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The recent announcement regarding the 2026 redesign asks for our help to improve the beta design. It also, quite curiously, notes that the new "design" plans to retire curation workflows.

As someone who spends most of their time on Stack Overflow ensuring content quality through these exact workflows, I'm looking for guidance on how to approach this beta period.

Since the "new path" for Stack Overflow explicitly moves away from the goal of building a "library of detailed, high-quality answers," I have a question regarding our participation:

Is testing "cosmetic only"? If the roadmap already includes the removal of the core utility we provide (i.e. curation), is there a functional reason to provide feedback on a system that isn't built for us?

I'm curious if others also feel that the most "helpful" thing we can do during this soft launch is to simply let the new design evolve without "friction" of our curation-heavy expectations. After all, if the platform is being rebuilt to exclude the very workflows we've spent years perfecting, it stands to reason that the internal team is now best positioned to find and fix the bugs in their own vision.

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    How can we improve beta? By not letting it improve. That means not participating and creating "activity" which will then be used to prove that this experiment is a success. This also means continuing to post feedback here about things that we absolutely don't want like: lack of curation, answer format and similar. Commented Feb 19 at 18:57
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    Agreed. I don't even wanna create activity by visiting just to see how (terrible) it looks. If anyone feels differently, please share screenshots. Commented Feb 19 at 19:04
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    I will visit because I need to see it, but I will only make a peek and that is it. Commented Feb 19 at 19:29
  • I don't think that post was ever really asking for help. It was just an announcement to soft launch the new design. Commented Feb 19 at 19:30
  • @Sayse I am mostly referring to this i.sstatic.net/bFNuJeUr.png and possibly (hopefully, there won't be any) bug reports posted to MSO. Commented Feb 19 at 19:33
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    @M-- - Oh I know, but that to me just a placebo button to give the appearance that your input matters. Sure they'd love free QA to make sure buttons work, but actual critique will be handled in the exact same way as every other "experiment" Commented Feb 19 at 19:38
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    @Sayse We are on the same page. I, too, do believe that: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/438177/…. Commented Feb 19 at 19:47
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    It's abundantly clear that site ownership is going to do what they want, and that doesn't involve what meta community members want. But these goals are pursued on other sites. Why not try them out? Commented Feb 19 at 20:15
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    @M-- Try out codidact.com. The close-to-SO equivalent would be software.codidact.com. Ironically, that site always had more relaxed close voting than SO and strives to be tolerant to design, subjective or big picture issues. Other than that it is quite similar. Commented Feb 20 at 7:50
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    Essentially what I am going to do is pretend I am signing up to the site for the very first time again pretending I am John Snow and know nothing; but this time with the foresight that I need to not immediately start hitting buttons and just look, taste and learn the lay of the land. I will "let them cook". Curation? What's that? Commented Feb 20 at 9:39
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    @peterh The link you shared isn't "proof" of a kangaroo court. Questions only enter the CV queue because at least one person already voted/flagged to close it. If you only look at a queue of "questions people think should be closed," of course the data is skewed. That's not a "rampage," that's the system working as intended by filtering problematic content before it reaches the queue. Unless you have actual data showing these closures are "blatantly destructive," we’re just comparing my experience against your assumptions. Commented Feb 23 at 17:39
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    @peterh Pointing fingers is not helpful at this point. The site is dead and the only relevant question is “What now?”. Undeniably, the site needs quality standards. Undeniably, this site is destroyed beyond repair. Undeniably, we need a new solution. Everything else is irrelevant Commented Feb 23 at 17:40
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    @peterh training an AI only on factual data doesn't mean the AI can no longer hallucinate nonsense. That's fundamentally not how language models work. At all. Using a limited dataset like Codidact (1128 questions in total) will only make the model more inaccurate. These models thrive with scale. Commented Feb 23 at 22:21
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    Codidact's software development site got 5 questions in the past month... That whole site gets less traffic than some questions on SO do. Commented Feb 23 at 22:27
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    Stack Overflow not getting a whole lot of traffic is not a Stack Overflow-specific problem. All sites that want to do what Stack Overflow does have exactly the same issue; they're not Reddit. Reddit has somehow... won. I don't know how, I don't know why because it's not a nice site in general. But in the modern day internet where people see the web as not a network of sites but a very specific collection of sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), Reddit is part of that list and persistently so. It is in the zeitgeist. Stack Overflow is not there anymore and Codidact never was. Commented Feb 24 at 10:50

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We cannot help with this. The company is not interested in hearing any form of feedback and therefore a "beta test" in the usual software industry manner is not possible to conduct.

