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Considering StackOverflow is now providing a ground truth for AI training, I believe the ban is more about not poisoning the well rather than keeping the StackO

Considering StackOverflow is now providing a ground truth for AI training, I believe the ban is more about not poisoning the well rather than keeping the StackOverflow or StackExchange human-friendly. That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins and verbal harassment.

dspillett 6mo ago
> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more information as we can't help”, “this isn't a complete answer”, and so forth, as deeply personal attacks… One of the good things about LLMs is that they've drawn off all the simple already-answered questions! Unfortunately the more complex ones, or the ones for new solutions, are also going there so SO and its family of sites is ceasing to grow even in the ways it wants to. > and verbal harassment. Again, that did/does happen, but a lot less than some people report it. The most abusive people I've seen on there are those who have been given one of the responses I listed above.
- Semaphor 6mo ago
  People also always bring up the "fake XY problem" thing on SO as a sign of toxicity or whatever, but I’ve had many, many results where it was a XY problem, and the actual problem Y was solved, yet I landed there searching for a solution to X :/
- bayindirh 6mo ago
  You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1], too. Also, 2023 doesn't look better: 45.63% of participants said no [2]. Maybe the survey is rigged. Who knows? [0]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/stack-overflow#2-feel-like-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/stack-overflow#2-feel-l... [1]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community#2-feel-like-a-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community#2-feel-like-a... [2]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-stack-overflow-site-use-feel-like-a-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-stack-overflow...
  - dspillett 6mo ago
    > don't feel like part of the community Maybe I'm off because I wasn't there for community, I don't really do the online community thing. I was one of the biggest contributors in terms of answers to a couple of the areas (SU, SF, DBA) in the early days and I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends. I also don't get on with remote work because I don't feel connected to names and faces on screens in remotely the same way as I do to people in the same room, so like I say maybe my personality missed that part of the problem as it doesn't properly appreciate when things are apparently the other way. Or maybe people were looking for the wrong thing in a technical Q&A site that wasn't, as far as I felt, trying to be a social media site. For technical questions and to help out with similar answers I'd go to SO, SF, SU, DBA, ... For community: the local, the running club, martial arts, or even sometimes DayJob.
    - bayindirh 6mo ago
      > I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends. SO was not structured to make friends, and I didn't expect anything similar to that end. However, I expected a more friendly (or neutral) conversation, like between colleagues or two people who just met in a conference. Being put down for programming style, language choices or other nitpick is just bad. I have seen enough flamewars and rude people in my life. I wanted to ask a questions and I got low-key insults or "duplicate!" warnings for things not duplicate, in fact. I also like learning and helping people, but I don't like to be bullied. I endured that thing enough (5+ years if anybody wonders). I neither want more, nor have time for that, nor young enough to don't care for that. So, I reverted to consulting documents and finding my own path. At worst, the code doesn't work and/or compiler shows what I did wrong. Even GCC 4 is more polite than some of the people in SO or SE.
  - sanderjd 6mo ago
    Yep, the first killer app for AI was, "hey, I'm having this problem and I'm not sure what's going on, can you help me figure it out?", and being told "sure!" instead of "this is a dupe, use the search function you idiot" or "this is not the right kind of thing to ask here". SO has always been incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at the same time.
- matheusmoreira 6mo ago
  It's the deletionism that effectively ended my participation in stack exchange networks. Violated the rules with your question? Closed. Alright, I can deal with it. But they didn't stop, they just had to go and delete the goddamn post, along with all the useful comments and links that had built up on it, for literally no reason. There was actual content in there. Seriously, fuck that. Went all in on my own website after that. Can't delete my stuff now.
  - dspillett 6mo ago
    Their rules said duplicates should be deleted, at least most of the time, so they were. While it might be nice for extra useful content from the dup to be merged into the original page, that would be a lot of work and much of the time there isn't enough to make it worthwhile (or any). > for literally no reason Other than the reason that it was their site and that is what they chose to do. While some criticism of SO is certainly valid, I find a lot of it boils down to "how dare they run their site the way they want instead of the way that I would prefer". > Went all in on my own website after that. Can't delete my stuff now. This is a good solution. Everything I've written on there that ended up being something I might want to preserve, and similarly useful answers to mine and others queries, I have archived for future reference too¹, in case the sites die, or that particular content does, or otherwise becomes inaccessible to me. -------- [1] though in my case not online as I never got around to that, maybe I will one day, when I've been sacked for being inefficient because I refuse to have Claude do my job for me and I have plenty of time on my hands!
    - matheusmoreira 6mo ago
      > Other than the reason that it was their site and that is what they chose to do. Welp, they can go to hell along with their site. AI is better than stack exchange anyways. Everybody's got boundaries, and they managed to cross mine. I can deal with rudeness and toxicity just fine. I can deal with moderators enforcing the rules. Straight up deleting stuff is simply not acceptable though, and I couldn't care less how they justify it.
      - 6mo ago

dspillett 6mo ago

> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more information as we can't help”, “this isn't a complete answer”, and so forth, as deeply personal attacks… One of the good things about LLMs is that they've drawn off all the simple already-answered questions! Unfortunately the more complex ones, or the ones for new solutions, are also going there so SO and its family of sites is ceasing to grow even in the ways it wants to. > and verbal harassment. Again, that did/does happen, but a lot less than some people report it. The most abusive people I've seen on there are those who have been given one of the responses I listed above.

