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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#741

Post by cutemonster »

kzrdude wrote: post #477
kebman wrote: post #436

I used to contribute a lot to Stack Overflow, but then I noticed that I’d get flamed for even asking simple questions; stuff that can really stand between actually getting somewhere with your code, and where a helpful comment could really make a difference. At some point regular replies were replaced by administrators and mods who are seemingly far more interested in finding faults with your question rather than to a…

Another observation is that sometimes it feels like you get answers to your question in contempt. Someone writes an answer but at the same time assure you that your question is not good enough. Or they answer it but don't upvote the question. (If the question is not worthwhile, why answer it? Probably for rep.)

(I personally upvote questions because I had the same problem. I've never upvoted a question just because it was well written. More interesting to see "how many has this problem" than "is the question well researched / well written" I think. So I would still be happy, related to that, if I were you :-))

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#742

Post by kzrdude »

culopatin wrote: post #636
kzrdude wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if we all do it the same way. I don't use push notifications for barely anything, because I don't want to be disturbed by random sites (least of all linkedin or SO.)

But you’re not the average person.

I didn't know that. Well, I suspected it, because something is clearly wrong, yeah, but.. you know what I mean?

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#743

Post by [deleted] »

wiz21c wrote: post #631
mountainb wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has long been a mantra in SEO land that user generated content sites in general and forums in particular are to be aggressively down ranked. The reason for this is that industrial strength spam farms otherwise spin up tens of thousands of forum domains to pass link juice to what they are targeting. This naturally penalizes real forums, which often contain the best content for a query. This is why Google has basica…

funny, I just rented an introductory book about signal processing and was (re) amazed to see how much the information is well explained, with tons of example, and a real plan to guide you in the ton of knowledge you have to master. I for one welcome back our new library overlords.

[deleted]

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#744

Post by fho »

freediver wrote: post #594
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…

Both features exactly as described already exist in Kagi search [1] (founder here). We are not trying to replace Google though, but offer an alternative to people who care so much for the quality of their search experience, that they are willing to pay for it. [1] https://kagi.com

You won me over by summarizing listicles to a short list :-)

To be honest I think your pricing is to high. $25 for unlimited queries might be fine for somebody who needs a good search to work and earn appropriately.

But as a (former) PhD student I ran through the 100 free queries in 2 or 3 days and just would not have been able to afford 25€.

I would gladly pay 10€ (for unlimited searches) or 15€ (for a unlimited family option). But to me, 25€ just seems to high. That's 5 meals at my workplaces cantina right now (Germany, NRW).

(I assume you are aware of pricing issues as pricing options have changed at least once while kagi is on my radar)

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#745

Post by hinkley »

abathur wrote: post #13
is_true wrote: post #6

I think the problem is google losing the fight with spammers. It's being a while for me that I have to put "stackoverflow" in the search query to avoid sites with scraped content

And, IME, these scraped sites often manage to rank above the canonical source.

Which means they aren't applying any sort of primacy to the information.

If three segments of the internet think the same piece of information is relevant, that should affect the score of all 3 copies, not just the largest segment.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#746

Post by hinkley »

culopatin wrote: post #99
lawgimenez wrote: post #83

My SO account is almost 12 years, with just over 2k reputation and I don't really care. Until now I am still somewhat helping answer some basic questions in the mobile development area tags, my only gripe with SO is the hostile nature of some mods with large reputation. Some seem to get a kick out of this and forgot that reputation does not translate to expertise. For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New…

I think that with the rise of push notifications, no one really goes to a site to check notifications anymore. So the new user may have not developed the muscle memory to go back to SO and participate. I suspect this also has something to do with the decline of forums. Reddit still works because the app sends 200 notifications a day, but without it, I don’t think it would be as popular. Also SO is participation hosti…

Since SO is often used in a professional capacity, that problem could have easily been fixed by dev tools providing a formal way to link to SO traffic for topics that are relevant to the team.

