmSparks » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #590

madog wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I want from a new search engine: 1. Respect exact match searches - this used to work enclosing the search terms in "" quotes, but no longer works. If there are no exact match results, return nothing. 2. Allow blacklisting or removing results from certain websites entirely e.g. I want to be able to configure geeks4geeks to never show up in any results ever If someone could make this new search engine they…

I think Brave search has those features. (I haven’t tried it, though.)

https://search.brave.com/

probably my new default search engine. Thnx

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#655

Post by gtirloni » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #595

pjc50 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an adversarial process. The search engine is, in theory, trying to rank by usefulness to the user, and the site owner is trying to maximize revenue by lying to the search engine. And the user.

I'm generally puzzled by Google's reluctance to do manual intervention in these cases. It's not like this is a secret. Just penalize the whole domain for 60 days every time a prominent site lies to the crawler.

If Google's support is any indication, Google doesn't like to involve humans in their processes. There probably isn't enough humans to do this manual intervention you propose.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#656

Post by peeters » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #628

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…

> 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 shutting it down for not being “on topic” enough or whatever. Related: I've often been looking how to do X, find an SO question asking that, but the answerers there refused to answer until the person explained…

I've never really thought about how contributors trying to avoid the XY problem really stands at odds with StackOverflow's mission of being a repository of answers, rather than a helpdesk. Not all Ys present as X, and not all Xs are actually Ys. Sometimes its an XZ problem.

The best you can hope for is some answer down the page that says something like "to answer the actual question..."

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#657

Post by dugmartin » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #642

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…

Owners of the SO sites are control freaks. Mods have started ruining the site around 10 years ago. Now, when I do a fresh registration I can't do basic things like upvote an answer or write a helpful comment, because I need X reputation. So I can't add relevant info/feedback to a topic I landed on via google, because I don't have reputation, so in essence the site strangles itself. Because in 2023 I'm not going to fa…

> Why don't they introduce a system where you can say, I need this answer for 5 bucks.

I think the problem with that is how do you prove it's a good or bad answer? Say you offer a bounty and I generate a great answer. You look at the answer and use it and then flag the answer as bad so you don't have to pay.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#658

Post by firesteelrain » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #649

tzs wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 shutting it down for not being “on topic” enough or whatever. Related: I've often been looking how to do X, find an SO question asking that, but the answerers there refused to answer until the person explained…

> Related: I've often been looking how to do X, find an SO question asking that, but the answerers there refused to answer until the person explained why they wanted to do X, and then all the answers (correctly) told the person that they actually needed to do Y and explained quite well how to do Y. > I actually need to do X, so those answers are useless to me. I know what you mean. Whenever I (rarely) ask a question…

> defensively load it up

Agree. This isn't a problem on the partner/sister sites as much. They are very helpful too. But they don't show up on Google

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#659

Post by redsaber » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

collaborative wrote: post #468

Tao3300 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I wonder how you feel aisearch.vip compares to your Bing experience. Send me a message via Side Menu-> Contact and I will give you a grand for free

small nitpick but I thought it was just an icon but it turns out to be the button for switching light/dark mode. It would be great if you could replace it.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#660

Post by tivert » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

ncruces wrote: post #606

rightbyte wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience matches mine. Spend two or three weeks blacklisting sites as you hit them and they disappear. Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them. It takes time to build ranking. The underlying reason is probably that the spam sites use Google Ads (revenue which is tied to 1000s of PMs and managers bonuses) and that…

Yeah, but then they're editorializing. And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.”

>> Some people argue that Google possibly can't win the fight vs spam sites, but obviously it works perfectly fine manually blacklisting them.

> Yeah, but then they're editorializing.

> And not in a generic “this kind of content is bad for our users” but very specifically “site x.com is bad for our users.”

Except that shouldn't be a problem because I'm pretty sure Google already blacklists domains.