Timeline for answer to Do you agree with Gergely that "Stack Overflow is almost dead"? by Your Common Sense
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| Mar 8 at 21:15 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @einpoklum while your idea will never work. It's just same old gatekeeping, new disguise. Your idea is based on inherently wrong assumption: that everyone comes here to build the Great Library of programming questions. From this point of view your idea - that people would forfeit their current problem and focus on making a good entry for the Great Library - sounds plausible. The problem is - people won't. Only a tiny fraction, addicts like you and me would care. But most people wouldn't. And your "go improve your question, the timer is on" is as good as just "bugger off". | |
| Mar 8 at 21:02 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @einpoklum of course there is no point in keeping bad questions! They are either to be improved or deleted altogether without much ado. I suggested it eons ago (and would have had this suggestion torpedoed by the local clique of gatekeepers, if not actual programmers from the wild who supported the idea). It's a pity that people here cannot separate two simple matters: helping one who asks, and helping one who searches. Why it MUST be same question is a MYSTERY. As soon as you allow both, all problems will be solved. | |
| Mar 8 at 19:20 | comment | added | einpoklum | I downvoted this, because I don't believe we should just let bad questions be. However, I would agree that we should take more time to help (new) users improve their questions before actually closing them. That is, start with a comment, and possibly come back later to see if the person changed things. This is easier when there are 10x less questions than a year ago. | |
| Feb 10 at 13:04 | comment | added | Gimby | It's all barriers. Even searching for answers is a barrier when you can post a question with zero barriers. That option is now there - people willingly post questions to robots and accept the nonsense they get back because it has zero barriers. Stack Overflow is a thick layer of barriers and that is the killer of traffic. The kill of traffic is the death of the site. Even when you do a Google or Bing search... it's become harder to get links to Stack Overflow, the AI crap you get first and foremost is a barrier you need to jump. Stack Overflow needs way less barriers. It's just the way it is. | |
| Feb 2 at 15:19 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @pepoluan yes, and they should do many other things as well. And you even were able to force them into complying, since SO was a monopolist. The problem is, you were. Nowadays, people prefer a polite chatbot who wouldn't bully a user into following an intricate "dress-code" when asking a question. So the tables turned and now SO needds its users, not the other way round. Which means the more users will bounced for not following the code, the less time SO would be alive. As simple as that. | |
| Feb 2 at 11:52 | comment | added | pepoluan | @geometrikal If someone asks a question that, at a glance, seems similar to another question, they can -- and should! -- post a note in the beginning of their question, something to the lines of, "This question is different from <link to a similar question> because ..." and explain how the question is different. | |
| Jan 29 at 19:10 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @phhu a very accurate account. | |
| Jan 29 at 17:57 | comment | added | phhu | Evolution according to stack overflow these days: (a) we want to create the best possible species (b) so let's kill anything that isn't good enough according to our criteria (c) oh, where did all the life go? | |
| Jan 18 at 19:11 | comment | added | Μenelaοs | @yourCommonSense to be clear - I used to be actively involved in answering questions on the main site. Over time, however, I found it increasingly discouraging to receive repeated lectures—particularly from users with relatively limited participation on the main site—about how contributors should engage. At some point, I concluded that my time and effort would be better spent elsewhere. I do believe the platform would benefit if more of the energy invested in Meta discussions were also reflected in direct contributions and answers on the main site. | |
| Jan 15 at 10:42 | comment | added | Μenelaοs | Gatekeeping as an issue... it gets toxic. But .. oh well... it is what it is. If only many of the gatekeepers in Meta would both to answer/ask in main stackoverflow. | |
| Jan 14 at 20:29 | comment | added | geometrikal | I saw the graph on Reddit and came back to SO and it’s the same old arguments about quality vs quantity. As an experienced SO user it was hard even for me to ask a question without copping the wrath of someone, so I left. Seems that one of the biggest gripes talked about on reddit was questions closes because duplicate that weren’t actually duplicates. | |
| Jan 13 at 15:15 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @HQSantos some time ago I pondered heavily on a proposal, how to meet both goals. Of course, it was meet by a fierce backslash. But yes, since then, the "quality answers" goal became obsoleted, and now only one way is left - just answering questions, whatever they are | |