At best they want to hear about small graphic bugs and typos - anything criticizing the actual idea or core design will be completely ignored.

The site is dead, now let it rest in peace. The most respectful way of doing this is to immediately stop all site activity. No Q&A, no moderation and certainly no beta testing of misguided experiments.

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    I want to be a part of resistance, but I can't stop doing Q&A sorry and some voting. =( Commented Feb 20 at 17:00
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    @Sinatr There will be nobody left on the site so that will become quite difficult. As you've surely noticed we've already lost some 90% of the user base. This is the remaining 10% leaving as well. Commented Feb 20 at 17:57
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    Honestly, I want to hang around for the "told you so" moment. But yeah, won't be doing much. Commented Feb 20 at 18:47
  • @Lundin Even worse, the number of questions has decreased by a factor of 25 since SO peak use a few years ago. Commented Feb 21 at 4:36
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    @Sinatr There are other sites that host Q&A. Try software.codidact.com Commented Feb 22 at 12:07
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By using it as intended... discussing whatever people decide to post to it or starting discussions yourself. If that's not for you, then... you may just not be an intended part of the site's future. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In essence they are shutting down meta like they threatened to do in the past, without actually doing it. 99% of the content here will be entirely irrelevant and there will more or less be nothing left to discuss (other than bugs on the new platform.)

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    (Almost) repeating what I said in Chat: I've been feeling like a dinosaur. Just waiting for the 2026 redesign to finish the extinction event, I guess :) Commented Feb 19 at 16:42
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    They already shut down some 2 years ago. All the threads asking for feedback couldn't care less about any feedback given. The company simply doesn't care about what anyone in the so-called "community" thinks. Commented Feb 20 at 7:52
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    Remember 2019, folks? "In no uncertain terms, the .015% of the Stack Overflow community that is on Meta does not speak on behalf of the entire community. They speak on behalf of themselves, and we are listening, but this is not the only place we are listening to". The only thing changing is that they stopped listening entirely. Commented Feb 20 at 21:36
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Is testing "cosmetic only"?

Not on a detail level. If you find and report a bug, there will be gratitude.

If the roadmap already includes the removal of the core utility we provide (i.e. curation), is there a functional reason to provide feedback on a system that isn't built for us?

If you hope to influence the result, for example persuade the company to change course and keep curation, use all your negotiation power. That's mostly your actions, less so words in abundance. They know exactly how we feel. We only said so a million times.

Verbal feedback is only useful if there is some common ground. I sense that there is little of that. Words alone will not persuade entities with such fundamentaly different approachs.

Best would be to once state what you want (SO with close votes and comparable curation maybe), and then act accordingly. But also don't waste time and add to friction. Ultimately, a simple divorce may be the best.

From past experience what helped most were moderation strikes. I don't call for one, that's up to moderators themselves, but surely even the newly proposed design would rely on moderation of some sort. That's where negotiation power would lie.

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    I cannot express really how taken aback I was by the fake downvote buttons introduced on some content some months ago. For me personally this was a no go and I think I made the right consequence. Commented Feb 20 at 6:15
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    I appreciate the direct answers. While the questions were largely rhetorical to highlight the disconnect, you’ve hit on the core issue: if there is no 'common ground' left, then 'gratitude' for bug reports is a pretty lopsided trade. Commented Feb 20 at 11:43
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    I suspect they will use AI moderation, as they said they would in their blog and then when I asked about it they said “of course we won’t”. And at the same time said “no we totally won’t use a bad ai system to post answers and flag content unilaterally” and they’ve gone back on that Commented Feb 20 at 12:58
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It is simple.

Ask yourself how YOU feel about this. It doesn't matter if you you think this is good, it doesn't matter if you think this is bad, it doesn't matter if you think Prosus is your god&savior, it doesn't matter if you hate them with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Just… decide by yourself.

