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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#761

Post by sedatk »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #760
sedatk wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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? No, I'd say your trauma is causing you to make an unreasonable demand. The writing style in a short technical post existing somewhere should not be harmful. > SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishe…

> I don't think most contributors would be anywhere near as upset about an inability to delete posts

Most contributors of any platform wouldn't be upset about anything. Conformance of the majority doesn't imply the rightfulness of the action.

But many people are upset about it, rightfully so; see for yourself: 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+can%27t+i+delete+my+cont... 2. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+can%27t+i+delete+my+cont...

> I don't think they want the level of emotional investment in those pieces of text

Of course they don't. They want you to be a free ChatGPT as much as possible. The less human you are, the better for them. That doesn't mean that what they are doing is okay or harmless.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#762

Post by beefman »

The Aviation Stack Exchange contains the only clear statement on the web about the power dissipation of jetliner engines.[1] Unfortunately, the value given is low by a factor of 2 due to a simple calculus mistake.[2] And even though my Stack Overflow account is more than a decade old, and I posted a slightly successful question on MathOverflow back in 2017, and signed up separately for Aviation, I was not able to comment on the answer or interact on the topic in any way.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/19569/how-many-...

[2] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/191826/derivativ...

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#763

Post by moneywoes »

AtNightWeCode wrote: post #486
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense. "New visits" are first time users, likely young coders who are looking up answers to things on a search engine, find what they're looking for on Stack Overflow, maybe click on an ad, and leave. They probably don't vote or post much. A sudden die-off there suggests something very bad happened to organic traffic (change in Google? Terrible new SEO scheme? A sudden stop in ad buys?) The new content rat…

If SO was worried about that drop I think they would have bought back some of that traffic. More likely something has changed how they count the visits or they blocked some bad traffic. Traffic data is often sampled as well. The fall in the beginning of 2023 may be the introduction of ChatGPT. A more worrying idea is that the numbers reflect not just the decline of SO but a decline of the whole IT business.

Perhaps they focus more on their enterprise offerings now?

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#764

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#765

Post by honzabe »

alex_lav wrote: post #721
honzabe wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please specify whether you use (paid) GPT-4? Would you kindly provide links to a few examples of very fundamental things incorrect? My experience - the free version made up a lot of things but still felt very useful - enough to want to upgrade to the paid version. With the paid version, I notice very rarely that it hallucinates. It does make errors but it can correct them when I provide feedback. It is possib…

> Can you please specify whether you use (paid) GPT-4? Paid. > Would you kindly provide links to a few examples of very fundamental things incorrect? No, definitely not. > I notice very rarely that it hallucinates. Unsure of what "hallucinates" means in this case. Some examples of things I've used it for: docker configuration, small blocks of code, generating a cover letter, proofreading a document, YAML validation,…

>> Unsure of what "hallucinates" means in this case

The term "hallucinations" is now commonly used for instances of AI making stuff up - like when I asked ChatGPT (before I had paid account) to recommend 5 books about a certain topic and two of the recommended books looked totally plausible, but when I tried to find them, I discovered there are no such books. This is where I see a big difference between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.

>> I get a response that isn't grammatically correct/doesn't include punctuation

What punctuation? If you mean stuff like commas separating complex sentences, my English is definitely not good enough to spot that. But your mention of punctuation reminded me of problems that ChatGPT has with my native language... any chance you are using ChatGPT in a language other than English?

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#766

Post by Turing_Machine »

cassepipe wrote: post #725
Turing_Machine wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rough moderators would close off discussions for the most trivial reasons, yet SO still allowed those discussions to be indexed by Google (despite rel="nofollow" having been a thing since 2005 or so). Presumably this was because SO still wanted the Google juice. It was irritating as hell to have the top several Google links go to SO discussions that had been shut down by the moderators. > I can't blame them I'm…

Except the moderators are unpaid and they don't hurt much more than egos ? Also Stack Overflow is not supposed to be a public service unlike police (is supposed to be), so the moderators are not accountable to you, only to the site guidelines (which you appeal to I guess) Given the value it gives to society, it should be turned into a public service before some rich prick takes it over and turns into a cow to be milk…

> Except the moderators are unpaid and they don't hurt much more than egos ?

Read again. It has nothing to do with "ego". By allowing their "moderated" threads to continue polluting search engine search results, they are wasting my time. They are wasting the time of everyone else who has a similar question and makes the mistake of clicking through an SO link.

I would not be at all surprised if they got downranked because people at Google were tired of SO wasting their time.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#767

Post by mewse »

rmbyrro wrote: post #429
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.

I'd also like to highlight "non-hostile" as a reason why folks might prefer ChatGPT.

Stack Overflow has a lot of stridently opinionated jerks contributing to it, and if I can just ask ChatGPT a question and get an answer that works rather than having to deal with being belittled by those people, then I'm probably having a much better day as a result.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#768

Post by erdeibit »

redsaber wrote: post #673
coffeebeqn wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally it seems like Google is favoring spam sites that have crawled answers from SO

I had to use ublock origin to start blocking those sites https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

Thanks, I've been looking for this kind of filter for ublock. Those copycat sites are a pest.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#769

Post by stulentsev »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #129
culopatin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least part of the reason for the hostility is that SO is a game. You get points, but you can also prevent others from getting points by voting down or removing their questions and answers. On SO this hostility is pronounced because participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job.

> participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job

It’s true, though. I have a high-rep account and I’ve had a few jobs fall in my lap because of that.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#770

Post by Cheezewheel »

cassepipe wrote: post #571

Well, I must be the only one left to think Stack Overflow is great then. Sure, you may encounter the occasional rough moderator but having to correspond with random people on the internet in writing as my daily job, I can't blame them. If you don't have a rep, it's up to you to gain some by crafting the best question, linking to the relevant docs, transcribing screenshots, correcting typos etc. The only issue with SO…

Having a high reputation shouldn't be a free pass to be an obnoxious jackass, but often that is what ends up happening. There is virtually no consequence to coming into a valid question (or answer) and just close it like a dickhead. No, in fact this behavior is rewarded.

If you are either someone who likes wielding power recklessly or autistic then becoming a power user isn't a problem. But demanding users "prove" they are trustworthy in a system where blatant abuses of authority go unchallenged is farcical.

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