8 ms·

I submitted a question regarding an obscure realmd bug and subsequently submitted the answer (which took about 24 hours to arrive at). The answer was nitpicked

I submitted a question regarding an obscure realmd bug and subsequently submitted the answer (which took about 24 hours to arrive at). The answer was nitpicked over a tag, downvoted, and finally removed. I would not be surprised if someone in the world is currently struggling to resolve the same realmd issue as it is not documented anywhere else online. That was the last time I will contribute to Stack Overflow.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eyelidlessness 3y ago
That’s pretty par for the course for the last few years, and I don’t even bother looking there for answers much anymore for the same reason.
jsnell 3y ago
Does this have something to do with the strike? (E.g. you think the moderation is still ongoing despite the supposed strike, or worse than before?) Or is this just a generic SO complaint?
- ftxbro 3y ago
  I feel like you are itching to get his hacker news answer nitpicked over its relevance, downvoted, and finally removed.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsnell 3y ago
    I mean, yes. Wouldn't it be pretty nice for the top comment to be relevant to the article rather than the 500th rerun of the same SO moderation complaints?
    - ricardo81 3y ago
      Understandable comment. To be fair, the SO community (and moderation) clearly play an important role in the utility of the site, in the same way Wikipedia editors are held to high scrutiny for their objectivity. Surely if enough people have reasonable objections based on past experiences, that is relevant.
- berkle4455 3y ago
  These “generic” complaints are why SO is a dead platform and also why nobody really cares about the moderator strike. It’s not that we don’t empathize with them (moderating a deluge of chatGPT garbage is impossible), it’s that we just don’t care about SO. It’s dead like Quora.
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    Calling SO 'dead' like Quora is not only extremely dramatic but also have you looked at Quora? Ever? I still find SO extremely valuable even if some parts of it can be extremely nitpicky. To some extent you need a hardass moderation team and community in order to prevent it from being destroyed over time. See: Wikipedia.
    - geysersam 3y ago
      Agreed. I visit stack overflow every day. It's usually helpful, concise and correct.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    > moderating a deluge of chatGPT garbage is impossible Why do you think that? I see quite a lot of garbage produced by the more meaty intelligences on the internet. And I don't understand why it'd be intrinsically more difficult to moderate ChatGPT content than any other.
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      Because ChatGPT: - multiplies the rate at which people are able to produce content by many orders of magnitude, and - uses sophisticated sounding language with a lot of correct statements, sprinkled with a few hallucinations that can be anywhere from slightly off-base to dangerously wrong, and - doesn’t even need a human much in the loop on the producing side. Certainly there are karma farming bots posting answers written by ChatGPT right as we speak So content produced by ChatGPT takes more time to review for the people looking into factual correctness of the answer while at the same time is able to be submitted at a much higher frequency than before.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  The predilection of SO moderators to overzealously remove answers seems clearly relevant to the question of whether it’s a good idea to give them the power to remove any answer because it has an AI vibe according to inaccurate AI detection tools.
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    It's important to highlight that SO mods remove very little. Almost the whole community can contribute and in my experience (as a mod) it's usually the enthusiasm of non-mod users that causes the problems you're describing. They gamified community moderation. When you reward people for taking action, expect people to take lots of action.
josephcsible 3y ago
Can you post a link to the question where this happened?
- matsemann 3y ago
  I've asked the same multiple times when people here complain about X happening to them. They never answer. My guess is they go and find it, read it, realize they were in the wrong, but never retract their statements. Yes, there are cases where questions are wrongly closed, or you get a nitpicky comment. But a few wrongs when you have to deal with thousands of useless questions every day is to be expected. Just think of the state of the site if it wasn't moderated as strictly.. I got badges for having reviewed 1000+ of stuff, and then you see the absolute garbage...
  - dvt 3y ago
    Read @NoMoreNicksLeft's comment in this thread, you'll understand why. I have dozens of examples, but I don't care enough to find them, cite them, collate them. You think the site is functioning properly? I'm happy for you, keep using it, it's a free country. The rest of us moved on years ago.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      Why spend your time writing comment after comment about how bad SO is, if you "don't care enough"? That's quite ironic. Those complaining about SO being toxic are often quite toxic in their comments. I find that quite ironic as well.
      - dvt 3y ago
        > Why spend your time writing comment after comment about how bad SO is, if you "don't care enough"? I'm having a discussion on a discussion website, does that confuse you in some way? I don't go out of my way to talk about Stack Overflow, but this thread is about Stack Overflow so I'm talking about my experience with Stack Overflow. Not sure how any of that is ironic.
ricardo81 3y ago
I had a similar issue in the past querying about 'nice' rate limits towards DNS authorities (mainly registries and registrars) - and was told the question was somehow wrong/irrelevant. It was a simple check to see if domains have nameservers and resolve. It's not really a question there's a manual and page for, simple etiquette. I was told the question should have been X where X was definitely not the question. The tone of the remarks were laughable too, militant/unempathetic. Last time I bothered to ask anything there, about 7-8 years ago.
- chrisallenlane 3y ago
  I stopped using Stack Overflow years ago when they went on their jihad to remove "please," "thanks," etc from all posts. I understand the motivation to keep "noise" low, but I disagree that civility is noise.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Some of the mods really are bad. I've found SO to be OK as I only use it for very specific questions and word them well, so never have any friction. But on some of the other SE sites? Man. I remember asking something on Server Fault about an obscure Apache setup, I can't even remember exactly what it was, but I was serving from localhost. The issue 100% had nothing to do with DNS, but some mod wanted me to add that info. I tried explaining it was irrelevant and he just deleted the question saying he knew better. Petty behavior like that is all too common. Good moderation relies on a principle of least interference, not reviewing every post and punishing those that don't share a mods personal values/standards.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
I had several cases like these over the last years (joined the network 12 years audio but the issues seem to be a few years old. I have about 220k across the sites, with a predilection to editing questions and answers for format (readibility) and updating my own answers as technology progresses). Some SE sites are better, some worse in that aspect. SO bring the largest usually gathers the anger most. Then within SO there are better and worse communities. Some are toxic (Go, in addition to being maddeningly elitist), some are great (sql for instance). The Meta is such a shitshow that I never get there anymore. It is dad, but in reality a combination of culture, low effort questions and egos.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