Then… as soon as you decided… stick with it. Stop going back "because you hope that something will change". Stop lying to yourself. Stop loving status quo. Stop being one of that users that "yes the company actions sucks but you know what I am trying to become an employee because that will surely change things". Stop the "I will do this one more time, maybe this is it". Or if you are on the other side of the wall and think that "all is fine and soon it will be even better", stop going around predicating the greatness of the Company to others. They don't care. You shouldn't care. At best, your words are only annoying them more.

There is no dialogue left to do to get the company to change direction. And there is nothing for you to gain from being the "Leave the poor billionaire company alone" guy. Stop thinking that there is a community that will stand together, or that mods will be united and strike again. There is no unity. There are no mods. Only individuals, each one with their own agenda. Some will hate the company actions, some will even defend them. There is no single voice. Only hundreds of individual ones, each yelling a thing "that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".
The sooner you see that the better. And the sooner you stop spending energy on that, the sooner you can use that time for the things you care about.

And when you finally accept this, start doing what brings joy to you. Maybe this means finally going away. Maybe this means eating popcorn as you watch the end from the very center of the event horizon. Or maybe you will find yourself back where you started, still useless trying to change something in an already fated dead spiral… But at least this time you will know that you are simply doing what you wanted to do, regardless of the outcome.

Stop thinking there is something greater than a community can do. The community died long ago. Love for status quo killed it. The refusal to act "because this time maybe will be different" killed it. The "yes but I want to stay positive" killed it. We all waited too long as we played the three wise monkey.

Now there is no time left. There is no community that can do something. The company knows that. That is why they waited sitting by the river as we happily waited doing nothing for a change to fall from the sky. The corpse of the site was already washed away by the current. Now all is left for them to do is to drain the water and build something else.

Maybe you never liked that river. Maybe you were waiting for the tavern that will be build in its place. Or maybe you always lived there and now you will have to move to other waters.

It is no longer time to ask yourself how to stop the death of the river. It is not time to go around telling the fish that they are toxic folks that never learned to breath air and you won't miss them. It is the time to ask yourself what you will do afterwards. And do what you need to not have any regrets later.

Sadly, I don't think there is anything useful the userbase can do as a group simply because the userbase doesn't share a common vision. Some hate the current direction the company is going, some love it, some almost look like they have something to gain from it as they blindly defend anything the company says. It showed again and again in the past... every time someone called for action as the new shoe felt, some were willing to "wait and see".

Why do you think they will move now? Why do you think it will be different this time?

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    I generally totally agree with this, but I do think this misses a major point. What to do now, as a group? If we all agree SO is dead, where do we go forward? 1 person themselves can't found a new site or community, or migrate one to an existing site. The community as a whole needs to do something, to save what remnants we can. Commented Feb 23 at 19:32
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    @Starship but my point is that "there is no group". So, your first step should be to create one. Find others that agree with you, find other willing to act as you do. And when you find them, decide what your plan will be. Personally, I doubt you can foster enough people to change the plan of a company that in my view has always been willing to ignore the feedback and construct fake data to misrepresent the outcome of their actions. But If you really have to try... I guess that a strike is the only way. Put them in a place where they can't even get the daily work done. Commented Feb 23 at 19:41
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    @Starship but... that is impossible. The mods basically refused to ever unite in a single strike again. The community refused to stop operating tools like Smokey to show the company what the site looks like without anyone curating the bad content. You continue everyday to curate spam, to improve question,to use those tools they are constantly taking from your hands in order to keep the site "looking good". You won't accept that the only way you have left to kill the tick is to poison the blood until it will flee or die with it... So yes, I doubt you folks can do anything now. Commented Feb 23 at 19:45
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    @Starship and if you instead agree on the "it is time to move on"... Isn't that what happen with Codedidact? How many users went away and tried to build an alternative ... and how many were left here because they lied to themselves saying "this can still be saved" while in reality it was all so to not change that reassuring status quo we all loved. Why it should be different now? I have lost my will to work on the site back during the Monica slander. I stopped being a network user back then. Now, everything I do it is for myself. I chat with internet friend, I post answers for my own pleasure Commented Feb 23 at 19:53
  • I don't think we can change the company plan, and a strike would give them what they want. I think we can build a new and better site. For the record, I have only curated sporadically for the past 6 months or so, and even then only in the small sites of the network that make them no real money. I believe if we got enough experts to go to a new site and build a better community, with community control...then yes that would work. Commented Feb 23 at 19:57
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    @Starship oh, if you can find enough people to make building a new site from the ground up viable... sure, go ahead. But I find quite dubious that could actually happen... Codedidact tried doing the same and it somehow failed to bring everyone onboard on the same plan. Commented Feb 24 at 8:47
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    I think it would be more viable if it started like SE did, maybe even narrower. Start from one topic and then expand. Like say get Jon Skeet and a bunch of other C# experts, and then make a site for that. So then that would attract people because there’s enough people to answer questions there, and then you could slowly expand that site to other things. Commented Feb 24 at 13:01
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I think downscaling might mean also an at least partial reimplementation with a new, smaller and much cheaper team.

