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Timeline for answer to Do you agree with Gergely that "Stack Overflow is almost dead"? by Your Common Sense

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2 days ago comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai Fair point. Imho the stagingground is a good start, unfortunately it looks rather abandoned as far as improving and tweaking goes. Eventually only such experiments can tell what works and what not. Which is another reason I decided to care less and just see what comes next. Sorry for ghosting you, cheers :)
2 days ago comment added Your Common Sense @463035818_is_not_an_ai I don't see a problem here. With your experience, you can always tell whether a question is viable or not, and so don't waste your time on to-be-deleted ones (which, as far as I can tell, is your main concern). Besides, you can also improve existing answers, where such thoroughness is even more welcomed.
2 days ago comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai My main motivation to write answers is to learn new stuff and train my writing skills. This works because answers are thouroughly reviewed and there is immediate feedback (also close and downvotes are helpful to me). If answers are first written only for the user asking the question and only potentially later polished, I don't think this would work for me. Don't get me wrong, I also like to help single persons, but then SO has to compete with other ways I can do that, for example in real life.
2 days ago comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai Its an unfortunate coincidence that I just decided that I should care a bit less. I find the aggressiveness by which some users proclaim their knowledge of how things should be exhausting. As I already mentioned I don't see much of that agression here and I find that refreshing. Anyhow, I am not sure if I understand your proposal. If you suggest to let questions get their answer (thats what you actually want "let them answer") no matter how the state of the question is and only then delete the q&a in case it doesnt meet quality standards, I dont think this would work for me
Apr 24 at 14:21 comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai I am thinking ;)
Apr 24 at 7:16 comment added Your Common Sense @463035818_is_not_an_ai man, that's unfair! :) You hooked me with "worthwhile to discuss" and... left?
Apr 23 at 8:49 comment added Your Common Sense @463035818_is_not_an_ai just same people who are doing it now? I mean, that current closure and voting process fits perfectly. Just replace a close vote with a delete vote, that's all. If a question is not marked for deletion, it's good, isn't it?
Apr 23 at 8:42 comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai @YourCommonSense "it's a false assumption" i am not making that assumption. When I said "there is little incentive for the asker" I was just reiterating what perhaps has been discussed before. But to have both, a nice question and answer experience for new questions and a Great Library, you need both. Let me ask more directly: Who will sort out the 1 out of 100? How to reach consensus which of the 100 is the 1 that should make it? And I have more questions, not because I think your ideas wont work, but because I find them worthwhile to discuss.
Apr 23 at 8:37 comment added Your Common Sense @463035818_is_not_an_ai it's a false assumption already discussed in the comments above. you cannot force the asker into reshaping the question. Partly because they have no idea how it should look, as it takes a LOT of experience you cannot expect from a noob. Partly because indeed the Great library is none of their business. Rightfully. They are the fuel, that's enough. That shaping has to be done by someone else. Also, mind you there is no reason to: 99 out of 100 don't have to be improved at all, being one-off duplicates that will be deleted anyway.
Apr 23 at 8:22 comment added 463035818_is_not_an_ai are you suggesting to reshape the staging ground into something where questions can be given already and as a second step the question and answer can be "fixed" to become part of the Great Library? I think this could would make askers and answerers happy, but there is little incentive for the asker to improve their question once they got what they were looking for. If somehow the effort in closing and deleting could be spend on that... Its an approach worthwhile to consider. Btw its refreshing to read a post that while it puts controversial points on the table is not just shouting and ranting
Apr 23 at 7:38 history edited Your Common Sense CC BY-SA 4.0
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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
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