4 ms·

Nah, SO is really toxic. There are plenty of examples and probably dozens of blog posts illustrating it. It took two seconds to find two of MANY meta posts [0][

by zer8k 3y ago

Nah, SO is really toxic. There are plenty of examples and probably dozens of blog posts illustrating it. It took two seconds to find two of MANY meta posts [0][1]. In fact one answer to the posts here illustrates what looks like at least a dozen similar posts. ChatGPT is just hastening an already well deserved death. I have not heard a positive opinion about SO in my professional network in years. Everyone passively consumes SO but a community built on contribution can't live on passive consumption. If the community is so high huffing it's own farts it drives away the exact thing it needs there's no good end for it. [0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342779/what-about-the-community-is-toxic-to-new-users https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342779/what-about-t... [1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/262791/the-rudeness-on-stack-overflow-is-too-damn-high https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/262791/the-rudeness...

matsemann 3y ago
Did you read your own links? I feel they explain it well. Strict moderation isn't toxic. It can feel harsh, but it isn't toxic. The rudeness is people joining a forum, spending zero effort to understand the rules or etiquette, and then demanding others helping them for free without putting any effort in.
- zer8k 3y ago
  The rudeness stems not from moderation but drive-by insults in comments and rapid dupe marking. That's covered in one of the several answers to the topics.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Rapid dupe marking is not rude.
    - chrisjj 3y ago
      Only if it is accurate. And the vast majority of SO dupe marking fails to accord with any meaning of the word duplicate found outside SO.
    - terribleperson 3y ago
      It is when the comment wasn't actually a dupe because of a subtle difference that was missed or because the 'original' question was years ago and all the answers would be different today.
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  I don't think strict moderation is inherently nontoxic, it's really quite toxic in a format like SO where no one knows how much effort may have gone in and what level people are at. Strict moderation usually works in conjunction with exclusivity to not just traumatize random members of the public. When someone reaches expertise are they going to participate in your forum? For many people, I think SO is understandably something they will never participate in after their early experiences being told off over things they couldn't yet distinguish.
- greedo 3y ago
  This view is exactly why SO is dying. It's elitist and exclusionary. It's the same as the grognards who autoreply RTFM to everyone. SO could have been a place where someone could post a question, and a decent search algorithm could offer answers from previously answered questions; if it was a unique question then it could be opened to answers. Instead, SO decided you needed to earn the privilege of posting a question by answering questions posed by others. That right off the bat excludes a ton of people who don't have the time to wait for a question in their domain, and answer it before 1000 other people. Sure, it's the Eternal September for tech sites. Comes with the territory. If you don't want people to visit your site (and contribute moderation and content for free), be hostile to new users. Reward aggressive closing of questions. Sure is a good way to drive away anyone but the most pedantic control freaks. I used to refer people to SO when they would come to me with a question I couldn't answer, (I even have an SO t-shirt hanging in my closet) but now I'd only do that to my worst enemies.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    > SO decided you needed to earn the privilege of posting a question by answering questions posed by others This is false. You can post both questions and answers without any rep. How people get the basics of SO wrong and still have such a strong opinion on how it works baffles me all the time.
    - greedo 3y ago
      Oh I'm wrong. You get all of ONE karma point to use for either a question (that will get closed) or one answer. Earning karma is fundamentally impossible for anyone who isn't living on SO.
      - matsemann 3y ago
        You were wrong. Accept it, don't be so snarky and toxic in your replies, please.
        greedo 3y ago
- moralestapia 3y ago
  >Strict moderation isn't toxic. And yet, the site died exactly because of that ...
- chrisjj 3y ago
  > Strict moderation isn't toxic SO's toxic moderation isn't strict. strict /strɪkt/ adjective demanding that rules concerning behaviour are obeyed and observed. Proper moderation for rules can be no more strict than are the rules themselves, and SO's are appallingly slack. E.g. try and find the rule prohibiting duplicates. Mods have fabricated their own definition: "Questions may be duplicates if they have the same (potential) answers" (verbatim). By which 1+1 is a duplicate of how many does it take to tango. Using that bogus grounds to close a question that fully follows the delared rules is, yes, toxic.
bink 3y ago
> ChatGPT is just hastening an already well deserved death. If ChatGPT kills Stack Overflow and Reddit/Twitter block API access, where will it gets its answers from?
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Probably by doing the thing that can be used to answer 95% of all questions programmers ask each other: reading the manual. Over time I've got used to it, but my colleagues tend to use me as a personal StackOverflow because I actually read the manuals for things we use/depend on. I regularly "amaze" them by answering obscure questions and when they ask how did you know that, the answer is always some variant on "by reading". Now I just accept that most programmers hate reading and will prefer either just splashing around until they stumble on the answer by accident, or asking other people. It's frustrating but just how it is. I've had a senior programmer at a well known tech company tell me that now LLMs exist they+their team suddenly feel like writing documentation is worth it, because something will actually read it, and he was serious! They work on the assumption that if they write docs, zero programmers will read them! I don't think that's literally true but it might be directionally true. I don't quite understand the assumption that LLMs are learning to code by reading StackOverflow anyway. Sure, it sounds plausible but we don't know how ChatGPT was trained. But it seems irrelevant now. GPT-4 has clearly learned programming to the level that it could generate self-training material just by reading the docs, writing experimental programs to try things out, and then summarizing its own findings which can be fed back into the next training round. At the moment it's not wired up to programming environments closely enough to do this, but it could be.
  - baud147258 3y ago
    > Now I just accept that most programmers hate reading and will prefer either just splashing around Usable documentation has to exists in the first place, though.
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      It's a bit of a circular problem. If programmers don't enjoy reading, they assume nobody else does either, so they don't bother writing proper docs, so the people who do read find there's no good docs and learn not to bother next time.

