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Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

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Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#221

Post by matkoniecz »

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…

> you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong

this comments are ignored

people closed my questions in past for being duplicate - despite that I linked that question and described why it is not a duplicate

> 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.

that is wrongheaded and bad idea leading to predictably terrible results

she/he should not close it as duplicated without proper check (it is better to have some duplicates over bad closures)

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#222

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

> So here's how it looks from the other side:

I don't care.

> Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong

Right.

> but another user who already spent some time cleaning up the site

"Cleaning up" by mislabeling stuff. Sounds like they are making a mess. But go on...

> is supposed to thoroughly analyze both questions to begin with?

Yes, they should completley read questions before closing them.

> People on Stack Exchange tend to try to not be emotional like you

I hope they care about being accurate rather than being apathetic about it.

> , so they don't fight a battle with you. You just resign from a discussion, and then complain how a mistake has been made, that you didn't care to even point out.

There was no discussion. I didn't resign, I never engaged in any discussion in the first place. I just found a question and a closed question.

And I can't even comment on how it shouldn't have been closed. It's closed. That's it.

Your entire comment is about how SO fails, and rather than work to overcome it, it just blamed the people for "not holding it right."

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#223

Post by Etherlord87 »

Yhippa wrote: post #214
Etherlord87 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> led them to where they are today

extremely popular network (stack exchange) of wisdom sharing websites?

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#224

Post by Etherlord87 »

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…

So the author made a foolish mistake of not reading the site's rules? I know, I know, who does that? I might be one of very few… Just like I might be one of very few who actually take their time when asking a question, showing respect to anyone who might spend some time answering…

The question doesn't show research effort, it's just two sentences. Sometimes that's all it takes, but if you add a requirement "without converting to lower/upper case", I think it should come with an explanation? I often encounter questions like that "How do I drive my car without using a steering wheel?" - and upon a confrontation I usually hear "well just for fun" or a similar answer - SO is a bad place to ask questions like that. If you're e.g. interested in performance, describe your situation, paste your current code and explain how you're concerned about the efficiency of your current approach.

Also originally the post wasn't not even properly written… Just a low quality post, so why bother improving a question (editing away the "best") that is so bad to begin with, especially as that doesn't guarantee you will avoid the critique (instead of critique of bad moderators who close a question, I would be reading about bad moderators that modify a question changing its meaning).

As I hinted at the beginning, we might be from different worlds: it's beyond my understanding how you could think of pointing out the example is not cherry picked, as if it was some beautiful post, with images, thoroughly explaining the issue, perhaps even addressing (preemptively or as an edit) the "opinion-based" flag, and yet was unfairly closed. Meanwhile it's shit. The revision history doesn't show any real OP's effort to fix the question, other than that meta exists to discuss such things, and if you're not satisfied with answers, you can write a real question describing your case.

So we might be from different worlds, and I'm happy SO/SE exist, because I find them, and their policies - for the most part - useful. You don't, and it's fine, you can use the alternatives.

> when you do occasionally manage to reopen a question (quite difficult) it leaves no evidence that it was ever closed.

you can see it in revision history: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/11635/revisions

The "closed" revision won't disappear when you reopen a question.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#225

Post by Etherlord87 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #222
Etherlord87 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So here's how it looks from the other side: I don't care. > Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong Right. > but another user who already spent some time cleaning up the site "Cleaning up" by mislabeling stuff. Sounds like they are making a mess. But go on... > is supposed to thoroughly analyze both questions to begin with? Yes, they should completley read questions…

> "Cleaning up" by mislabeling stuff. Sounds like they are making a mess. But go on...

Accidents are inevitable.

> Yes, they should completley read questions before closing them.

Do you know the concept of a triage?

> And I can't even comment on how it shouldn't have been closed.

Either you don't have some very minimal reputation in the network (I don't know, 100 points?), which limitation is there, I think, do protect from bots and similar abuse, or the question was *locked* for other reason than just being a duplicate. You could still open a question on meta to discuss that.

I don't even want to defend SO, I'm just frustrated by how terribly bad the arguments criticizing SO are.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#226

Post by cutemonster »

bhandziuk wrote: post #192
bryanlarsen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem likely that I'm an outlier . OTOH it could be that just people that have had bad experiences are posting their experiences and the silent majority without bad experiences aren't posting. It's so hard to tell in a forum format.

I think the loudest people are the ones talking about their bad experience. I've been on SO for, I think, 13 years. I've rarely had questions closed as duplicates and if one was it truly was a duplicate and I found my answer on the referenced question. I don't see how all the people complaining about moderation don't look at all the low quality questions and see why moderation is what it is.

Personally I don't remember having gotten questions closed. However, sometimes other people's good questions have gotten closed, making me annoyed that I didn't get to see any, or more, answers.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#227

Post by szundi »

antimora wrote: post #137
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.

For finding answers, Stack Overflow may be useful, but for posting questions, it is not. I ceased posting questions a while ago due to the aggressive moderation, which often labeled my questions as duplicates or too common. I was very upset with the direction Stack Overflow had taken, as it seemed to embody the very criticisms it had once had about forums. The Stack Overflow community has lost its vibrancy and has be…

Problem is ChatGPT is feeding on SO

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#228

Post by szundi »

motleyhatch wrote: post #183
bryanlarsen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: I've never had a question moderated as duplicate, and I've been using StackOverflow for 15 years.

It can still happen. I've been actively using SO for 14 years and had my first question marked as a duplicate last week. The question was already 9 years old and had been thoroughly answered. Last week somebody decided to "optimize" it, which sent it to the review queue and finally led its closing.

Would be almost hilarious if it was not my next thing to search for

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#229

Post by eslaught »

hn_user82179 wrote: post #186
charlie0 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they didn't moderate aggressively, they would probably end up with a bunch of duplicate questions. I really like the fact there's not a ton of dups on SO. ie, see other help sites. They also have a high standard for those questions, to the point where it will take 10+ minutes to post a good question. I don't ask questions either, mainly because I don't want to spend 30+ minutes writing a good question AND that's a…

IMO, the aggressive de-duplication of questions means that people will keep updating the answers as things change, which is really nice as you don't have to worry about the responses to a question becoming out-of-date/stale.

I don't think people object to de-duping true duplicates. The problem is near duplicates, where the original question/answer didn't quite cover what you're asking. In those cases, it can be frustrating getting past the SO duplicate filter, which can sometimes be too aggressive.

Or, when searching for answers, you keep chasing your tail because the mods kept killing off the variants of the question you cared about, and you have to cobble together answers from the comments because those will often be all you get.

Or (and arguably worse), you'll find a relevant question but the answers are inundated with "like the real answer, but variation for situation X" because people are posting to the main question because they know the almost-but-actually-not dupes will all get closed out.

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