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Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

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Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#771

Post by noduerme »

bazzargh wrote: post #762
noduerme wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hhhhmm. Ok. So I invented this solution in 2009 at what you might call a "peak mental moment", by a pool in Palm Springs, CA, after about 6 hours of writing on napkins. I'm not a mathematician. I don't think I'm even a great programmer, since there are probably much better ways of solving the thing I was trying to solve. And also, I'm not sure how I even came up with the reduction; I probably was wrong or made a typo…

BTW, yet another way to do it (more compact than the bitwise and prime options) is the Cantor pairing function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairing_function ... z = (x+y+1)(x+y)/2 + y - but you have to sort x,y first to get the order independence you wanted. This function is famously used in the argument that the set of integers and the set of rationals have the same cardinality.

mm. I did see this when I was figuring it out. The sorting first was the specific thing I wanted to avoid, because it would've been by far the most expensive part of the operation when looking at a million poker hands and trying to target several players for potential collusion.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#772

Post by CamperBob2 »

zahlman wrote: post #489
js8 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think PP means it's more in the tone and passive-aggressive behavior ("closed as duplicate") than somebody explicitly articulating that. It's a paradox of poor communication that you cannot prove with certainty that there is an intent behind it. There is always the argument that the receiver should have known better (and bother checking local news at Alpha Centauri).

There is nothing "passive-aggressive" about closing a question as a duplicate. It is explicitly understood to be doing a favour to the OP: an already-existing answer to a common question is provided instantly .

The person best qualified to assess the relevance of any previous answers is often the OP. Far too often, the already-existing answer is years old and either no longer the best answer, or doesn't actually address a major part of the question. Or it simply was never a very good answer to begin with.

What would be the harm in pointing out previous answers but leaving the question open to further contributions? If the previous answer really is adequate, it won't attract further responses. If it's not, well, now its shortcomings can be addressed.

Closing duplicates makes as much sense as aggressive deletionism on Wikipedia. It generally means that somebody missed their true calling on an HOA board somewhere.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#773

Post by [deleted] »

stocksinsmocks wrote: post #730
nprateem wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the fundamental difference is one asks actual humans who know what's right vs statistical models that are right by accident.

Humans do not know what’s right. What’s worse is the phenomenon of people who don’t actually know but want to seem like they know so they ask the person with the question for follow up information that is meaningless and irrelevant to the question. Hey, can you show me the log files? Sure here you go. Please help! Hmm, I don’t really know what I’m looking for in these. Good luck!

[deleted]

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#774

Post by inquirerGeneral »

noduerme wrote: post #736
Aurornis wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree with most comments that the brusque moderation is the cause of SO's problems, though it certainly didn't help. SO has had poor moderation from the beginning. I was an early SO user and I don’t agree with this. The moderation was always there, but from my perspective it wasn’t until the site really pushed into branching out and expanding Stack Exchange across many topics to become a Quora style competitor…

The moderation definitely got kind of nasty in the last 5 years or so. To the point where you would feel unwelcome for asking a question you had already researched, and felt was perfectly sound to ask. However, that didn't stop millions of people from asking questions every day , it just felt kinda shitty to those of us who spent more time answering, when we actually needed to ask one on a topic we were lacking in. (…

[dead]

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#775

Post by scirob »

cpa wrote: post #641
scirob wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers? The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context. But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "T…

Am I reading an AI trying to trick me into becoming its subordinate?

hehe, damn I did let an AI fix my grammer and they promptly put the classic tell of — U+2014 in there

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#776

Post by nolok »

andomar wrote: post #768

StackOverflow was a pub where programmers had fun while learning programming. The product of that fun was valuable. Instead of cultivating the pub, the owners demanded that the visitors be safe, boring and obedient witers of value. This killed the pub and with it the business. The most visible aspect was the duplicate close. Duplicate closes scare away fresh patrons, blocking precisely the path that old timers took w…

Another exemple being "Comments are not for extended discussion ! if you want to actively bring value by adding information, later updates, history, or just fun that cultivates a community, please leave and go do that somewhere else like our chat that doesn't follow at all the async functionnality of this platform and is limited to the regular userbase while scaring the newcomers."

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#777

Post by andomar »

sevenseacat wrote: post #687

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, reading some of these comments. It looks like a pretty clear divide between the people that wanted to ask questions to get solutions for their own specific problems; and those who were aware of what the site wanted to be and how it actually operated, and were willing to put in the time and answer questions, etc. The sheer amount of garbage that used to get posted every day required…

Garbage was never moderated on StackOverflow, it was always ignored.

Moderation was used by the insiders to keep new people out.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#778

Post by losradio »

Shog9 wrote: post #456
Aurornis wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree with most comments that the brusque moderation is the cause of SO's problems, though it certainly didn't help. SO has had poor moderation from the beginning. I was an early SO user and I don’t agree with this. The moderation was always there, but from my perspective it wasn’t until the site really pushed into branching out and expanding Stack Exchange across many topics to become a Quora style competitor…

There was definitely a bit of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [0] at work. I worked there during a lot of the drama you allude to, and... It sucked, for everyone. But also... For most of SO's history, the vast majority of visitors (and this questions, answers) came in via Google. Not "search engines"; Google. This was pretty much baked in right at the start, and it effectively served as the site's primary user in…

Shog9, excellent comment and very apt. I have to point out that you were also part of the toxicity and bad tone. You very much were part of the problem. Moderation and staff were very much the downfall.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#779

Post by CuriouslyC »

noduerme wrote: post #754
CuriouslyC wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labs are spending billions on data set curation and RL from human experts to fill in the areas where they're currently weak. It's higher quality data than SO, the only issue is that it's not public.

Can you explain what you're saying in greater depth? Are you saying that the reason there is no human expertise on the internet anymore is that everyone with knowledge is now under contract to train AIs?

No, I think the reason human expertise on the internet is dying out is because we have a cacophany of voices trying to be heard on the internet, and experts aren't interested in screaming into the void unless they directly need to do it to pay their bills.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#780

Post by MichaelZuo »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #604
Shog9 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was definitely a bit of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [0] at work. I worked there during a lot of the drama you allude to, and... It sucked, for everyone. But also... For most of SO's history, the vast majority of visitors (and this questions, answers) came in via Google. Not "search engines"; Google. This was pretty much baked in right at the start, and it effectively served as the site's primary user in…

Best answer so far, too bad way down here.

It still seems a bit too simplistic… no one imagined that Google could behave less than 100% virtuously in the future? Really?
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