by zer8k 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago

Did you read your own links? I feel they explain it well. Strict moderation isn't toxic. It can feel harsh, but it isn't toxic. The rudeness is people joining a forum, spending zero effort to understand the rules or etiquette, and then demanding others helping them for free without putting any effort in.

zer8k 3y ago
The rudeness stems not from moderation but drive-by insults in comments and rapid dupe marking. That's covered in one of the several answers to the topics.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Rapid dupe marking is not rude.
  - chrisjj 3y ago
    Only if it is accurate. And the vast majority of SO dupe marking fails to accord with any meaning of the word duplicate found outside SO.
  - terribleperson 3y ago
    It is when the comment wasn't actually a dupe because of a subtle difference that was missed or because the 'original' question was years ago and all the answers would be different today.
fatfingerd 3y ago
I don't think strict moderation is inherently nontoxic, it's really quite toxic in a format like SO where no one knows how much effort may have gone in and what level people are at. Strict moderation usually works in conjunction with exclusivity to not just traumatize random members of the public. When someone reaches expertise are they going to participate in your forum? For many people, I think SO is understandably something they will never participate in after their early experiences being told off over things they couldn't yet distinguish.
greedo 3y ago
This view is exactly why SO is dying. It's elitist and exclusionary. It's the same as the grognards who autoreply RTFM to everyone. SO could have been a place where someone could post a question, and a decent search algorithm could offer answers from previously answered questions; if it was a unique question then it could be opened to answers. Instead, SO decided you needed to earn the privilege of posting a question by answering questions posed by others. That right off the bat excludes a ton of people who don't have the time to wait for a question in their domain, and answer it before 1000 other people. Sure, it's the Eternal September for tech sites. Comes with the territory. If you don't want people to visit your site (and contribute moderation and content for free), be hostile to new users. Reward aggressive closing of questions. Sure is a good way to drive away anyone but the most pedantic control freaks. I used to refer people to SO when they would come to me with a question I couldn't answer, (I even have an SO t-shirt hanging in my closet) but now I'd only do that to my worst enemies.
- matsemann 3y ago
  > SO decided you needed to earn the privilege of posting a question by answering questions posed by others This is false. You can post both questions and answers without any rep. How people get the basics of SO wrong and still have such a strong opinion on how it works baffles me all the time.
  - greedo 3y ago
    Oh I'm wrong. You get all of ONE karma point to use for either a question (that will get closed) or one answer. Earning karma is fundamentally impossible for anyone who isn't living on SO.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      You were wrong. Accept it, don't be so snarky and toxic in your replies, please.
      - greedo 3y ago
moralestapia 3y ago
>Strict moderation isn't toxic. And yet, the site died exactly because of that ...
chrisjj 3y ago
> Strict moderation isn't toxic SO's toxic moderation isn't strict. strict /strɪkt/ adjective demanding that rules concerning behaviour are obeyed and observed. Proper moderation for rules can be no more strict than are the rules themselves, and SO's are appallingly slack. E.g. try and find the rule prohibiting duplicates. Mods have fabricated their own definition: "Questions may be duplicates if they have the same (potential) answers" (verbatim). By which 1+1 is a duplicate of how many does it take to tango. Using that bogus grounds to close a question that fully follows the delared rules is, yes, toxic.

bink 3y ago

> ChatGPT is just hastening an already well deserved death. If ChatGPT kills Stack Overflow and Reddit/Twitter block API access, where will it gets its answers from?

mike_hearn 3y ago
Probably by doing the thing that can be used to answer 95% of all questions programmers ask each other: reading the manual. Over time I've got used to it, but my colleagues tend to use me as a personal StackOverflow because I actually read the manuals for things we use/depend on. I regularly "amaze" them by answering obscure questions and when they ask how did you know that, the answer is always some variant on "by reading". Now I just accept that most programmers hate reading and will prefer either just splashing around until they stumble on the answer by accident, or asking other people. It's frustrating but just how it is. I've had a senior programmer at a well known tech company tell me that now LLMs exist they+their team suddenly feel like writing documentation is worth it, because something will actually read it, and he was serious! They work on the assumption that if they write docs, zero programmers will read them! I don't think that's literally true but it might be directionally true. I don't quite understand the assumption that LLMs are learning to code by reading StackOverflow anyway. Sure, it sounds plausible but we don't know how ChatGPT was trained. But it seems irrelevant now. GPT-4 has clearly learned programming to the level that it could generate self-training material just by reading the docs, writing experimental programs to try things out, and then summarizing its own findings which can be fed back into the next training round. At the moment it's not wired up to programming environments closely enough to do this, but it could be.
- baud147258 3y ago
  > Now I just accept that most programmers hate reading and will prefer either just splashing around Usable documentation has to exists in the first place, though.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    It's a bit of a circular problem. If programmers don't enjoy reading, they assume nobody else does either, so they don't bother writing proper docs, so the people who do read find there's no good docs and learn not to bother next time.