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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#361

Post by franciscop »

Const-me wrote: post #300
franciscop wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first question for example is what would be a low-quality question in SO, and could easily have been a homework assignment. It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question and expect other people to answer it fully, without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck, etc.

> It doesn't show any effort from your side, you just pose the question You probably assumed I asked that question? If so, the assumption was incorrect, I answered it. > without explaining what you attempted, why it worked/didn't work, where you got stuck I don't think any of that is possible to do. The question, and my answer, are too simple to decompose into smaller parts. Not enough runway to start and get stuck.…

Ah sorry, if you answered it it's totally different, sorry for assuming the question was yours! Some of my best answers are also on "simple questions".

The question is asking about the best way of doing X, which has a clear substep of "any way of doing X". Not only that, it's asking about a code solution, not just maths/combinatronics. Not a single line of code in a question about finding the optimal (not any) solution for doing some algebra in code is, IMHO, reason enough to close it.

Edit: for example, I'm not asking and so have no stakes on the question but can already try to think about brute-forcing it, which already shows more effort than the author SHOWS at attempting a solution.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#362

Post by sznio »

Lazare wrote: post #134

I feel like the moderation culture of Stack Overflow became toxic and counterproductive years ago. It's like the worst parts of Wikipedia, but squared. Just endless arguments over what is or isn't a duplicate or is or isn't relevant, while every interesting question somehow ends up closed, good answers are downvoted, and spam drifts to the top. I'm sure everyone involved actually wants the site to be useful and pleas…

I'd blame Google - at least for the initial drop. When you look at the "new visits" chart you can see that the drop happens in May, 6 months before ChatGPT.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#363

Post by JimDabell »

JohnMakin wrote: post #120
JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

Which is the correct response to this question?

> How do I shoot myself in the foot? I’m pointing the gun at my foot and pulling the trigger, but nothing is happening.

Is it:

> A common reason for guns not firing is that they aren’t loaded. Try loading the gun and trying again.

…or is it:

> Woah, hang on a sec! What are you trying to achieve exactly? It seems like you are doing something very wrong here. I’m sure there’s a better way to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

There are many technical questions that give the very strong impression that somebody is asking how to shoot themselves in the foot. It’s not responsible to blindly answer the question regardless of the consequences. Yes, people sometimes overcorrect for this which can be annoying, but they are only trying to steer newbies away from shooting themselves in the foot.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#364

Post by yarekt »

xyproto wrote: post #339
lelanthran wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what all the replies are telling you is that the most XY problems are misdiagnosis. Explaining what the XY problem is to people who are telling you about it's high false positive identification is, itself, an XY misdiagnosis. Your reply is an example of what people are complaining about - you are addressing the issue you wished was asked, not addressing the issue you were presented with.

Sometimes people ask questions like "how do I shoot myself in the foot and still have a working foot", though. Questions are not always reasonable. A question is not always "pure" either, but can embed incorrect assumptions.

I do see both of your points of view. There are some good answers on SO that capture both. They first explain why it’s infeasible, talk about a better approach, then lastly give pointers on how to achieve what is asked regardless using their best reasoning. Think it just depends on the quality

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#365

Post by JimDabell »

CodeCompost wrote: post #290
JohnMakin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here’s a classic SO thread: OP: “how can I accomplish X doing Y?” top voted response: “I wouldnt do X by Y. Instead, I’d consider Z. It’ll do everything X by Y would do, plus these other things.” buried sub comment to top voted response: “that’s not what he asked, to do X by Y (exact solution provided)” then 10 comments blasting the guy who actually answered the question for not doing it the way the top voted answer…

The impression I get from commenters is that somehow they think their careers are tied to StackOverflow points. Trying their best to downvote correct answers and promoting their own in order to further their agenda.

Downvoting costs points.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#366

Post by JimDabell »

seanthemon wrote: post #221
Eduard wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it. Nevertheless post the question and provide an answer. Everybody wins: you reap the upvotes, and everyone else benefits from the shared knowledge.

"marked as duplicate" pointing to a 5yo answer with links that 404

You don’t mark answers as duplicates, you mark questions as duplicates. And if it’s a duplicate question, the new answer should be posted to the old question. So it’s correct to mark the question as a duplicate. Otherwise all the people arriving at the original question won’t see the new answer.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#367

Post by anticodon »

quirino wrote: post #256
suzzer99 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything went downhill once people had real incentive (like actual money, not just internet cred) to game the system for reputation points. The mods had to come up with ever-evolving layers of rules on top of rules that lowered the answer quality and put up huge barriers for an average user to contribute.

Incentives really make or break this type of website. Often on the internet I find myself thinking "Thank God this [website specific metric] isn't worth anything so people have no reason to game it".

I think "Internet Karma" systems are inherently flawed. I know one technical website with karma, where one type of users eventually gained majority of the karma capital, downvoted all opposition into such deep negative karma, that they can't write anything anymore, and now there's strictly one point of view in all the articles and comments.

Which is aligned with the site owners' point of view, so they have no incentive to change anything. Though everyone notices that quality of articles and comments started to decline once the users with karma majority censored all others out.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#368

Post by pwdisswordfishc »

38 wrote: post #66

Stack Overflow banned my character with 100,000 reputation: https://stackoverflow.com/users/1002260 for FIVE YEARS, because of a rollback war on some of my own answers. some idiot was gaming the system and adding minor punctuation here and there, just to get review points. so yeah, good riddance.

Probably because you were going around antagonizing everyone and then deleting the evidence, Steven Penny.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#369

Post by lelanthran »

xyproto wrote: post #339
lelanthran wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what all the replies are telling you is that the most XY problems are misdiagnosis. Explaining what the XY problem is to people who are telling you about it's high false positive identification is, itself, an XY misdiagnosis. Your reply is an example of what people are complaining about - you are addressing the issue you wished was asked, not addressing the issue you were presented with.

Sometimes people ask questions like "how do I shoot myself in the foot and still have a working foot", though. Questions are not always reasonable. A question is not always "pure" either, but can embed incorrect assumptions.

> Sometimes people ask questions like "how do I shoot myself in the foot and still have a working foot", though. Questions are not always reasonable. A question is not always "pure" either, but can embed incorrect assumption

But those are correctly diagnosed XY problems. No one is complaining about those.

My parent was told the issue is too many incorrectly identified XY problems, and responded with an explanation of what the XY problem is.

That is the example of a misdiagnosed XY problem, which was kinda my point. This sort of behaviour makes the actual experts leave the site in droves.

If, when answering a question, one where to discard the answer the minute they write "Why would you want to do this?", you'd get much fewer incorrectly diagnosed XY problems.

As I said in a different thread, ChatGPT sometimes does this as well, but at least with ChatGPT, when it is answering a question that was never asked, it doesn't also act like a condescending jackass. There are no "Why would you want to do this?" type of questions.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#370

Post by iLoveOncall »

JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

> google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago

I haven't noticed that at all. I also haven't noticed any degradation in the results on Google overall contrarily to what people claim.

What I have noticed though is that every time someone complains about search results and shares the way they search on Google, it becomes obvious that the problem is between the keyboard and the chair and not in Google.

For example my girlfriend always get completely unrelated results when searching. But she searches an unintelligible mess that even a human wouldn't understand.

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