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Everybody got what they wanted and it’s much “nicer” now (it won’t even let you comment “what have you tried?” anymore, for instance). Wouldn’t you know it, the

Everybody got what they wanted and it’s much “nicer” now (it won’t even let you comment “what have you tried?” anymore, for instance). Wouldn’t you know it, the front page is now full of low-quality, low-effort questions.

2h 4y ago
Yeah it's kind of sad really. I was a member for 10 years. The point is sometimes, yes, your 9th repost of the same question is garbage, and should be treated as such. But that doesn't get you the sweet sweet ad money I guess. Quick Stack Overflow, make another blog post no one gives a shit about, and continue banning 90k rep users over rollback wars.
DangitBobby 4y ago
And yet I have no issues finding answers to my question when using a search engine. I'm sure if a slippery slope is detected, SO will change its policy back.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Why are you sure of that? They're all the way down the damn slope at this point, there's no cleaning it up. But ownership's metrics are not mine necessarily.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    They want the platform to survive, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered listening to user feedback. Either way, I'm happy to see they are doing something about how toxic SO is. The community has certainly earned its reputation. I for one don't think being an asshole is the only way to drive down noise. I'm kind of curious, because I've heard the line of reasoning about keeping it "clean" multiple times. Like its only purpose is to be a pristine knowledge base where every question is asked only once, and a perfect answer is selected and enshrined for all time. That's all wonderful and magical, but how does also serving it's purpose as a QA platform for new people on the struggle bus prevent that first goal?
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      You won’t be able to find the useful questions because they’re buried under garbage. This problem is papered over by a lot of high-rep old answers but it’s going to look longer and longer in the tooth as those get dated. The platform “surviving” is orthogonal to it being what its original users were looking for.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Most of the timeless answers were given 5 years ago though.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Well, yes, and some of them are starting to seem a bit less timeless.
wokwokwok 4y ago
I mostly no longer contribute to stack overflow. I don’t ask questions, because people take a very carefully explained, explicit question and post irrelevant stupid comments on it (“why are you doing this?”) instead of answering the question. I don’t answer questions, because people upvote wrong answers and vindictively downvote answers to the actual question (which is why everyone posts comments instead of answering, because you can’t down vote them for it). People care more about karma than actually helping. The quality issues are real, but really? I care not at all if 90k+ karma folk leave. Just leave. If you don’t like what it is, go hang out somewhere else. Why are you there if you’re not trying to help people? What I care about is the people patiently answering questions in a way that is correct, not antagonistic, not ducking off because it took more than 5 minutes and they can get better karma somewhere else. …almost like, a dedicated support community who care about a topic. That’s a nice idea. You could probably find one of those for your topic of interest and get help there from nice people. That’s what I do now. The folk there are generally quite lovely, because they actually care. The people on stack overflow, by and large, are not nice, do not care and won’t help you if you have any really hard problems to solve. An AI would be just as good, if it had decently accurate answers.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  > An AI would be just as good, if it had decently accurate answers. Well, this reminds me of "if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle." Failing to clean up bad questions is encouraging all the bad behavior you're talking about, since answering yet another question from someone who couldn't be bothered to write his own regex is an easy 25 points that nobody will ever look at again.
  - wokwokwok 4y ago
    Does it help any of the issues I mentioned? Or would those people be happier if they just had their questions answered? The answerers with their karma; happy! The askers with their answers: happy. The only “losers” are people who hoard their karma… because (I guess?) now other people are getting karma? …and I just do not care about those people.

2h 4y ago

Yeah it's kind of sad really. I was a member for 10 years. The point is sometimes, yes, your 9th repost of the same question is garbage, and should be treated as such. But that doesn't get you the sweet sweet ad money I guess. Quick Stack Overflow, make another blog post no one gives a shit about, and continue banning 90k rep users over rollback wars.

DangitBobby 4y ago

And yet I have no issues finding answers to my question when using a search engine. I'm sure if a slippery slope is detected, SO will change its policy back.

emodendroket 4y ago
Why are you sure of that? They're all the way down the damn slope at this point, there's no cleaning it up. But ownership's metrics are not mine necessarily.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  They want the platform to survive, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered listening to user feedback. Either way, I'm happy to see they are doing something about how toxic SO is. The community has certainly earned its reputation. I for one don't think being an asshole is the only way to drive down noise. I'm kind of curious, because I've heard the line of reasoning about keeping it "clean" multiple times. Like its only purpose is to be a pristine knowledge base where every question is asked only once, and a perfect answer is selected and enshrined for all time. That's all wonderful and magical, but how does also serving it's purpose as a QA platform for new people on the struggle bus prevent that first goal?
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    You won’t be able to find the useful questions because they’re buried under garbage. This problem is papered over by a lot of high-rep old answers but it’s going to look longer and longer in the tooth as those get dated. The platform “surviving” is orthogonal to it being what its original users were looking for.
Aeolun 4y ago
Most of the timeless answers were given 5 years ago though.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Well, yes, and some of them are starting to seem a bit less timeless.

wokwokwok 4y ago

I mostly no longer contribute to stack overflow. I don’t ask questions, because people take a very carefully explained, explicit question and post irrelevant stupid comments on it (“why are you doing this?”) instead of answering the question. I don’t answer questions, because people upvote wrong answers and vindictively downvote answers to the actual question (which is why everyone posts comments instead of answering, because you can’t down vote them for it). People care more about karma than actually helping. The quality issues are real, but really? I care not at all if 90k+ karma folk leave. Just leave. If you don’t like what it is, go hang out somewhere else. Why are you there if you’re not trying to help people? What I care about is the people patiently answering questions in a way that is correct, not antagonistic, not ducking off because it took more than 5 minutes and they can get better karma somewhere else. …almost like, a dedicated support community who care about a topic. That’s a nice idea. You could probably find one of those for your topic of interest and get help there from nice people. That’s what I do now. The folk there are generally quite lovely, because they actually care. The people on stack overflow, by and large, are not nice, do not care and won’t help you if you have any really hard problems to solve. An AI would be just as good, if it had decently accurate answers.

emodendroket 4y ago
> An AI would be just as good, if it had decently accurate answers. Well, this reminds me of "if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle." Failing to clean up bad questions is encouraging all the bad behavior you're talking about, since answering yet another question from someone who couldn't be bothered to write his own regex is an easy 25 points that nobody will ever look at again.
- wokwokwok 4y ago
  Does it help any of the issues I mentioned? Or would those people be happier if they just had their questions answered? The answerers with their karma; happy! The askers with their answers: happy. The only “losers” are people who hoard their karma… because (I guess?) now other people are getting karma? …and I just do not care about those people.