Slate's stash

00:40

@Kevin B: so... how does stack serve users who need help with javascript but can't find what they need?

@KevinB In principle, we have enough expertise. In practice, we don't have any way for people to describe that information (duplicates are a really poor alternative), so that knowledge only lives inside people's heads. (LLMs are a really crude, lossy way to extract this information, and the fact they're so popular validates the need for something like this.)

I've had designs for such a system knocking around for years, but I wouldn't be able to bootstrap its database on my own (and tbh I'd want to re-do those designs, now that I've read of more prehistoric academics who almost produced the system I'm describing, but didn't quite get there).

People like the Rust and Haskell compilers. There's no inherent reason that a tool like that can't solve all problems, with nice friendly descriptions written by real people who've faced this exact problem before. "Help" questions could have the reference components and the holistic "how do we get to the canonical references from this instance of the problem?" information extracted, put in a form that generalises…

This is what I was getting at with my feedback on the notorious user -2 (private mod-team link):

> There are many Python questions that a fairly simple lint tool could automatically answer, even before they're asked. (Sadly, I lack the attention span for making such a tool under my own steam. I've tried, I've probably still got my notes: it just didn't happen. I probably could do it if I were salaried for it.)

Tinkeringbell

08:48

@Slate: I'm somewhat concerned as to the process of getting this message inside your eyes.

@Slate Visualization is an important part of manifesting ;)

@Slate: > - From talking to newer users, early - mid career, I am hearing that people still ask questions on Stack Overflow because it offers reliability, depth, and human input that can still be super import

@Slate I'm now mostly left with questions like ... How is e.g. that leaked Answer Assistant going to do some of that? But that's a different discussion better kept out of here for now, I guess :)

Part of that research seems to suggest that the AI/LLM is somehow wanted as 'part' of the community, with community editing/approving/vetting their posts as if they were just another user. I now wonder if that's ever going to happen... maybe if it gets really good, but with the quality of things LLMs/AI spew out these days, I'd probably mod them like any other user and would want to see them answer-banned :P

Bryan Krause

15:24

@Tinkeringbell @Tinkeringbell I wonder if that lack of "accountability" is part of why people (myself included) find GenAI so offputting... Like, a human hates to write bad answers. They get social pressure to either be better or just not post at all on a topic they can't really answer about. For most people, that's plenty; if anything, the balance is probably towards scaring some people away from answering at all. The people who stubbornly keep at it are a rare few that get handled by system restrictions and mods

But for the AI... the AI doesn't care. Someone posting AI content doesn't really care, either; it's not their own work being judged, even if they're the one earning rep or not. That social pressure is missing

@Slate: I'm not super up to date on what's going on with Jobs these days

@Slate A couple answers here get at some of the issues: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404909/…

Slate

@Tinkeringbell @Tinkeringbell it's a fair question. not sure I have a good answer for you atm. there's a part of me that wants to say struggles with AI is directly relevant and a part of me that wants to say it's little more than a case example of something deeper

@Bryan Krause @BryanKrause yeah, I read those! they're definitely relevant

Kevin B

15:48

I think part of what frustrates me about GPT output, where i see it most often in search, is that it's more or less being presented instead of the much better results we used to get 5+ years ago

but there's likely no going back to that, given how flooded things are with garbage now days

so.... :shrug:? guess it's an acceptable compromise in some regards?

Bryan Krause

@Kevin B @KevinB The AI summaries in search are just so devoid of context and often not clearly based on anything reputable

Kevin B

agreed, tho, they often include more hints relevant to what i'm looking for than the results do

Bryan Krause

If I care heavily about the accuracy of the answer, like it has relevance to the health of my kid or is important for winning an argument about trivia, it puts me squarely back where I started though which is finding some reference that is trustworthy

Kevin B

16:11

i'm more looking at this as a developer

looking for documentation, methods that exist, etc

from that perspective any hint is enough to lead you to proper documentation

It's certainly frustrating that i'm getting a summary instead of a link to what contains the info i need, but it's better than nothing at all

effectivley what has happened is instead of providing me what i want through generic search result listings like they did in the past, they're just not being provided in leu of showing a summary of them instead tha tyou have to click through to reach. the frustrating part is that i need to click through this summary to reach it

One positive though is it'll summarize content from some of these clickbait ad driven garbage dev sites so i can benefit from their content without giving them a view,

It's all worse than what i actually want, a link to a source so i can draw my own conclusions

Bryan Krause

For most things I need the documentation itself is the best source, and is usually pretty easy to find via search

Kevin B

This summary i'm looking at currently for example was created from 6 sites i would never trust for documentation

but at least now those 6 sites aren't taking up space in my search results, instead SO's listings appear right below the overview

Bryan Krause

I find SO most useful because it often comes with examples that are sparse in documentation and I often find it a lot faster and intuitive to learn from an example rather than reading the docs, and then use the docs to elaborate

Kevin B

I'd like ot know how brave decides whether or not to show a stack overflow answer the sidebar directly

user152859

16:42

And it's done.... answer is posted.

user152859

@Kevin B @KevinB huh? What's that? Some browser plugin?