eyelidlessness 3y ago

That’s pretty par for the course for the last few years, and I don’t even bother looking there for answers much anymore for the same reason.

jsnell 3y ago

Does this have something to do with the strike? (E.g. you think the moderation is still ongoing despite the supposed strike, or worse than before?) Or is this just a generic SO complaint?

ftxbro 3y ago
I feel like you are itching to get his hacker news answer nitpicked over its relevance, downvoted, and finally removed.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jsnell 3y ago
  I mean, yes. Wouldn't it be pretty nice for the top comment to be relevant to the article rather than the 500th rerun of the same SO moderation complaints?
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    Understandable comment. To be fair, the SO community (and moderation) clearly play an important role in the utility of the site, in the same way Wikipedia editors are held to high scrutiny for their objectivity. Surely if enough people have reasonable objections based on past experiences, that is relevant.
berkle4455 3y ago
These “generic” complaints are why SO is a dead platform and also why nobody really cares about the moderator strike. It’s not that we don’t empathize with them (moderating a deluge of chatGPT garbage is impossible), it’s that we just don’t care about SO. It’s dead like Quora.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Calling SO 'dead' like Quora is not only extremely dramatic but also have you looked at Quora? Ever? I still find SO extremely valuable even if some parts of it can be extremely nitpicky. To some extent you need a hardass moderation team and community in order to prevent it from being destroyed over time. See: Wikipedia.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    Agreed. I visit stack overflow every day. It's usually helpful, concise and correct.
- geysersam 3y ago
  > moderating a deluge of chatGPT garbage is impossible Why do you think that? I see quite a lot of garbage produced by the more meaty intelligences on the internet. And I don't understand why it'd be intrinsically more difficult to moderate ChatGPT content than any other.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    Because ChatGPT: - multiplies the rate at which people are able to produce content by many orders of magnitude, and - uses sophisticated sounding language with a lot of correct statements, sprinkled with a few hallucinations that can be anywhere from slightly off-base to dangerously wrong, and - doesn’t even need a human much in the loop on the producing side. Certainly there are karma farming bots posting answers written by ChatGPT right as we speak So content produced by ChatGPT takes more time to review for the people looking into factual correctness of the answer while at the same time is able to be submitted at a much higher frequency than before.
fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
The predilection of SO moderators to overzealously remove answers seems clearly relevant to the question of whether it’s a good idea to give them the power to remove any answer because it has an AI vibe according to inaccurate AI detection tools.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  It's important to highlight that SO mods remove very little. Almost the whole community can contribute and in my experience (as a mod) it's usually the enthusiasm of non-mod users that causes the problems you're describing. They gamified community moderation. When you reward people for taking action, expect people to take lots of action.

