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Honest Question: Why continue to support stack exchange through this? They have shown themselves to be disingenuous at best. They are now profiting off free lab

by chimi 7y ago

Honest Question: Why continue to support stack exchange through this? They have shown themselves to be disingenuous at best. They are now profiting off free labor. They started it because ExpertsExchange was hiding answers. They rode the high horse to hypocrisy. Why continue helping people like that succeed? Why not just start a new one? Leave en masse to a new playground. Speak with your answers. Show the powers that be they can't treat the sharecroppers like this anymore. Hasn't history shown the way? It's repeating itself all over this controversy. Is this an inevitability? How can this be prevented? It feels like the issue regarding Monica is just the issue we are all talking about, but ultimately, it goes much deeper.

wavefunction 7y ago
what do you mean by support? I google and sometimes use their content and that's it. There are other sources.
- chimi 7y ago
  By support I mean, continue to moderate their website for them. Answer questions for them. Ask questions of them. Continue to give them time and help them create the product they are going to sell to someone else and keep all the money for themselves. And also support by voicing concerns. Showing them what their user base wants when they clearly don't care what their user base wants, only what they want in their wallet.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    I ask questions there because I get good answers quickly. Sometimes I see questions in my field of expertise and I answer them. Which other site should I go to instead to have that?
sesuximo 7y ago
This is the last straw for me. The ads were also out of control. Real documentation is better anyway!
- oefrha 7y ago
  > Real documentation is better anyway! If SO was the alternative to real documentation to you, you’re probably part of the reason why SO quality has declined so much and why moderation got heavy-handed over time, with collateral damage: lazy ass users asking RTFM / I-can-haz-code questions. (Years ago I answered questions for a while on SO, accumulated a few thousand points, and participated in modding queues. I know how bad the bottom 30% or more of SO questions are.)
  - JanisL 7y ago
    Even with the quality slipping from the early days I think it's quite remarkable how high the quality is when you consider the distribution of quality of questions that get posted. The low quality review queue on stack overflow is just brutal. Part of what makes it a good resource is that the worst of the questions just don't get seen by many people.
beerandt 7y ago
>Why continue to support stack exchange through this? To exploit the new rules and demand everyone refer to you by your preferred pronoun of "God". If you're into that kind of thing.
- 0-_-0 7y ago
  "Master" would also work well. Or "Daddy" if you're into that kind of thing. Hmm, I'm starting to actually like this policy...
  - beerandt 7y ago
    "Don't confine me within your normative definition of 'pronoun'!"
lordgrenville 7y ago
SO has so much information already, I think it would be frustrating for people to have to walk away from it and start from scratch, and a huge loss to the community (or anyone who has ever googled "how to do X in lang Y"). However when your community is built on top of a VC-funded for-profit company this is always a risk you take. Maybe the only solution is starting over with a non-profit model.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  > I think it would be frustrating for people to have to walk away from it and start from scratch All the StackExchange Q&A content is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license (CC BY-SA). You can start your own website and use all the content. The only sense in which you'd be starting over is with building the community; the existing questions and answers are free to use. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchange-and-stack-overflow-have-moved-to-cc-by-sa-4-0 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...
  - lordgrenville 7y ago
    Didn't know that - thanks!
tinus_hn 7y ago
Unfortunately StackExchange fell into the trap of trying to support social justice warriorisms. Either they will fold or they will come to realize that the only ways to deal with users that are preoccupied with genders, religion, sexual orientations and whatever protected class they can come up with are to lose them or ignore them. You can’t go along with their demands because there will always be a new demand, each one crazier and more irrelevant than the last one.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  I'm curious as to what part of the issue was about "social justice warriorisms", especially since Monica herself and most of the other mods who resigned were okay with the principle of calling people by the pronoun they prefer to be called by.
  - mkohlmyr 7y ago
    Perhaps my reading of the situation is way off, but at the risk of making a fool of myself: My understanding is that Monica wanted to use gender neutral pronouns throughout her writing as a general case, but that this was deemed "not good enough" (or indeed hateful) in the cases where someone has chosen specific pronouns. So I suppose this is what the GP is referring to. And I can't argue that it seems like a rather extreme position - although I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
    - abstractbarista 7y ago
      That is what this is about? There is something wrong with the way our culture is shifting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Monica's choice. It is literally the most pacifist choice you could make. Anyone who feels "harmed" by her choice is only harming themselves.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mcv 7y ago

by chimi 7y ago

wavefunction 7y ago

what do you mean by support? I google and sometimes use their content and that's it. There are other sources.

