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Stack Overflow is almost dead

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#201

Post by zahlman »

palata wrote: post #174
zahlman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as far as I can see, it is dying. And why are you the one who gets to make this judgment? > So on the one hand you find it okay to delete old questions, and on the other hand you find it okay to not add new questions. But it's not dying. Yes. You write this as though you think there is a contradiction here. I genuinely don't understand why. There is no contradiction here. QuickDraw wasn't "injured" when it lost…

> it's not hard to distinguish between "this person can barely write coherent English" and "I don't know anything about this technology" Sorry, I hadn't realised I could barely write coherent English. > QuickDraw wasn't "injured" when it lost 2000 lines of code, either Talking about writing coherent English, what the hell does this have to do with the current discussion?

> Sorry, I hadn't realised I could barely write coherent English.

I was clearly referring to different kinds of questions, not to your writing.

> Talking about writing coherent English, what the hell does this have to do with the current discussion?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#202

Post by zero_shift »

louison11 wrote: post #12

My heart goes to the stack overflow community which has always been very kind and helpful, essentially working for free. As a self-taught developer since the age of 8, I literally grew up learning how to code through SO, asking hundreds of questions and answering many more. So many bugs that would take 2-3 days to fix would eventually find their answer through it. But now ChatGPT does that in minutes… so it’s for the…

Ironically, when someone first asked the Meta SO community if ChatGPT could ever become a threat, it was downvoted with prejudice:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/384355/could-chatgp...

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#203

Post by jarek83 »

I wonder if they could survive if they added a mode like phind.com wrapper - where each question stores LLM answers as answers. So (SO!) many more content and would people reason to still use it.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#204

Post by staircasebug »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #60
staircasebug wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're learning from working code in GitHub, IDE "co-pilots"...

But a priori you don't know if the code you find on Github is "good", plus it doesn't come with a handy explanation. The quality of the data is much, much worse.

Fair point, but large, popular and well maintained/healthy repos would likely be better to learn from than SO. Lots of stack overflow convos have moved to GitHub issues as well.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#205

Post by mvdtnz »

zahlman wrote: post #198
mvdtnz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the entire internet is telling you you're hostile, aggressive and hard to work with it would pay to stop explaining why you're right and start looking inwards.

It's not my responsibility, as a Stack Overflow user, to make Stack Overflow a site that gets lots of users posting and viewing lots of content. It is correct to be "hostile, aggressive and hard to work with" when you are inundated with requests from others to "work with" you on something that is radically different from what you are trying to accomplish . I will not look inward because I am objectively doing nothing…

ok man

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#206

Post by kulahan »

Arnt wrote: post #180
stormblooperz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines, this is extremely telling. Of course, nobody is a villain in their own story. Members of online communities who drive others away are often just simply blind to the impact they are having - an existential impact in the case of Stack Overflow sadly.

Bah. I volunteer to do x and if you try to read some duty to also volunteer for y between the lines, you can do y yourself. If you expect kindness to someone I don't care to help, go on, show that kindness by doing y yourself. Nobody pays us answerers to do what we do. The key prerogative of a volunteer is that the volunteer alone chooses what to volunteer for.

Probably right, definitely justifiable, super annoying and actively driving away users.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#207

Post by IshKebab »

zahlman wrote: post #194
IshKebab wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has no mandate to organize content or care about the quality of its content. That's fundamentally where SO went wrong. The mods think they're building programming Wikipedia, but normal users are using it as a Q&A forum. > Questions can be reopened, and this has always been the case. What is not allowed is for the OP to reopen a question unilaterally, because that defeats the entire purpose of question closure. N…

The short version: Stack Overflow was always, explicitly intended to be the site that you think "went wrong", and is made so by a community that actively discusses policy (and gives detailed reasoning) in the open - not by its tiny, overwhelmed moderation team. There is abundant historical documentation of this, but it took time for that intent to be explained coherently and the site initially grew far faster than it…

> made so by a community that actively discusses policy (and gives detailed reasoning) in the open - not by its tiny, overwhelmed moderation team.

When I say "mods" I mean the tiny group of people that spend a lot of time moderating question, and discussing things on meta. I'm not literally talking about the people with extra privileges.

You can say "but it was always meant to be overly moderated" as much as you want. Doesn't change the fact that it was popular in spite of that, not because of it.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#209

Post by yuzzi »

kulahan wrote: post #80
louison11 wrote: post #12

My heart goes to the stack overflow community which has always been very kind and helpful, essentially working for free. As a self-taught developer since the age of 8, I literally grew up learning how to code through SO, asking hundreds of questions and answering many more. So many bugs that would take 2-3 days to fix would eventually find their answer through it. But now ChatGPT does that in minutes… so it’s for the…

I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone describe the stack overflow community as “kind”. Usually it’s the exact opposite: “I asked a question and just got 30 questions asking why I’m trying to do this” or “my question was closed for seemingly no reason”. It’s literally the most blunt and aggressive website I’ve ever been on that wasn’t a straight-up troll site like 4-Chan.

Agree! A decade ago it wasn't like this. But it has devolved into a community of vandals who seem to take glee in criticizing the manner in which a question is asked, rather than contributing a solution.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#210

Post by yuzzi »

Arnt wrote: post #173
kulahan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone describe the stack overflow community as “kind”. Usually it’s the exact opposite: “I asked a question and just got 30 questions asking why I’m trying to do this” or “my question was closed for seemingly no reason”. It’s literally the most blunt and aggressive website I’ve ever been on that wasn’t a straight-up troll site like 4-Chan.

I answer questions for a few tags, know the styles of the other people who answer on those tags, and I do consider my fellow answerers as kind. All of them. That doesn't mean that you will think we're kind to you personally. We're there to build a searchable Q&A knowledge base and spread knowledge. Some people who ask questions misunderstand and think we're there to help them, personally. To work for free for that si…

Seems to me like you're part of the problem. Of course it's not my problem anymore because I no longer contribute there.
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