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We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

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Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#21

Post by spiderfarmer »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #13

Like so many things in American life these days, we've arrived at a "better solution" that extracts value from the past without producing a future. The decades of Stack Overflow answers fed into LLM training produce plausible answers for today . In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? So much of life these days is purely extractive, trying to squeeze more money out of less productive activity. It's no wonder young p…

> In 10 years what will the LLMs train on?

Why do people think this is necessary? When you learn new things, like bicycling, you don't start with relearning how to walk.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#22

Post by [deleted] »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #13

Like so many things in American life these days, we've arrived at a "better solution" that extracts value from the past without producing a future. The decades of Stack Overflow answers fed into LLM training produce plausible answers for today . In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? So much of life these days is purely extractive, trying to squeeze more money out of less productive activity. It's no wonder young p…

[deleted]

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#23

Post by pixelat3d »

The whole premise of this is kinda wrong. Google killed SO more than anything else. Much like how they’re killing the rest of the web today. AI certainly didn’t help, but it is/was not the root cause, nor was the ‘toxic’ environment

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#24

Post by okaleniuk »

There should be a lesson for other communities but, unfortunately, there is none. StackOverflow used to be a fun and welcoming place in 2009. It became a toxic hellhole overtime

There are no obvious flows in the original design, and there were no endemic wrongdoings in the governance either. It just rotted slowly like any other community does. And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe. And that's why StackOverflow doesn't serve as a lesson either.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#25

Post by okaleniuk »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #21
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #13

Like so many things in American life these days, we've arrived at a "better solution" that extracts value from the past without producing a future. The decades of Stack Overflow answers fed into LLM training produce plausible answers for today . In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? So much of life these days is purely extractive, trying to squeeze more money out of less productive activity. It's no wonder young p…

> In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? Why do people think this is necessary? When you learn new things, like bicycling, you don't start with relearning how to walk.

Walking doesn't change as often as C++ standard.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#26

Post by moralestapia »

pixelesque wrote: post #17

A couple of thoughts: That graph is number of questions asked being posted: very often the question already exists (although obviously with technology and frameworks changing over time, things aren't constant, and answers can be out of date at some point), so you don't need to post the question. Also: Would LLMs be as good for answers if they hadn't been trained on scraping StackOverflow in the first place?

Hyper-cope.

But on your 2nd question,

>Would LLMs be as good for answers [...]

Yes.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#27

Post by jakeydus »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #21
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #13

Like so many things in American life these days, we've arrived at a "better solution" that extracts value from the past without producing a future. The decades of Stack Overflow answers fed into LLM training produce plausible answers for today . In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? So much of life these days is purely extractive, trying to squeeze more money out of less productive activity. It's no wonder young p…

> In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? Why do people think this is necessary? When you learn new things, like bicycling, you don't start with relearning how to walk.

The issue here is borrowing from the future to pay for the present. The bicycle analogy (unless I'm missing something huge here) does not seem relevant at all.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#28

Post by xeromal »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #21
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #13

Like so many things in American life these days, we've arrived at a "better solution" that extracts value from the past without producing a future. The decades of Stack Overflow answers fed into LLM training produce plausible answers for today . In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? So much of life these days is purely extractive, trying to squeeze more money out of less productive activity. It's no wonder young p…

> In 10 years what will the LLMs train on? Why do people think this is necessary? When you learn new things, like bicycling, you don't start with relearning how to walk.

I think they are positing that LLMs do not produce new thought. If a new framework (super magic new framework) is released, current LLMs will not be able to help.

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#29

Post by onesandofgrain »

okaleniuk wrote: post #24

There should be a lesson for other communities but, unfortunately, there is none. StackOverflow used to be a fun and welcoming place in 2009. It became a toxic hellhole overtime There are no obvious flows in the original design, and there were no endemic wrongdoings in the governance either. It just rotted slowly like any other community does. And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic.…

I’d reckon a set of mods with no superiority complex is one step though lol

Re: We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

#30

Post by ronbenton »

okaleniuk wrote: post #24

There should be a lesson for other communities but, unfortunately, there is none. StackOverflow used to be a fun and welcoming place in 2009. It became a toxic hellhole overtime There are no obvious flows in the original design, and there were no endemic wrongdoings in the governance either. It just rotted slowly like any other community does. And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic.…

>And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe. And that's why StackOverflow doesn't serve as a lesson either.

I think a well-moderated community can be non-toxic. Lobste.rs is a good if not extreme example: it's kind of a vouch system for the people you refer and there's pretty good moderation to prevent overly mean discussion.

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