chimi 7y ago
By support I mean, continue to moderate their website for them. Answer questions for them. Ask questions of them. Continue to give them time and help them create the product they are going to sell to someone else and keep all the money for themselves. And also support by voicing concerns. Showing them what their user base wants when they clearly don't care what their user base wants, only what they want in their wallet.
- p1esk 7y ago
  I ask questions there because I get good answers quickly. Sometimes I see questions in my field of expertise and I answer them. Which other site should I go to instead to have that?

sesuximo 7y ago

This is the last straw for me. The ads were also out of control. Real documentation is better anyway!

oefrha 7y ago
> Real documentation is better anyway! If SO was the alternative to real documentation to you, you’re probably part of the reason why SO quality has declined so much and why moderation got heavy-handed over time, with collateral damage: lazy ass users asking RTFM / I-can-haz-code questions. (Years ago I answered questions for a while on SO, accumulated a few thousand points, and participated in modding queues. I know how bad the bottom 30% or more of SO questions are.)
- JanisL 7y ago
  Even with the quality slipping from the early days I think it's quite remarkable how high the quality is when you consider the distribution of quality of questions that get posted. The low quality review queue on stack overflow is just brutal. Part of what makes it a good resource is that the worst of the questions just don't get seen by many people.

beerandt 7y ago

>Why continue to support stack exchange through this? To exploit the new rules and demand everyone refer to you by your preferred pronoun of "God". If you're into that kind of thing.

0-_-0 7y ago
"Master" would also work well. Or "Daddy" if you're into that kind of thing. Hmm, I'm starting to actually like this policy...
- beerandt 7y ago
  "Don't confine me within your normative definition of 'pronoun'!"

lordgrenville 7y ago

SO has so much information already, I think it would be frustrating for people to have to walk away from it and start from scratch, and a huge loss to the community (or anyone who has ever googled "how to do X in lang Y"). However when your community is built on top of a VC-funded for-profit company this is always a risk you take. Maybe the only solution is starting over with a non-profit model.

jessriedel 7y ago
> I think it would be frustrating for people to have to walk away from it and start from scratch All the StackExchange Q&A content is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license (CC BY-SA). You can start your own website and use all the content. The only sense in which you'd be starting over is with building the community; the existing questions and answers are free to use. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchange-and-stack-overflow-have-moved-to-cc-by-sa-4-0 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  Didn't know that - thanks!

tinus_hn 7y ago

Unfortunately StackExchange fell into the trap of trying to support social justice warriorisms. Either they will fold or they will come to realize that the only ways to deal with users that are preoccupied with genders, religion, sexual orientations and whatever protected class they can come up with are to lose them or ignore them. You can’t go along with their demands because there will always be a new demand, each one crazier and more irrelevant than the last one.

claudiawerner 7y ago
I'm curious as to what part of the issue was about "social justice warriorisms", especially since Monica herself and most of the other mods who resigned were okay with the principle of calling people by the pronoun they prefer to be called by.
- mkohlmyr 7y ago
  Perhaps my reading of the situation is way off, but at the risk of making a fool of myself: My understanding is that Monica wanted to use gender neutral pronouns throughout her writing as a general case, but that this was deemed "not good enough" (or indeed hateful) in the cases where someone has chosen specific pronouns. So I suppose this is what the GP is referring to. And I can't argue that it seems like a rather extreme position - although I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
  - abstractbarista 7y ago
    That is what this is about? There is something wrong with the way our culture is shifting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Monica's choice. It is literally the most pacifist choice you could make. Anyone who feels "harmed" by her choice is only harming themselves.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcv 7y ago