| Jan 13 at 14:59 | comment | added | HQSantos | Stack overflow focused so much on 'quality answers and quality' questions that drifted beginners away from the platform. Basically, shooting their own foot. Maybe a community that would accept any sorts of questions and not judging people for lack of explanation or knowledge about the problem would help bring beginners back instead of them going to chatgpt to ask that. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 21:08 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "Asked better" includes the result after editing. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 19:09 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @KarlKnechtel I think they should be asked better. Isn't it quite illogical to expect a well-rounded question from someone who is already asking? Wouldn't it be much more helpful if knowledgeable people shaped the question after it gets some traction? You don't have to answer - it would. Just that Stack Overflow won't let it be. It would punish community effort and defend selfishness and greed. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 18:58 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | And I don't think such questions should be banned. I think they should be asked better, and that we should have better answer deletion mechanisms. But deleting answers is the same spirit of curation as enforcing standards on questions. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 18:57 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | I agree the gamification was ill conceived. I disagree that the existence of that gamification reveals an intent for how Stack Overflow was supposed to be. I think Atwood and Spolsky just made a mistake, or else didn't have a better idea for handing out curation privileges, or were too influenced by existing sites despite their desire to make something different. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 18:49 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | On the other hand, if you consider this particular question controversial and insist that such questions must be banned from Stack Overflow, than where all these 2.8m people should go for the answer? | |
| May 19, 2025 at 18:17 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @KarlKnechtel not to mention that such gamification is exactly like a stick in the famous bike meme. As much SO aspires to be that trove of high quality answers, it's doomed to be that enormous garbage dump of millions hasty answers, with a few selected quality answers that make anything but a rule. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 18:13 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @KarlKnechtel not at all! If you don't like this specific question, you can choose any other. They all just spammed with answers. This is Stack Overflow, it's the way it meant to be! And no, it's not lack of closures. Rather, this self contradicting approach is a direct result of ill-conceived "gamification", which put quality WAY beyond quantity. Nobody gets a single reputation point, let alone a virtual trinket, for making existing answer better. While for a hasty new answer you'd easily get a hundred. This is how it's started. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 17:50 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | " It claims being "not a forum" but any popular question looks exactly like a forum thread!" - Okay, but that is precisely a consequence of people not having done enough (especially in 2008, but still now) of what you now propose to stop doing. As much as the question seems well-posed (and phrased in a highly searchable way), it reflects distracting ideas about what the terms ought to mean (by casting everything in terms of the calling semantics instead of also the variable semantics, and allowing arguments about whether the term "pass by value" is misleading in that context). | |
| May 19, 2025 at 17:36 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @Clive Truth be told, even before LLM, Stack Overflow sucked a big one in regard of quality. It claims being "not a forum" but any popular question looks exactly like a forum thread! Instead of just a single "detailed, high-quality answer" there are dozens, sometimes arguing with others, each with a heated discussion on its own! Only people that don't have any other choice would tolerate that mess. No wonder everyone and their uncle turned to LLM. Compare that exodus with that of Wikipedia, were you can see what a quality detailed answer is. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 16:49 | comment | added | Your Common Sense | @Cerbrus First, there is not much flood, which this post is exactly about :) Second, there are people willing to answer. Right now they just huddle in the comments under the closed question, making it look ridiculous. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 16:44 | comment | added | Cerbrus | Yeap, let's just open the floodgates and stop closing questions. Sure, that'll increase traffic... For a while. | |
| May 19, 2025 at 16:36 | history | answered | Your Common Sense | CC BY-SA 4.0 |