As recent source says, there is no plan to remove the close review. Although, I believe, there are strong arguments for doing that, mostly because it is entirely dysfunctional since about 2014.

Most importantly, I believe, we have not a say for the company, what to do differently, if anything. They are not very strong in listening us.

Second, even if we could, our second largest problem is that the meta sites are ruled by... well... politely formulated, they are not exactly the forum of positive voices, or creative ideas. Just check the voting score and the comments below this post, and you will see, what I am talking about.

However, if neither problem would exist, then the site could work as it is intended to: we would post our ideas and suggestions here, or to the MSE, and then we would vote about, what would we like or not. There could be also a cooperative discussion below the messages. In theory, nothing would be binding, but in practice, all participants had the interest too cooperate with the others on the most reasonable way. I know at least one Q&A forum, where exactly that would happen.

The company representants, developers, tech leads etc could also balance between the "voice of the people", as they perceive, and their long-term interests, plans, strategy. That had a really high value: mostly, questionnaires are not good to collect complex thoughts of smart people. Here they could talk with their users (and also volunteers) directly. Anyone worked a lot on projects, from which they knew nothing about, how an end customer can see it, knows, how important info is that.

I am really, really sad that here it can not happen. We have lost with it a lot.

Believe me, it would be much better as the feeling of this fake power for fake internet points.

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    "As recent source says, there is no plan to remove the close review." Which source is that? Commented Feb 23 at 14:08
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    @MisterMiyagi See edits to meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/438177/…. Commented Feb 23 at 14:12
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    @Lundin see my answer: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/438235 Commented Feb 23 at 14:20
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    @M-- It is dead, let it RIP. You are wasting your time writing posts for corporate goons who neither can nor will do anything no matter you say. They are going to push out their stupid ideas come hell or high water, because some pointy-haired boss says so. Commented Feb 23 at 14:29
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    @Lundin oh, I am not delusional. I know they will. As I wrote under your answer, I like to hang around for the "told you so" moment. Also, I don't have as many answers on MSO as you do, and I kinda look at these as a writing exercise ;) Commented Feb 23 at 14:33
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    "Although, I believe, there are strong arguments for doing that, mostly because it is entirely dysfunctional since about 2014." Eh, no, curation's been the one thing that kept some semblance of value and quality to SO. It's not been optimal, sure. But to call it "entirely dysfunctional" is just blatantly wrong. Commented Feb 23 at 15:58
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    "Second, even if we could, our second largest problem is that the meta sites are ruled by ..." Oh, get over it already. You consistently antagonize the people you want to change. Instead of working with meta, you fight them. And then you're surprised nobody iswilling to listen to you. Commented Feb 23 at 15:59
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    @Lundin Can you be more specific? I don’t see a claim as strong anywhere in the recent edits. Commented Feb 23 at 16:33
  • @Lundin I don't see what discussion threads from the past 2-3 years have to do with "As recent source says, there is no plan to remove the close review." Commented Feb 24 at 8:40
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    @MisterMiyagi Ah I misunderstood which of my comments you were referring to, sorry. Here is the latest company update: meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/438177/revisions Commented Feb 24 at 9:15
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    @Lundin Are you trying to pull my leg? I am well aware how to access revisions. I am asking what specifically motivates to claim the source says "there is no plan to remove the close review". The closest I can find is "We’d like to clarify the announcement that review queues and question closure will not be going away for the time being." (emphasis mine) which doesn't say that at all. Commented Feb 24 at 9:19
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    @MisterMiyagi You asked what this post was referring to and I answered. Commented Feb 24 at 11:39
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    @Lundin I asked for the source of the claim. I still don't see one. I can well see what the post is referring to now myself, thank you very much. Commented Feb 24 at 12:20

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