Kevin B

no, brave has it's own search engine now

user152859

ah wow

user152859

Well no idea, perhaps AI?

Kevin B

search.brave.com/…

what's weird is it has ads, but brave browser blocks them if you tell it to

:shrug:

user152859

16:51

@Kevin B @KevinB ah so looks like the last bullet:

user152859

> Answer with AI: large language model that automatically responds to some search queries, aided by content from web pages in the search results

Kevin B

also it's only $30 a year for premium brave search... that's not bad at all, provided it has other useful features

also... to be clear... disabling the overview is 2 clicks away and i'll never see them again, unlike google search

user152859

17:17

@Kevin B @KevinB Google has AI by default in the search results?

Kevin B

17:49

Yup

Slate

19:20

In a decidedly un-American move, I'm not going to be working over the holidays.

In fact I'm leaving end of day today, and I won't be back until around mid-January.

5

So if anyone blithely accuses this post of being "just another broken promise," another "dead end discussion that went nowhere," etc., I'd politely request they be informed that I am entitled to my vacation ;)

starball

@Slate @Slate enjoy your time off!

Slate

thank you! It's much needed, and I'm looking forward to it

user152859

@Slate @Slate have fun, and a well deserved vacation, but my clock is set to end of January to check again. :D

starball

@Slate @Slate I've been impressed with your dedication to reading and replying to the answer posts that have come in <3

Slate

thank you :) it's very important to me that folks feel questions like these aren't a waste of time

2

user152859

19:25

@Slate @Slate which is exactly how such questions felt like, for long years, until you arrived.

Slate

yeah, I hear that. I mean, I do think it's overstated to a degree, but it's impressions and opinions all the way down

for me, in a way, writing is thinking. and that makes it easy (if a bit labor-intensive) to communicate that I'm engaging with something. provided I have the latitude to talk about it openly etc etc lol

Angie (2015 Remaster)

►

user152859

Well go have fun, take pictures of the magical places you visit, etc. ;-)

Slate

I will!

Kevin B

19:41

tbf, we had a very similar question posed on mse almost exactly a year ago

as far as i can tell, it had literally no followup

at least in this case we've had a lot of interaction with the team already

Spevacus

Yeah I'd appreciate if Philippe gave some indication that he read the responses there (and in other posts), if not giving some responses where he can. I know it's quite likely everything gets read, it just feels like nothing got read because he was radio silent.

Slate

fwiw... I get what you're saying, and also, I don't really hold it against him. (well, obviously I'm biased, since he's my boss.) functionally speaking, I've gotten nothing done the last three days except have this conversation

which is valuable, don't get me wrong. but he's a manager. he's got people who depend on him within the org. shit happens, sometimes the couple days one wants to take responding get eaten up by something else, and by then the question's cold

also like, gotta take into account that people hated that question, for one reason or another. that makes responding harder (and more time-consuming), too

Spevacus

Yeah I mean starball was pretty ruthless here (no offense to starball, they're great, it's just that's... A pretty rough way to just lay it all out like that)

Oh, hey, look

Woah, this is just brutal. Why post this? It seems like an effective way to get Stack Exchange to not want to genuinely engage with us. — Rebecca J. Stones Nov 18, 2023 at 23:48

Slate

oh yeah if I were in his shoes, I don't know how I'd even begin approaching that post (sorry starball lol)

it lays out the terms clearly, but the terms are not really favorable for honest discussion. if I got that answer my strategy would probably be "ok, wrong place and wrong time. point taken. I'm going to scrub this attempt and try again later in a different way"

(it's something I was a bit afraid would happen with the new post too, but I didn't really think I'd get a better opportunity by changing the timing. esp going on vacation. january is just too late to start folks thinking about heavy questions)

Spevacus

Oooh. Why is January too late to get folks thinking about heavy questions, Slate?

👀

Slate

19:55

lol, not really intending to hint at something specific with that, sorry

I guess more generally speaking, the fact that I'm posting this should reasonably tell you I'm not the only one who thinks the time is right to ask serious questions about the big picture. maybe balpha's answer also suggests it's on many people's minds, too. I put together this post, but I didn't spend this time on a lark

Kevin B

my point was more that it's kinda been the status quo to post things like this then kinda... leave it behind for the past few years. It's nice seeing it be handled differently this time

Slate

:)

hope to keep it going.

Slate

22:27

@ShadowWizard cool answer

left a couple comments. I like it

cocomac

@Slate: In fact I'm leaving end of day today, and I won't be back until around mid-January.

@Slate I won't get to it today unfortunately, but I'm planning to post an answer there in the next week or two

Slate

Take your time. I won't forget

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