Semaphor 6mo ago
People also always bring up the "fake XY problem" thing on SO as a sign of toxicity or whatever, but I’ve had many, many results where it was a XY problem, and the actual problem Y was solved, yet I landed there searching for a solution to X :/
bayindirh 6mo ago
You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1], too. Also, 2023 doesn't look better: 45.63% of participants said no [2]. Maybe the survey is rigged. Who knows? [0]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/stack-overflow#2-feel-like-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/stack-overflow#2-feel-l... [1]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community#2-feel-like-a-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community#2-feel-like-a... [2]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-stack-overflow-site-use-feel-like-a-part-of-the-stack-overflow-community https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-stack-overflow...
- dspillett 6mo ago
  > don't feel like part of the community Maybe I'm off because I wasn't there for community, I don't really do the online community thing. I was one of the biggest contributors in terms of answers to a couple of the areas (SU, SF, DBA) in the early days and I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends. I also don't get on with remote work because I don't feel connected to names and faces on screens in remotely the same way as I do to people in the same room, so like I say maybe my personality missed that part of the problem as it doesn't properly appreciate when things are apparently the other way. Or maybe people were looking for the wrong thing in a technical Q&A site that wasn't, as far as I felt, trying to be a social media site. For technical questions and to help out with similar answers I'd go to SO, SF, SU, DBA, ... For community: the local, the running club, martial arts, or even sometimes DayJob.
  - bayindirh 6mo ago
    > I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends. SO was not structured to make friends, and I didn't expect anything similar to that end. However, I expected a more friendly (or neutral) conversation, like between colleagues or two people who just met in a conference. Being put down for programming style, language choices or other nitpick is just bad. I have seen enough flamewars and rude people in my life. I wanted to ask a questions and I got low-key insults or "duplicate!" warnings for things not duplicate, in fact. I also like learning and helping people, but I don't like to be bullied. I endured that thing enough (5+ years if anybody wonders). I neither want more, nor have time for that, nor young enough to don't care for that. So, I reverted to consulting documents and finding my own path. At worst, the code doesn't work and/or compiler shows what I did wrong. Even GCC 4 is more polite than some of the people in SO or SE.
- sanderjd 6mo ago
  Yep, the first killer app for AI was, "hey, I'm having this problem and I'm not sure what's going on, can you help me figure it out?", and being told "sure!" instead of "this is a dupe, use the search function you idiot" or "this is not the right kind of thing to ask here". SO has always been incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at the same time.
matheusmoreira 6mo ago
It's the deletionism that effectively ended my participation in stack exchange networks. Violated the rules with your question? Closed. Alright, I can deal with it. But they didn't stop, they just had to go and delete the goddamn post, along with all the useful comments and links that had built up on it, for literally no reason. There was actual content in there. Seriously, fuck that. Went all in on my own website after that. Can't delete my stuff now.
- dspillett 6mo ago
  Their rules said duplicates should be deleted, at least most of the time, so they were. While it might be nice for extra useful content from the dup to be merged into the original page, that would be a lot of work and much of the time there isn't enough to make it worthwhile (or any). > for literally no reason Other than the reason that it was their site and that is what they chose to do. While some criticism of SO is certainly valid, I find a lot of it boils down to "how dare they run their site the way they want instead of the way that I would prefer". > Went all in on my own website after that. Can't delete my stuff now. This is a good solution. Everything I've written on there that ended up being something I might want to preserve, and similarly useful answers to mine and others queries, I have archived for future reference too¹, in case the sites die, or that particular content does, or otherwise becomes inaccessible to me. -------- [1] though in my case not online as I never got around to that, maybe I will one day, when I've been sacked for being inefficient because I refuse to have Claude do my job for me and I have plenty of time on my hands!
  - matheusmoreira 6mo ago
    > Other than the reason that it was their site and that is what they chose to do. Welp, they can go to hell along with their site. AI is better than stack exchange anyways. Everybody's got boundaries, and they managed to cross mine. I can deal with rudeness and toxicity just fine. I can deal with moderators enforcing the rules. Straight up deleting stuff is simply not acceptable though, and I couldn't care less how they justify it.
    - 6mo ago