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StackOverflow is famously obnoxious about questions badly asked, badly categorized, duplicated… It’s actually a topic on which StackOverflow would benefit from

StackOverflow is famously obnoxious about questions badly asked, badly categorized, duplicated… It’s actually a topic on which StackOverflow would benefit from AI A LOT. Imagine StackOverflow rebrands itself as the place where you can ask the LLM and it benefits the world, whoch correctly rephrasing the question behind the scenes and creating public records for them.

rerdavies 9mo ago
And famously obnoxious about rejecting questions that are properly asked, properly categorized, and not actually duplicated.
- eastbound 9mo ago
  SO is not obnoxious because the users are wrong!
wizzwizz4 9mo ago
The company tried this. It fell through immediately. So they went away, and came back with a much improved version. It also fell through immediately. Turns out, this idea is just bad: LLMs can't rephrase questions accurately, when those questions are novel, which is precisely the case that Stack Overflow needs. For the pedantic: there were actually three attempts, all of which failed. The question title generator was positively received (https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/388492/308065 https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/388492/308065), but ultimately removed (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/424638/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/424638/5223757) because it didn't work properly, and interfered with curation. The question formatting assistant failed obviously and catastrophically (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/425167/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/425167/5223757). The new question assistant failed in much the same ways (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/432638/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/432638/5223757), despite over a year of improvements, but was pushed through anyway.
- eastbound 9mo ago
  This is an excellent piece of information that I didn’t have. If the company with most data can’t succeed, then it seems like a really hard problem. On the side, they can understand why humans couldn’t do it either.

rerdavies 9mo ago

And famously obnoxious about rejecting questions that are properly asked, properly categorized, and not actually duplicated.

eastbound 9mo ago
SO is not obnoxious because the users are wrong!

wizzwizz4 9mo ago

The company tried this. It fell through immediately. So they went away, and came back with a much improved version. It also fell through immediately. Turns out, this idea is just bad: LLMs can't rephrase questions accurately, when those questions are novel, which is precisely the case that Stack Overflow needs. For the pedantic: there were actually three attempts, all of which failed. The question title generator was positively received (https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/388492/308065 https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/388492/308065), but ultimately removed (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/424638/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/424638/5223757) because it didn't work properly, and interfered with curation. The question formatting assistant failed obviously and catastrophically (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/425167/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/425167/5223757). The new question assistant failed in much the same ways (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/432638/5223757 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/432638/5223757), despite over a year of improvements, but was pushed through anyway.

eastbound 9mo ago
This is an excellent piece of information that I didn’t have. If the company with most data can’t succeed, then it seems like a really hard problem. On the side, they can understand why humans couldn’t do it either.