this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
647 points (99.2% liked)

Programming

17670 readers
258 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]



founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
647
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Stack Overflow has seen a substantial decline in traffic over the last year that appears to be accelerating. https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 year ago (6 children)

IDK what shitoverflow gets out of being so fucking toxic. I asked one dumb question and I'm basically banned from posting on the website.

It feels like they're trying to be a sort of "wikipedia" of every programming problem and solution. The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.

I don't think they see that as a problem, that's the goal

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I vaguely recall the first time I ever asked something on SO, around 2013, the first reply was "this has already been asked before". No link to said previous question. Taught me to lurk and search more before asking anything there.

I sometimes also suffer a case of "explaining until I figure the question myself", where the more details I punch into my question, the more likely I am to find the answer myself.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You were able to post on there at all? Don't they have extremely high barriers to entry for even question comments?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, I put some effort into get some of their reputation points. Then I asked one question that I didn't realize was dumb and I can't post questions anymore. You're welcome to see my profile and try to figure out how I did it 👍

https://stackoverflow.com/users/3971843/dan

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

lmao, how dare you be inquisitive

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not only post, but I have content that still feeds me residual cool-points even now.

I got a nastygram because I was editing the questions to follow a proper style and form (AP) and some people got upset that my comments were more "run on sentence" and " 'emails' and 'helps' both sound wrong as nouns for the same reason" instead of something like "there-there, Timmy".

So I said "you can have free editing, or the next guy can be a people person instead." And they agreed.

So I'm read-only there now too. :-D

[–] nic2555 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It feels like they're trying to be a sort of "wikipedia" of every programming problem and solution.

That is exactly what stackoverflow is supposed to be. It's not there to answer your question about "why is my IF statement not working", it's there to be a resource for all developers. How is a question about your specific problem gonna helps anyone ? If you haven't, take the time to read the "how to ask" section, it describes what kind of questions are acceptable and what kind are not.

There is, obviously, some proper questions that should not have been deleted, but most of them are not suited for the site, as they don't bring anything to the rest of the community.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If SO supposed to be wiki, then why there no clear way to update the answer with new information? Why only the person that asked the question can mark answer as correct? Clearly some person with more expirience should have possibility to mark answer as correct.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

"You should be making a wiki page instead of a forum."

  • SO user on SO business model, thread closed Aug 2008
[–] nic2555 5 points 1 year ago

Depending on your reputation, you can edit the answer / comments of others. It's usually not recommended to change the context of the question or the answer but you could. Those update will be reviewed by other if needed. As for the correct answer, you can always upvote the answer you feel is the correct one, which is kind of a community way of selecting the correct answer.