Stack Overflow is almost dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#241

Post by zahlman » Sat, May 17, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #230

zahlman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read the answer of that “duplicate” and it was not applicable to my problem You are supposed to have a question in the first place, not just a problem. (In fact, you are not required to have had anything go wrong with your code, nor to need to know how to do something, in order to ask a question. You only need to ask a question that meets standards.) If something was wrong with your code, and using Stack Overflow…

The question is the problem, if I did not have a problem I wouldn’t be reaching out to a site named StackOverflow (one of the many problems I encountered over the years…). The problem is not just broken code, the problem is many different things like “how do I …?” or “I am trying to figure out how to …?” which is not about the broken code.

> The problem is not just broken code, the problem is many different things like “how do I …?” or “I am trying to figure out how to …?” which is not about the broken code.

> > Or if you figured out that you need to do something specific, and came up with a clear, precise specification for it, and there isn't a clear way to break the task down further into logical steps.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#242

Post by zahlman » Sat, May 17, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #238

Arnt wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow has its own notion of what a question is. In short, a question has to be suitable as part of a searchable knowledge base. If you want to post something that isn't SO's idea of a question, then you're really just posting off-topic. And if you then insist that people should help you with your off-topic posting, you're being overly presumptious.

I don’t disagree… However, that leads you to your eventual demise. They coasted for a long time being as toxic as they have been because there was virtually no alternatives. Now that we have alternatives it is no wonder the website is as dead as it gets. Make the bed, lie in it…

What about any of this is "toxic", and why?

What does this word mean, in context?

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#243

Post by zahlman » Sat, May 17, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

daedrdev wrote: post #236

zahlman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read the answer of that “duplicate” and it was not applicable to my problem You are supposed to have a question in the first place, not just a problem. (In fact, you are not required to have had anything go wrong with your code, nor to need to know how to do something, in order to ask a question. You only need to ask a question that meets standards.) If something was wrong with your code, and using Stack Overflow…

And this is why stack overflow now has as many questions asked as it did in 2009

>And this is why stack overflow now has as many questions asked as it did in 2009

So now there is a manageable volume of new questions that allows for enough people to review them properly and apply question standards properly, instead of letting most things seep through and set bad examples for the next batch. And more time to sift through the existing questions to polish up the best.

Existing questions, by the way, that outnumber Wikipedia articles by more than 3:1. Even though they're only supposed to be specifically about programming rather than about literally anything notable.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#244

Post by bdangubic » Sat, May 17, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #242

bdangubic wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree… However, that leads you to your eventual demise. They coasted for a long time being as toxic as they have been because there was virtually no alternatives. Now that we have alternatives it is no wonder the website is as dead as it gets. Make the bed, lie in it…

What about any of this is "toxic", and why? What does this word mean, in context?

I meant the entire Stackoverflow platform is and has been toxic for quite some time.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#245

Post by Arnt » Sat, May 17, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

daedrdev wrote: post #237

Arnt wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've closed like that. One asker complained that his question about base64 encoding in one language was not like the duplicate I identified because the language was another one. "Vaguely related", he thought, but he asked precisely because he didn't know.

surely the answer is to tell him his language is wrong, if enough people have that problem that is the answer.

Show, don't tell.

Try answering some of the recently closed questions on SO, see how much time you're willing to spend on them. (As a practical matter: You can do it with the comment function, or search for questions that have two votes to close already.)

Any mode of answering is okay. If you find out that it's not deathly tiring, let us know how.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#246

Post by tom_m » Sat, May 17, 2025, 8:26 PM UTC

Kind of a catch 22 isn't it? LLMs trained off stack overflow data. Without new data for them to train from, what will happen to the quality of LLMs in the future?

How will technology advance without research sharing?

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#247

Post by int_19h » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #225

int_19h wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost comical. SO is increasingly useless for new questions precisely because so many top contributors left (because they don't agree with this approach), while the ones that remain have convinced themselves that not only this new state of affairs is fine, it's actually preferable, and what they are doing is somehow beneficial.