josephcsible 3y ago

Can you post a link to the question where this happened?

matsemann 3y ago
I've asked the same multiple times when people here complain about X happening to them. They never answer. My guess is they go and find it, read it, realize they were in the wrong, but never retract their statements. Yes, there are cases where questions are wrongly closed, or you get a nitpicky comment. But a few wrongs when you have to deal with thousands of useless questions every day is to be expected. Just think of the state of the site if it wasn't moderated as strictly.. I got badges for having reviewed 1000+ of stuff, and then you see the absolute garbage...
- dvt 3y ago
  Read @NoMoreNicksLeft's comment in this thread, you'll understand why. I have dozens of examples, but I don't care enough to find them, cite them, collate them. You think the site is functioning properly? I'm happy for you, keep using it, it's a free country. The rest of us moved on years ago.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    Why spend your time writing comment after comment about how bad SO is, if you "don't care enough"? That's quite ironic. Those complaining about SO being toxic are often quite toxic in their comments. I find that quite ironic as well.
    - dvt 3y ago
      > Why spend your time writing comment after comment about how bad SO is, if you "don't care enough"? I'm having a discussion on a discussion website, does that confuse you in some way? I don't go out of my way to talk about Stack Overflow, but this thread is about Stack Overflow so I'm talking about my experience with Stack Overflow. Not sure how any of that is ironic.

ricardo81 3y ago

I had a similar issue in the past querying about 'nice' rate limits towards DNS authorities (mainly registries and registrars) - and was told the question was somehow wrong/irrelevant. It was a simple check to see if domains have nameservers and resolve. It's not really a question there's a manual and page for, simple etiquette. I was told the question should have been X where X was definitely not the question. The tone of the remarks were laughable too, militant/unempathetic. Last time I bothered to ask anything there, about 7-8 years ago.

chrisallenlane 3y ago
I stopped using Stack Overflow years ago when they went on their jihad to remove "please," "thanks," etc from all posts. I understand the motivation to keep "noise" low, but I disagree that civility is noise.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

Some of the mods really are bad. I've found SO to be OK as I only use it for very specific questions and word them well, so never have any friction. But on some of the other SE sites? Man. I remember asking something on Server Fault about an obscure Apache setup, I can't even remember exactly what it was, but I was serving from localhost. The issue 100% had nothing to do with DNS, but some mod wanted me to add that info. I tried explaining it was irrelevant and he just deleted the question saying he knew better. Petty behavior like that is all too common. Good moderation relies on a principle of least interference, not reviewing every post and punishing those that don't share a mods personal values/standards.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

I had several cases like these over the last years (joined the network 12 years audio but the issues seem to be a few years old. I have about 220k across the sites, with a predilection to editing questions and answers for format (readibility) and updating my own answers as technology progresses). Some SE sites are better, some worse in that aspect. SO bring the largest usually gathers the anger most. Then within SO there are better and worse communities. Some are toxic (Go, in addition to being maddeningly elitist), some are great (sql for instance). The Meta is such a shitshow that I never get there anymore. It is dad, but in reality a combination of culture, low effort questions and egos.