It's just been a while since anyone has started trying to integrate tools with each other, outside of the established players.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#747

Post by hinkley »

Nextgrid wrote: post #347
is_true wrote: post #6

I think the problem is google losing the fight with spammers. It's being a while for me that I have to put "stackoverflow" in the search query to avoid sites with scraped content

Google is not "losing" any fight. Google is deliberately letting spam thrive because that spam may contain Google Ads/analytics and increases engagement on the SERP page as people who click on the spam go back to try something else (potentially one of the sponsored results). All these contribute to Google's bottom-line.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#748

Post by freediver »

fho wrote: post #744
freediver wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both features exactly as described already exist in Kagi search [1] (founder here). We are not trying to replace Google though, but offer an alternative to people who care so much for the quality of their search experience, that they are willing to pay for it. [1] https://kagi.com

You won me over by summarizing listicles to a short list :-) To be honest I think your pricing is to high. $25 for unlimited queries might be fine for somebody who needs a good search to work and earn appropriately. But as a (former) PhD student I ran through the 100 free queries in 2 or 3 days and just would not have been able to afford 25€. I would gladly pay 10€ (for unlimited searches) or 15€ (for a unlimited fam…

Thanks for the kind words. There are many things like grouping listicles you can do to improve search experience, once the incentives are aligned.

Unlimited for $10 is something we are working towards.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#749

Post by sedatk »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #735
sedatk wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do because I’m not a robot? I wrote answers that made it to HN’s frontpage (this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5243389 ). Later, that answer was edited by automod to remove “Hello” line because somebody hated that people greeted each other on SO. I wrote paragraphs only to be closed by mods as “opinion based” or whatever, so I had to turn them into blog posts, and they got picked up by popular publishin…

Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for. I'm not saying you shouldn't care about things like that. And I wasn't talking about the issue of mods deleting entire answered questions. I was talking about single contributions, and mods deleting things is the exact opposite of what my post was addressing! On the other side, that compiler post is fun but it's not some big effortful thing…

> Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for

It wasn't a blog post on the site; I extended it to a blog post after mods closed it and flagged it for deletion. As a top 0.5% or whatever contributor of SO, believe me, I know what the site is for.

> but it's not some big effortful thing

It doesn't have to be. It's my thing. It sounds like me, it carries my spirit. Nobody else would have written it then. It reflects a period of my life, how I perceived things; and more importantly, its continued existence has an impact on me regardless how it's licensed. Say, if my writing style, or my choice of words, or my tone were associated with a traumatic event in my past, SO's insistence on keeping it up would be explicitly abusive, don't you agree?

Even if no such event had occured, SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishes is also abusive; it deprives me of control over my thoughts and my words. Is it legal? Yes, 100%. But, is it ethical? No, I don't think so. And for what? For keeping the answer for "how can I simulate a click on a DOM element?" online, as if that problem immediately becomes "unsolveable" when that comment, heck, the whole SO web site goes down. What a pretentious excuse to keep your income stream steady.

> I wouldn't care about it that much

You would if you were me.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#750

Post by Eisenstein »

kerkeslager wrote: post #727
Eisenstein wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not ignoring anything, and this conversation has gotten strangely emotional for people responding to me. I joined this thread when it had a few comments and explained what an XY problem was. I don't use stackexchange and I am a little bewildered why people are accusing me of being condescending.

> I don't use stackexchange and I am a little bewildered why people are accusing me of being condescending. Because you're propagating the idea that you (or anyone asking questions) knows better what a person asking needs than the person asking does. Telling people you know what they need better than they do is pretty close to the definition of condescending. People are emotional because nearly everyone who asks a qu…

I ask follow up questions and get at what the person really wants, confirm it, and help them with it. I'm sorry if I am making troubleshooting harder -- I think that the answerer of the questions should be obligated to solve the problem or they shouldn't be helping.

Unfortunately I had no idea about the perverse incentives for question answering and the terrible moderator practices on SO, so I walked into a minefield giving an answer here that I thought was helpful based on my experience as a hands on technician working directly with people -- but it turned out to be a lightning rod for people's frustrations on these issues.

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