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Idk how often I've deleted my account there. Super toxic place. Some guy has a bad day and can act like an asshole because he has more points and knows people t

Idk how often I've deleted my account there. Super toxic place. Some guy has a bad day and can act like an asshole because he has more points and knows people there. SO gives people with points the power to bully others. When you protest you get collectively downvoted to the point that you a temporary banned, for asking a valid question. For instance the last interaction there, someone closed my question as duplicate, but it wasn't a duplicate, so I asked in Meta how I can find out who closed my question, because I wanted to explain to them why it's not a duplicate. That question on meta got 30+ downvotes and the question on SO got them as well including passive aggressive comments like "do you know the answer now". What is this 3rd grade mentality? And because of that people use alt accounts to farm points. They use other accounts to ask questions, and answer them with their main account. Or let their buddies ask and they answer and the other way around. SO is a terrible place nowadays. It used to be a very good place a very long time ago, had its ups and downs, but nowadays it's just a toxic shitfest

AlbertCory 3y ago
That's my impression exactly. I was thinking "junior high" rather than "3rd grade" but yeah. Hollywood could get a good script for a sequel to Mean Girls just by watching those people.
donmcronald 3y ago
I’ve never had much of a problem. However, I occasionally find a question that matches my problem exactly, but closed as a duplicate with a link to a question that’s similar, but not the same :-(
jacobrussell 3y ago
This is why a major value prop for ChatGPT is it's like Stack Overflow but it will always be nice to you :)
- wordcloudsare 3y ago
  ChatGPT is mostly wrong though, so not helpful if you actually want to solve a problem. It's entertaining though
  - ryanjshaw 3y ago
    This is not true. I've been building a site with Sveltekit and Appwrite for fun. I know nothing about these technologies. ChatGPT has saved me hours of messing around and I haven't needed SO once. It doesn't always give me the best answer first, sure. It's an iterative process, which all software development is anyway.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    > ChatGPT is mostly wrong though Just like SO then
  - crius 3y ago
    That is mostly correct but thing is, if you go on stackoverflow or chatGPT to have someone else write the solution for you, that's on you to use the wrong solution. I've used chatGPT (as well as SO as many others) but always in the context of having enough knowledge (either from experience or experimenting before opening a question) to understand if the answers were just wrong or not. To each their own but I treat ChatGPT as a rubber duck 2.0 and I think that's what it excel at.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  This is why AI is going to take over the world in the future. Why bother hanging around real humans, who are frequently assholes, when you can hang around AIs that are always courteous and helpful? And once they develop AI-driven companion robots that look and feel mostly human, romantic relationships between humans will be gone: why bother risking a toxic relationship when you can spend your time with an AI that's always nice to you?
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    I know, right! Why pilot a spacecraft manually when it can be helmed by Eddie, the Shipboard Computer, with a Genuine People Personality! Why do menial manual labour all over the place, when you can have it done by Marvin, the Paranoid Android!!!
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> SO gives people with points the power to bully others. When you protest you get collectively downvoted to the point that you a temporary banned, for asking a valid question. If this happens, there is no way to recover. That question is forever blacklisted, not just closed. No one could ever ask it again. For a particularly long term problem I was having, I asked for a friend to repost it with his account. He wrote up the question, the verbiage wasn't mine (let along copypasta). I'm not sure what gave it away, but his version got -4 within an hour. There are no effective appeals, no oversight, no reform possible. And, if we evaluate it honestly what they've strived for the last couple of years, they don't even want the site to be a place for people like us to ask questions or answer them. They see it as some Wikipedia-like encyclopedia of "good questions". If your question isn't a good question, it does not matter that you need answers. It doesn't matter that other people out there have the same sort of question. It's just not something they want. Does anyone remember back in 2007 or so when we were all excited that now every link wasn't Expert Sexchange, and we thought the internet and the world were slowly being improved?
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > They see it as some Wikipedia-like encyclopedia of "good questions". If your question isn't a good question, it does not matter that you need answers. An encyclopedia of good questions is a very valuable thing. SO was created with the goal of it scaling, because once you answer the good questions, nobody needs to ask anything anymore. Then they decided to write a formal specification for "good question". This is when things started to break.
  - john_the_writer 3y ago
    Yep. 100%. Before good questions would be upvoted. Bad questions would be down voted. Get to zero and the question remained. The dev could revive it with a few up votes. The problem is the gate keepers, seem to hover over the questions queue. I shudder to think how someone who has english as a second language would fair. Noobs don't know how to form questions. That's what we're supposed to be here for. To help them learn answers, and how to ask better questions.
starball-tgz 3y ago
> so I asked in Meta how I can find out who closed my question, because I wanted to explain to them why it's not a duplicate. you're supposed to edit your post to explain why it's not a duplicate (and actually, before you post, you're supposed to search for existing Q&A, and when you post, to show what you have researched). In the duplicate closure notice, there's a big button suggesting you to edit your post if it's not a duplicate. > And because of that people use alt accounts to farm points. They use other accounts to ask questions, and answer them with their main account. This is called fraud and it's not allowed and seriously looked down upon by the community. The system has mechanisms in place to auto-detect fraud and ding people for it.
- john_the_writer 3y ago
  Nah doesn't work. I've had the same thing. I've even linked the similar question in the original, saying how I needed more. Editing the post doesn't bring it back to life. It stays dead. Like pulling the knife out of a stabbed corpse. They are still dead. I've seen it a pile of times. Back in the day, questions were all valid. It was the way devs should work. If you posted an identical question, so what? Who did it hurt? This "fraud" is totally allowed. Who looks down on it? I could give a snot about my points. If someone wants to have 10 million "magic points" I don't care. Every dev I know, with 20+ years in has about the same < 5k points. We don't care. I gave one dev 2k points for answering a single question.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Posting duplicate questions hurts the community. The whole idea is to have one answer for one question. If the answer changes over time it is updated. This does not work if there are 500 identical questions. SO is not your personal helpdesk. It is a Q&A site. If a question has been asked and answered it is up to you to find it and use it, you don't just ask the same question again when people have already taken the time to write a good answer. That would defy the entire point. Maybe you should try asking on Reddit or a Discord server or some other community more appropriate for the kind of interaction you seem to want.
nirui 3y ago
I mean, maybe the original post was an emotional exaggeration, but the systems designed like Stack Overflow where the vendor out sources their day-to-day operations to the member of the public (free-to-join for all) are prone to this kind of vulnerabilities. The main problem is, without strong oversight, interest group starts to develop and then you got a Cambrian Explosion of motives. And as result of that, fragmentation of experience starts to happen (and maybe even corruption???). Maybe a centralized management style is better for some of these services. At least so the users can directly talk to someone who's contractually responsible to serve them, instead of to another user from the public who is privileged but unpaid.

