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Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

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Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#111

Post by blazing234 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #100
delichon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten answers from OpenAI that were technically correct but quite horrible in the longer term. I've gotten the same kinds of answers on Stack Overflow, but there other people are eager to add the necessary feedback. I got the same feedback from an LLM but only because in that case I knew enough to ask for it. Maybe we can get this multi-headed advantage back from LLMs by applying a team of divergent AIs to the…

You can usually even ask the same LLM: - do a task - criticize your job on that task - redo that task based on criticism I find giving the LLM a process greatly improves the results.

How do you know the second result is correct? Or the third? Or the fourth?

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#112

Post by bryanrasmussen »

SoftTalker wrote: post #63
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean part of the reason to not ask about stuff on SO, there are several types of questions that one might like to ask - such as: I don't know the first thing about this thing, help me get to where I know the first thing. This is not allowed any more. I want to know the pros and cons of various things compared. this is not allowed. I have quality questions regarding an approach that I know how to do, but I want to k…

The first one especially is not interesting except to the person asking the question, who wants to be spoon-fed answers instead of making any effort of his own to acquire foundational knowledge. Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. Pro/Con questions are too likely to involve opinion and degenerate into flamewars. Some could be answered factually, but mostly are not. Others hav…

thank you for bringing the default SO reasons why these are not the case, but first off

>Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems.

I don't think I've been in any class since elementary school in which I did not have foundational knowledge, I'm talking "I just realized there must be a technical discipline that handles this issue and I can't google my way to it level of questions."

If I'm a student, I have a textbook and the ability to read. I'm not asking textbook readable or relevant literature readable in the thing I am studying questions because I, being in a class on the subject I would "know the first thing" to quote my earlier post, that first thing being how to get more good and relevant knowledge on the thing I am in a class in.

I'm talking about things you don't even know what questions to ask to get that foundational knowledge which is among the most interesting questions to ask - the problem with SO is it only wants me to ask questions in a field in which I am already fairly expert but I have just hit a temporary stumbling block for some reason.

I remember when I was working on a big government security project and there was a Java guy who was an expert in a field that I knew nothing about and he would laugh and say you can't go to SO and ask about how do I ... long bit of technical jargon outside my field that I sort of understood hung together, maybe eigenvectors came up (this was in 2013)

Second thing, yes I know SO does not want people to ask non-factual questions, and it does not want me to ask questions in fields in which I am uninformed, so it follows it wants me to ask questions that I can probably find out myself one way or another, only SO is more convenient.

I gave some reasons why I do not find SO particularly convenient or useful given their constraints implying this is probably the same for others, you said two of my reasons were no good, but I notice you did not have any input on the underlying question of - why are people not asking as many questions on SO as they once did?

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#113

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jakub_g wrote: post #98
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean part of the reason to not ask about stuff on SO, there are several types of questions that one might like to ask - such as: I don't know the first thing about this thing, help me get to where I know the first thing. This is not allowed any more. I want to know the pros and cons of various things compared. this is not allowed. I have quality questions regarding an approach that I know how to do, but I want to k…

I can see how frustrating it might be, but the overall idea of SO is "no duplicates". They don't want to have 1000 questions which are exactly the same but with slightly different phrasing. It can be problematic for total newcomers, but at the same time it makes it more useful for professionals: instead of having 1000 questions how to X with 1 reply, you have one canonical question with 20 replies sorted by upvotes a…

>I can see how frustrating it might be

It's certainly not frustrating for me, I ask a question maybe once a year on SO, most of their content is, in my chosen disciplines, not technically interesting, it is no better than looking up code snippets in documentation (which most of the time is what it really, really is)

I suppose it's frustrating for SO that people no longer find it worthwhile to ask questions there.

>advanced / off the beaten path

show me an advanced and off the beaten path question that SO has answered well, that is just not worth the effort to try to get an answer - if you have an advanced and off the beaten path question that you can't answer then you ask it on SO just "in case" but really you will find the answer somewhere else or not at all in my experience.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#114

Post by wwweston »

wokwokwok wrote: post #109
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but the funny thing is, the only people I've ever seen complain about SO are people who don't know how to search.