> while the ones that remain have convinced themselves that not only this new state of affairs is fine, it's actually preferable, and what they are doing is somehow beneficial. None of you have done anything at all to explain why it somehow isn't , except perhaps to indicate that it isn't how you want the site to work. Or that the company is losing business. (As a reminder, the company has never paid any of us a red…

It's comical because it has been explained to you specifically dozens of times by several different people already right here in HN comments, but every time you do the equivalent of "la la la can't hear you" in response.

It's sad because most of us remember how much more useful SO used to be.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#248

Post by int_19h » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:08 AM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #232

int_19h wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost comical. SO is increasingly useless for new questions precisely because so many top contributors left (because they don't agree with this approach), while the ones that remain have convinced themselves that not only this new state of affairs is fine, it's actually preferable, and what they are doing is somehow beneficial.

Citation needed. I know why one top contributor left (cancer) and I heard the same about another. I haven't heard what you say about any, except in sweeping statements like yours.

I still have 100k SO rep from the glory days of old - is that enough for you to count my vote as "you dun fucked it up" in that category?

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#249

Post by solongso » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:55 AM UTC

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…

If that's you're goal, you're going about it the wrong way. Thank you for introducing yourself and your fellow answerers. Let me introduce myself and my fellow questioners. I have a deadline and a problem. I've already spent 5 hours researching why what should work - according the the documentation and the conventional advice - doesn't. I've searched many sources, including SO. I've seen some articles which might have answered my problem. Tried the suggestions, but no joy. So now I'm six hour in, and my deadline is looming. It's probably around 1:00am. Between 1 and 2 I type up my problem and submit it to SO. I'm hopeful that perhaps in the morning someone who has successfully worked through my problem will have contributed a solution.

9:00am, I check SO. My reputation has decreased by 8 points, a number of self-styled enforcers have left negative comments comparing my issue to other issues which bear a superficial similarity to my posting, and my posting has been closed.

I'm not the most powerful contributor but over several years I've achieved upwards of 1,000 points. So I am by no means a nudnick. I've posted some good ones and I've helped some of my peers along the way. But recently, my experience has devolved to the point where the experience I describe above is the rule, rather than the exception. And when I tried to have the discussion we are having now, on the stack overflow meta site, your fellow enforcers shut down the discussion and deleted the posting. So I left. And now we can have the conversation here.

You can have all the justifications in the world for your approach, and you don't need to keep the audience you don't want. But if those of us voicing our displeasure here, are not simply a few malcontents, but a significant chunk of your former user base, you might want to look inward, and at the same time ask with a certain measure of humility - what are we doing wrong and how can we improve?

For starters, if you want a questioner to improve their posting or you have questions about why they posted, is it necessary to start off by immediately deducting from the poster's reputation? Ask your question, make your point, give the poster the opportunity to remediate or show you why you're the one who's off base (did you ever consider that possibility?) before decreasing someone's reputation.

Stop dehumanizing your knowledge base. Your resistance to AI is somewhat ironic, given all the effort you've devoted toward eliminating all courtesy and gratitude from your knowledge base. Do you want humans communicating on your platform? Let them. Perhaps after a question has been asked, answered, let the posting remain dormant for 30 days and then have some AI process go ahead and scrub the posting. Don't ding people for saying please and thank you and expect them to like you for it.

Just for starters. For now, I'm out of there. Change your game, maybe I'll be back one day.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#250

Post by solongso » Sun, May 18, 2025, 3:06 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #219

yuzzi wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ironic. For years you've been enforcing the dehumanization of human communications (e.g. basic gratitude and courtesy are taboo) and then you object when AI comes along and people prefer it to your dehumanizing platform.

> For years you've been enforcing the dehumanization of human communications (e.g. basic gratitude and courtesy are taboo) This is so far from true that it's frankly insulting. > and then you object when AI comes along and people prefer it to your dehumanizing platform. I do not object in the slightest to people preferring to use an LLM. I have even explicitly suggested in threads like this that people who prefer to…

It's absolutely true. I've had my posts edited to remove phrases like "thanks for any advice which you can provide". I've had people leave comments and ding my reputation because I've expressed gratitude. Maybe you don't think eliminating gratitude from basic communications qualifies as "dehumanizing". OK, let's agree to disagree. (BTW - to the guy who called me a "troll". If you can't disagree with a fellow of your species, without branding them a troll, you've just made my point. Thank you.)