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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#601

Post by zwieback »

caymanjim wrote: post #248
zwieback wrote: post #12

The consensus seems to be that SO has peaked some time ago although I still get a lot of value out of it. Why then does nobody seems to think there's an upside to the acquisition? Maybe they can fix some of the problems.

I'm not sure what problems you're hoping they'll solve. I think the biggest problem with Stack Overflow is the endless stream of low-quality questions. It's hard to find interesting, helpful-to-others questions among all the "do my homework for me" type questions, repeats, poorly-worded unresearched posts, etc. That only gets worse as more people use it. I used to moderate, and got sick of it because it's not rewardi…

The two biggest problems I'd like to see solved:

1) low-quality questions ("do my homework", etc.)

2) over-zealous moderators closing things they don't like

With the vast data SO accumulated maybe some kind of deep network thing? I'm a DNN skeptic but would love to be proven wrong in this case. If someone could extract a quality metric and then add a bot that prompts users to improve the question we'd be a long way towards getting higher quality content.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#602

Post by stjohnswarts »

systemvoltage wrote: post #187
arp242 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything else, Microsoft has left Github untouched so far. Actually, I think it has gotten better. I don't like the consolidation of independents like GitHub to big corporations like Microsoft, but I can't deny that thus far, it actually worked out pretty well. Stack Overflow is a difficult company/website to manage though; it's not "just a website with a SaaS product" and really requires a good understanding of…

That's a good point. I wonder why SO is so political? As an outsider it is just like a bunch of people asking questions and getting answers.

It's just a very rigid structure, you have to put your square block in their square hole or you will be ripped a new one and tossed when asking a question. Also mods need to be in a good mood that day.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#603

Post by stjohnswarts »

rkagerer wrote: post #559

What a steal. I personally think StackOverflow is worth more than some of the other tech companies that got acquired recently at higher valuations. They really nailed the model for building high-quality content. Unlike Reddit, Facebook Groups and others, they're one of few modern social sites that I actually find more useful than more conventional niche forums.

They don't use your standards of $$ value. For VC it is strictly based on current and anticipated future value and amount of profit to be had. It has nothing to do with usefulness to society or actual importance in the human experience.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#604

Post by crazygringo »

sneilan1 wrote: post #593

What about all the people who contributed over the years to Stack Overflow? All the people that took time out of their day for years to answer people's questions and keep the site organized. Stack Overflow would be worthless without its contributors. It seems like Stack Overflow is a company that has figured out a way to profit of the Hacker Ethos of helping people. I guess if you concentrate enough naive volunteers…

It's not an either/or.

People contribute to the site because they get value from it and want to give back. And for some people it's a kind of reputation. That's enough on its own, or else the content wouldn't even exist in the first place.

Totally orthogonal is Stack Overflow as a business. People need to write and maintain the code, run the servers, moderate the community, determine new features, and so on. They're the ones being rewarded by the sale, and they deserve it because SO is a whole lot more than just the user-generated content.

I don't think there's any moral or even social or "decency" expectation that people who have written questions and answers over the years would share in the business rewards. That was never an expectation going in.

Now, if Stack Overflow's founders want to find ways to "give back" to the community from their personal proceeds, then that's wonderful too. But they have no obligation to.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#605

Post by stjohnswarts »

ejb999 wrote: post #519

Top 0.5% SO'er here, but the funniest thing that I have had happen to me - and it has happened more than once - is I google for an answer to a programming problem I am having, get brought to stack overflow, and find the accepted answer to the question is one i myself wrote years before.

Do you also use Arch?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#606

Post by stjohnswarts »

fleddr wrote: post #577
caymanjim wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what problems you're hoping they'll solve. I think the biggest problem with Stack Overflow is the endless stream of low-quality questions. It's hard to find interesting, helpful-to-others questions among all the "do my homework for me" type questions, repeats, poorly-worded unresearched posts, etc. That only gets worse as more people use it. I used to moderate, and got sick of it because it's not rewardi…

Well said. Especially during the early years, I always found the signal/noise ratio of SO to be head and shoulders above anything on the web. In part, due to a lot of their subtle UI and reputation choices. Really well designed. Massive scale may at one point break that, but another cause may be found in the change of tone by the team behind SO. They're on the "inclusive" train now. Don't get me wrong, being inclusiv…

This is why I keep going back. I'm afraid it will get worse with this but it may be just entropy of existence as a web service. It's inevitably doomed to mediocrity and replacement by a new hotness.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#607

Post by stjohnswarts »

munificent wrote: post #236
caution wrote: post #101

Prosus’s Acquisition of Stack Overflow: Our Exciting Next Chapter: https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosuss-acquires-stack...

https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

I don't know why you are downvoted, this is hilarious :)

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#608

Post by bhaak »

ddingus wrote: post #550
milkytron wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. I would agree, although I do not think it has been particularly bad either. If they had broken apps the enhance reddit and removed old.reddit.com, then I would think otherwise. For the most part, I am still able to use the site as I have since 2011.

To me, and I'm in the same scenario as you, that's mostly bad. old.reddit.com isn't going to last, is it?

For what it's worth, even i.reddit.com aka reddit.com/.compact is still working.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#610

Post by yougotrioted »

ddingus wrote: post #318

While I'm happy for the people who made a lot of money in this transaction, I always read these announcements with a bit of angst. From a user point of view, I expect this to go like Reddit has, for example. Everyone building that value saw high use value, returns on their investment in the form of information they need, lean, easy to find, high signal to noise. Now there is a debt to be paid. The new owner needs to…

You saw it with their latest April fools joke - Premium Copy & Paste
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