Everyone has a pet theory about what’s wrong with SO; but here’s the truth: Whatever they’re doing, it isn’t working. Blame mods. Blame AI. Blame askers… whatever man. That is a sinking ship. If you don’t see people complain about SO, it’s because they aren’t using it, not because they’re using the search. Pretty hard to argue at this point that the problem is with the users being too shit to use the platform. That’s…

I get useful info from SO all the time, so often that these days it’s rare I have to ask a question. When I do, the issue seems to be it’s likely niche enough that an answer could take days or weeks, which is too bad, but fair enough. It’s also rare I can add an answer these days but I’m glad when I can.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#115

Post by baq »

verdverm wrote: post #64

For me, many of my questions about open source projects have moved to GitHub and Discord, so there is platform migration besides LLMs. I also tend to start with Gemini for more general programming things, because it will (1) answer in the terms of my problem instead of me having to visit multiple pages to piece it together, or (2) what it's wrong, I often get better jump off points when searching. Either way, LLMs sa…

2022: Discord is not indexed by search engines, it sucks

2024: Discord is not indexed by AI slop generators, it's great

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#116

Post by sokoloff »

SunlitCat wrote: post #99
haolez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time that I asked a question on #cpp @Freenode was a unique experience for my younger self. My message contained greetings and the question in the same message. I was banned immediately and the response from the mods was: - do not greet; we don't have time for that bullshit - do not use natural language questions; submit a test case and we will understand what you mean through your code - do not abbreviate…

That contradiction is funny, tho: > - do not greet; we don't have time for that bullshit and > do not abbreviate words (you have abbreviated "you" as "u"); if you do not have time to type the words, we do not have time to read them So they have apparently enough time to read full words, it seems!

I think reading “u” takes longer than reading “you”.

With “u”, I have to pause for a moment and think “that’s not a normal word; I wonder if they meant to type ‘i’ instead (and just hit a little left of target)?” and then maybe read the passage twice to see which is more likely.

I don’t think it’s quite as much a contradiction. (It still could be more gruff than needed.)

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#117

Post by wholinator2 »

wokwokwok wrote: post #109
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but the funny thing is, the only people I've ever seen complain about SO are people who don't know how to search.

Everyone has a pet theory about what’s wrong with SO; but here’s the truth: Whatever they’re doing, it isn’t working. Blame mods. Blame AI. Blame askers… whatever man. That is a sinking ship. If you don’t see people complain about SO, it’s because they aren’t using it, not because they’re using the search. Pretty hard to argue at this point that the problem is with the users being too shit to use the platform. That’s…

We're talking about stackoverflow right? The website is a veritable gold mine of carefully answered queries. Sure, some people are shit, but how often are you unable to get at least some progress on a question from it? I find it useful in 90-95% of queries, i find the answers useful in 99% of queries that match my question. The thing is amazing! I Google search a problem, and there's 5 threads of people with comparable issues, even if no one has my exact error, the debugging and advice around the related errors is almost always enough to get me over the hump.

Why all the hate? AI answers can suck, definitely. Stackoverflow literally holds the modern industry up. Next time you have a technical problem or error you don't understand go ahead and avoid the easy answers given on the platform and see how much better the web is without it. I don't understand, what kind questions do you have?

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#118

Post by herval »

melenaboija wrote: post #38

It’s been a relief to find a platform where I can ask questions without the fear of being humiliated Half joking, but I am pretty tired of SO pedantry.

The flipside to this is you can’t get answers to anything _recent_, since the models are trained years behind in content. My feelig is it’s getting increasingly difficult to figure out issues on the latest version of libraries & tools, as the only options are private Discords (which aren’t even googleable)

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#119

Post by SoftTalker »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #112
SoftTalker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one especially is not interesting except to the person asking the question, who wants to be spoon-fed answers instead of making any effort of his own to acquire foundational knowledge. Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. Pro/Con questions are too likely to involve opinion and degenerate into flamewars. Some could be answered factually, but mostly are not. Others hav…

thank you for bringing the default SO reasons why these are not the case, but first off >Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. I don't think I've been in any class since elementary school in which I did not have foundational knowledge, I'm talking "I just realized there must be a technical discipline that handles this issue and I can't google my way to it level of questions." I…

SO is what it is, they have made the choices they made as to what questions are appropriate on their platform.

I don't know why SO questions are declining -- perhaps people find SO frustrating, as you seem to, and they give up. I myself have never posted a question on SO as I generally have found that my questions had already been asked and answered. And lately, perhaps LLMs are providing better avenues for the sorts of questions you describe. That seems very plausible to me.

Re: Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms

#120

Post by insane_dreamer »

The problem is eventually what are LLMs going’s to draw from? They’re not creating new information, just regurgitating and combining existing info. That’s why they perform so poorly on code for which there aren’t many many publicly available samples, SO/reddit answers etc.
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