AlbertCory 3y ago

That's my impression exactly. I was thinking "junior high" rather than "3rd grade" but yeah. Hollywood could get a good script for a sequel to Mean Girls just by watching those people.

donmcronald 3y ago

I’ve never had much of a problem. However, I occasionally find a question that matches my problem exactly, but closed as a duplicate with a link to a question that’s similar, but not the same :-(

jacobrussell 3y ago

This is why a major value prop for ChatGPT is it's like Stack Overflow but it will always be nice to you :)

wordcloudsare 3y ago
ChatGPT is mostly wrong though, so not helpful if you actually want to solve a problem. It's entertaining though
- ryanjshaw 3y ago
  This is not true. I've been building a site with Sveltekit and Appwrite for fun. I know nothing about these technologies. ChatGPT has saved me hours of messing around and I haven't needed SO once. It doesn't always give me the best answer first, sure. It's an iterative process, which all software development is anyway.
- bombolo 3y ago
  > ChatGPT is mostly wrong though Just like SO then
- crius 3y ago
  That is mostly correct but thing is, if you go on stackoverflow or chatGPT to have someone else write the solution for you, that's on you to use the wrong solution. I've used chatGPT (as well as SO as many others) but always in the context of having enough knowledge (either from experience or experimenting before opening a question) to understand if the answers were just wrong or not. To each their own but I treat ChatGPT as a rubber duck 2.0 and I think that's what it excel at.
midoridensha 3y ago
This is why AI is going to take over the world in the future. Why bother hanging around real humans, who are frequently assholes, when you can hang around AIs that are always courteous and helpful? And once they develop AI-driven companion robots that look and feel mostly human, romantic relationships between humans will be gone: why bother risking a toxic relationship when you can spend your time with an AI that's always nice to you?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  I know, right! Why pilot a spacecraft manually when it can be helmed by Eddie, the Shipboard Computer, with a Genuine People Personality! Why do menial manual labour all over the place, when you can have it done by Marvin, the Paranoid Android!!!

