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Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

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Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#211

Post by drewnoakes »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #203
IshKebab wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not. The mods there absolutely love closing questions as duplicate. It has earned that reputation for a reason.

Can you give one example? I keep reading the negative comments about SO, how the moderators are bad, and there's never one example confirming it.

I've found that SO varies a lot by tech/language. In my experience, the C++ and JS subworlds are pretty brutal. C# is middle-of-the-road when it comes to culture. Clojure is very friendly and welcoming, but obviously more niche. This may explain why folks have different experiences on the same site.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#212

Post by random_cynic »

corethree wrote: post #59
ram4jesus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to grow skin on the internet where mistreatment is abundant. I just don't engage. Offline people can't treat you like shit because then they're gonna get treated like shit. Respect begets respect and good manners beget good manners. The way SO folks talk to you ... I'll just say: try that offline and I'll pull your card no ifs or doubts.

Thats not the point. The point is who cares about the mistreatment. The objective is to get the relevant info. I'm one of the highest ranked people on SO. And guess what? All I do on SO is ask stupid ass questions. One time someone scolded me, said I should know better for asking a certain question that was against policy of something given that my rank was so high. You know what I said to him? Nothing. I just didn't…

> I'm one of the highest ranked people on SO.

Here's a prototype of an average tone-deaf user of SO who think their imaginary internet points actually count. The point being raised here is the difficulty new users (with no imaginary internet points, but with dignity and self-respect) face while submitting a questions/answers to SO. Not people like you who've normalized the bullying for "getting info". Guess what, now with ChatGPT you can get answers that are on average of much better quality than average new SO answers without tolerating pricks.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#213

Post by dehrmann »

ram4jesus wrote: post #76
AlbertCory wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, it takes a superhuman amount of patience and empathy. I don't particularly have those, and it sounds like you don't, either. So your course is just to avoid those, not downgrade them.

If people had your level of insight and self-reflection, then SO would be less popular but much more helpful and probably not known for all the needless hostility. It takes a lot of guts to ask for help. And being put down when you're vulnerable: exposing an ignorance or a lack of understanding, is not a good feeling at all. For me, it always sticks for a long time until I forget it.

> It takes a lot of guts to ask for help.

Among coworkers you know, yes, but among internet strangers?

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#214

Post by Yhippa »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #204
jasonlotito wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it works for me, usually. Q: I have this problem. Mod: This is a dup of this. Me: Goes to read the other ticket. It's from 8 years ago, and the answer was "This is solved in version X." Me, on something many versions after X, and having the hindsight of knowing that no, it was not solved in X, shakes my head. I find the solution someplace else. I do not go back to SO because I can't be bothered to fight a…

So here's how it looks from the other side: A 'high' (just not a new one) reputation user (not necessarily a moderator) opens a review queue. He sees a new question. He searches the SO if a similar question has been asked. He finds a similar question, and without reading and testing it thoroughly, he marks yours as a duplicate of that. Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag i…

Well it doesn't matter because the parent post completely disengaged from the site. Turning away potentially active users seems like a horrible move that the owners of SO didn't try to fix and possibly led them to where they are today.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#215

Post by catlover76 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #103

Am I the only one that still finds SO to be quite useful? If I paste an error message into Google, it's still quite likely that the SO answer is the best one. And if it doesn't, I contribute an answer if/when I eventually find it because I still think I get more out of SO than I put in. I've received 21 necromancer badges doing that.

Of course not. It's still my first recourse if GPT-4 can't answer my question adequately.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#216

Post by IshKebab »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #203
IshKebab wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not. The mods there absolutely love closing questions as duplicate. It has earned that reputation for a reason.

Can you give one example? I keep reading the negative comments about SO, how the moderators are bad, and there's never one example confirming it.

Sure, here's an example:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/11635/265521

It's the top result for "case insensitive string comparison in C++". It has 372 votes and a ton of useful high quality answers. But it was closed 5 years ago for being "opinion based". Presumably because the author made the foolish mistake of asking for the best way to do it, rather than just a way to do it.

I don't see how anyone could defend that.

That's not cherry picked, and actually the situation is worse than it might seem to a casual observer because when you do occasionally manage to reopen a question (quite difficult) it leaves no evidence that it was ever closed.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#217

Post by IshKebab »

drewnoakes wrote: post #211
Etherlord87 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give one example? I keep reading the negative comments about SO, how the moderators are bad, and there's never one example confirming it.

I've found that SO varies a lot by tech/language. In my experience, the C++ and JS subworlds are pretty brutal. C# is middle-of-the-road when it comes to culture. Clojure is very friendly and welcoming, but obviously more niche. This may explain why folks have different experiences on the same site.

I agree. Rust is the worse by far in my experience. There's a couple of really prolific people on there (Shepmaster and Stargateur) who treat it as their personal fiefdom. Shepmaster does provide a ton of high quality answers but I don't think that gives them the right to be so unfriendly.

Kind of ironic considering how the Rust community prides itself so much on being welcoming.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#218

Post by smsm42 »

IshKebab wrote: post #216
Etherlord87 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give one example? I keep reading the negative comments about SO, how the moderators are bad, and there's never one example confirming it.

Sure, here's an example: https://stackoverflow.com/q/11635/265521 It's the top result for "case insensitive string comparison in C++". It has 372 votes and a ton of useful high quality answers. But it was closed 5 years ago for being "opinion based". Presumably because the author made the foolish mistake of asking for the best way to do it, rather than just a way to do it. I don't see how anyone could defend that. Th…

That's one of common failure modes for SO. When people ask for "best", they actually mean tell me the options, and the reasons to choose them, and their advantages and problems. It's hugely helpful. But moderators see "best", and automatically close it as "opinion" because there's no objective best. But that isn't the point of it!

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#219

Post by smsm42 »

I can't help but wonder why did they have a massive hiring push recently? I don't remember any huge functional upgrades, the site is pretty much how I remember it being for years. Why double the staff? What were they trying to do? Did they just convert from engineering org to a massive sales org with engineering on the background?

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#220

Post by matkoniecz »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #153
matkoniecz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone whose downvotes exceed a certain threshold has their reputation points reduced to zero. Why it would help? While closing random questions as duplicates of similar but different question is obnoxious, downvoting "do my homework for me" questions is very useful.

> While closing random questions as duplicates of similar but different question is obnoxious, downvoting "do my homework for me" questions is very useful. In what way? Who really cares if it's homework or a newbie question? Are you such an expert in everything that you never ask newbie questions? This arrogant attitude is toxic, spreads quickly, and poisons far too many communities. I'm grateful to dang et al that H…

> Who really cares if it's homework or a newbie question?

Answering "do my homework for me" is helping cheaters.

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