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Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

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Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#241

Post by imtringued »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7
conradfr wrote: post #5

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.

Much of what Claude insists you do probably came from SO.

Yeah, that's basically it.

In robotics there is no free lunch dataset. You'll have to gather it yourself, but if you do that, you run into an obvious problem: labeling.

With SO, you literally have the best possible scenario, because the data is clearly structured and separated into prompt and answer (aka label).

Your objective function is literally "Say what he said".

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#242

Post by ceejayoz »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #223
ceejayoz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being book-smart or correct is only half of the skill in sharing knowledge. While often overlooked, the voice in which the knowledge is delivered matters. 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…

> 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.

People flock to heroin, too.

> Being book-smart or correct is only half of the skill in sharing knowledge. While often overlooked, the voice in which the knowledge is delivered matters.

This applies to asking questions, too.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#243

Post by skywalqer »

MrZander wrote: post #226
crispyambulance wrote: post #173

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…

While there were many zealots that gave SO this reputation, I don't know if that's the reason it died. 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…

It is dead because everybody is asking LLMs now.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#244

Post by IshKebab »

ruebencoleslaw wrote: post #175
echoangle wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a significant number of people started boycotting SO after the sale?

I'd disagree that the site wasn't changing. I think they were already trying to sideline job portal possibilities because it wasn't making a high enough worth calculation compared to entirely unrealized estimates. However my reaction to changes was forgiving for the old firm while feeling transactional was basically doom to my using the site as I didn't really need anything from interactions.

I agree that ditching the job adverts was a super weird move. But it didn't actually affect users at all.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#245

Post by pwdisswordfishq »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #72
pkamb wrote: post #14

Forum? What forum? When has Stack Overflow ever been a forum?

How is it not a forum? Sure, it has some search features and a "comments/answers" dichotomy, but at the root it's just phpBB with fancier formatting

A forum records free-form conversations between specific people, where every post can be edited at most by its original author (if even that). SE sites are libraries of questions that may be generalized beyond the original author's circumstances, and if someone's post does not fit the rigid Q&A form, it may be moderated away.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#246

Post by ruebencoleslaw »

IshKebab wrote: post #244
ruebencoleslaw wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree that the site wasn't changing. I think they were already trying to sideline job portal possibilities because it wasn't making a high enough worth calculation compared to entirely unrealized estimates. However my reaction to changes was forgiving for the old firm while feeling transactional was basically doom to my using the site as I didn't really need anything from interactions.

I agree that ditching the job adverts was a super weird move. But it didn't actually affect users at all.

It had the possibility of surfacing employers or coworkers with a little more comfort about their ~support competence. The enterprise stuff seems more like the stealing an OSS contributor who can't deny competence to work on internal Jira from now on..

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#247

Post by casey2 »

MrZander wrote: post #226
crispyambulance wrote: post #173

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…

While there were many zealots that gave SO this reputation, I don't know if that's the reason it died. 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…

You sound exactly like an enforcer of the cultural problem the GP was talking about. Group think is healthy in small doses, but overdo it and it kills the group.

It's simply not on a new user to understand whatever group interpretation you have made up on top of the written rules. There is no platonic ideal of a good question, the project was doomed from the start if people take that idea seriously. The UX says submit a question about coding while the unwritten rules say submit a flawless peer-reviewed abstract or we close in 3 minutes.

Ironically those 99% asking low effort questions will gain more than everybody who looks at a "high value" question put together. Truly, nobody on SO learned anything writing those questions, they were just regurgitating their phd/previous work. It was grossly performative and I'm glad it's gone.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#248

Post by soraminazuki »

crazygringo wrote: post #73
hintymad wrote: post #6

Wouldn't this be worrisome? People used StackOverflow and generated new knowledge along the way. Without such medium for discussion, how can we feed models with up-to-date quality knowledge?

Plenty of documentation, and plenty of code that the AI can read itself. E.g. if a library has a bug that has a common workaround, it can learn that from open source code using the library that uses the workaround.

Sounds nothing like the world we live in. When has there ever been a time where there were an abundance of software documentation? How can plenty of documentation or code be made if AI scraper bots hammer servers that host them, steal content and drive people away from the actual authors?

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#249

Post by hbn »

rich_sasha wrote: post #228
kstrauser wrote: post #179

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.

Now: "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"

You can just... ask it not to do that

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#250

Post by ComplexSystems »

MrZander wrote: post #226
crispyambulance wrote: post #173

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…

While there were many zealots that gave SO this reputation, I don't know if that's the reason it died. 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…

Can you imagine ChatGPT terminating a conversation because it thought your question was "low effort?" The behavior wouldn't be viewed as helpful or aligned, and nobody would use it.

StackOverflow was, all too often, not helpful or aligned. It died because the staff were unable to get the moderators to be helpful.

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