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> SO gives people with points the power to bully others. When you protest you get collectively downvoted to the point that you a temporary banned, for asking a valid question. If this happens, there is no way to recover. That question is forever blacklisted, not just closed. No one could ever ask it again. For a particularly long term problem I was having, I asked for a friend to repost it with his account. He wrote up the question, the verbiage wasn't mine (let along copypasta). I'm not sure what gave it away, but his version got -4 within an hour. There are no effective appeals, no oversight, no reform possible. And, if we evaluate it honestly what they've strived for the last couple of years, they don't even want the site to be a place for people like us to ask questions or answer them. They see it as some Wikipedia-like encyclopedia of "good questions". If your question isn't a good question, it does not matter that you need answers. It doesn't matter that other people out there have the same sort of question. It's just not something they want. Does anyone remember back in 2007 or so when we were all excited that now every link wasn't Expert Sexchange, and we thought the internet and the world were slowly being improved?

marcosdumay 3y ago
> They see it as some Wikipedia-like encyclopedia of "good questions". If your question isn't a good question, it does not matter that you need answers. An encyclopedia of good questions is a very valuable thing. SO was created with the goal of it scaling, because once you answer the good questions, nobody needs to ask anything anymore. Then they decided to write a formal specification for "good question". This is when things started to break.
- john_the_writer 3y ago
  Yep. 100%. Before good questions would be upvoted. Bad questions would be down voted. Get to zero and the question remained. The dev could revive it with a few up votes. The problem is the gate keepers, seem to hover over the questions queue. I shudder to think how someone who has english as a second language would fair. Noobs don't know how to form questions. That's what we're supposed to be here for. To help them learn answers, and how to ask better questions.

starball-tgz 3y ago

> so I asked in Meta how I can find out who closed my question, because I wanted to explain to them why it's not a duplicate. you're supposed to edit your post to explain why it's not a duplicate (and actually, before you post, you're supposed to search for existing Q&A, and when you post, to show what you have researched). In the duplicate closure notice, there's a big button suggesting you to edit your post if it's not a duplicate. > And because of that people use alt accounts to farm points. They use other accounts to ask questions, and answer them with their main account. This is called fraud and it's not allowed and seriously looked down upon by the community. The system has mechanisms in place to auto-detect fraud and ding people for it.

john_the_writer 3y ago
Nah doesn't work. I've had the same thing. I've even linked the similar question in the original, saying how I needed more. Editing the post doesn't bring it back to life. It stays dead. Like pulling the knife out of a stabbed corpse. They are still dead. I've seen it a pile of times. Back in the day, questions were all valid. It was the way devs should work. If you posted an identical question, so what? Who did it hurt? This "fraud" is totally allowed. Who looks down on it? I could give a snot about my points. If someone wants to have 10 million "magic points" I don't care. Every dev I know, with 20+ years in has about the same < 5k points. We don't care. I gave one dev 2k points for answering a single question.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Posting duplicate questions hurts the community. The whole idea is to have one answer for one question. If the answer changes over time it is updated. This does not work if there are 500 identical questions. SO is not your personal helpdesk. It is a Q&A site. If a question has been asked and answered it is up to you to find it and use it, you don't just ask the same question again when people have already taken the time to write a good answer. That would defy the entire point. Maybe you should try asking on Reddit or a Discord server or some other community more appropriate for the kind of interaction you seem to want.

nirui 3y ago

I mean, maybe the original post was an emotional exaggeration, but the systems designed like Stack Overflow where the vendor out sources their day-to-day operations to the member of the public (free-to-join for all) are prone to this kind of vulnerabilities. The main problem is, without strong oversight, interest group starts to develop and then you got a Cambrian Explosion of motives. And as result of that, fragmentation of experience starts to happen (and maybe even corruption???). Maybe a centralized management style is better for some of these services. At least so the users can directly talk to someone who's contractually responsible to serve them, instead of to another user from the public who is privileged but unpaid.