221–230 of 267 posts
Call me crazy but sometimes I still find a better solution on StackOverflow than what Claude Code insists to do. I'm not sure we're better off without SO in the long run.
Good riddance! I've used it a lot, like everybody else, and it helped me many times. Unfortunately, it developed a serious culture problem that would not go away. I suspect the gamification attracted many rigid-thinking, rule-obsessed personality types that weren't self-aware enough to realize when they hurt others. Yes, of course, they wanted good questions and useable answers. That's a good intention but it does no…
Tried to go back to one of my closed questions to look up a link someone had dropped in the comments, only to find out some moderator had fucking deleted the question for literally no reason, despite the fact there was actual fucking content in there. It actually drove me over the edge and made me go all in on my own domain and my own website. If I ever post anything there again, it will always be framed as links to my own site where their deletionism will never reach. I simply refuse to be erased.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also part of the decline from the asker side, once a less abrasive alternative became available
Again: the "less abrasive alternative" is built off the labor and knowledge of those abrasive folks. They're a large part of the reason it knows what to less-abrasively suggest.
This is arguably more important than the the actual depth knowledge, given how many people have flocked to soft-spoken random text generators in comparison.
For better or for worse, people are cursed with ego, and we need to account for that when communicating with others. It is a failing of the platform (and a tragedy, because it is healthier to learn from a human) that it was unable to foster a positive environment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"How do I do this thing in Django 6?" Closed: duplicate of question 1234, "How do I do some vaguely related thing in Django 1.3?", August 2011 The mods there sucked all the joy out of interacting with the site. If you run a site with moderators, let this be a reminder to keep them reined in lest they Stack Overflow it.
Poetic how they were so ridiculous about meticulously curating a database of answers where the ultimate consumer would be LLMs that really don’t care about duplicates.
Wow. It declined all the way to zero? I'd have expected it to tail off. That's scary. What else can AI make decline all the way to zero? Customer support?
I know everyone here is heckling calling it a forum, but this is a basic forum feedback loop -- the forum activity declines, so people show up to check less often and get fewer responses to their posts, so the post there less often, repeat until traffic falls near zero. You may have like a handful of weirdos who never leave and develop their own little community in the wreckage, especially if the cost to continuing t…
Good riddance! I've used it a lot, like everybody else, and it helped me many times. Unfortunately, it developed a serious culture problem that would not go away. I suspect the gamification attracted many rigid-thinking, rule-obsessed personality types that weren't self-aware enough to realize when they hurt others. Yes, of course, they wanted good questions and useable answers. That's a good intention but it does no…
As someone who frequently answered questions in the 'New' queue, the sheer amount of rule breaking, low effort, and obvious duplicates was astounding. I eventually quit answering questions because 99% of them were not worth interacting with. Just vote close and move on.
Ultimately, I think SO is dead because it got too popular and moderation became untenable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stack Overflow was acquired in June 2021 by Prosus, a Dutch private equity firm., That is great to hear. I am glad that the original creators of StackOverflow got their liquidity event and are well off financially I suspect.
That would be Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software) and Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror), mostly. Jeff has gone on to make several large philanthropic gifts. Joel probably has too but I don't have info on them.
Good riddance! I've used it a lot, like everybody else, and it helped me many times. Unfortunately, it developed a serious culture problem that would not go away. I suspect the gamification attracted many rigid-thinking, rule-obsessed personality types that weren't self-aware enough to realize when they hurt others. Yes, of course, they wanted good questions and useable answers. That's a good intention but it does no…
"How do I do this thing in Django 6?" Closed: duplicate of question 1234, "How do I do some vaguely related thing in Django 1.3?", August 2011 The mods there sucked all the joy out of interacting with the site. If you run a site with moderators, let this be a reminder to keep them reined in lest they Stack Overflow it.
"How do I do this thing in Django 6?"
"This is an excellent question, and shows a real attention to detail! Let me walk you through it in detail, with a particular focus on Django version and the evolution of the semantics there.
[...]
Bottom line: it's exactly the same as in Django 1.3 back in August 2011. But by anchoring to a specific version, you make the question unambiguous and much more insightful.m"
The author labels COVID and the launch of ChatGPT on the graph, but fails to mention that Stack Overflow was acquired in June 2021 by Prosus, a Dutch private equity firm. That looks to me like it matches pretty well with the entire downward trend.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-wa...
https://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-audito...
I hope they stay with us. I don't much care for the company or what's left of the community.