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upvoteby hatthew5 hours ago|
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SO wasn't a discussion forum, it was wikipedia for programming. It was already dying long before the question rate dropped off, since most new questions were "plz write/debug my code for me" which tend to be the sort of question that SO was not designed for. Chatgpt replaced that, and github issues replaced project-specific debugging. Now there's nobody left to write/read/answer the small amount of questions that are still a good fit.
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upvoteby sobellian39 minutes ago|
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I remember when SO had codegolf on the main site. Maybe if they weren't such killjoys people would have still been interested in participating in some programming oriented community even though AI displaced the actual writing of computer languages.
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upvoteby p-e-w5 hours ago|
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> SO wasn't a discussion forum, it was wikipedia for programming.

They changed what they wanted to be multiple times, and even after they had settled on a policy they didn’t enforce it consistently.

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upvoteby hatthew4 hours ago|
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I feel like the "repository of knowledge" identity was pretty clear for around a decade (at least for main Q&A, not Chat or Discussions). It was inconsistently enforced because the volume of low-quality questions exceeded the ability of the "moderators" to enforce it. At its peak, the backlog of questions in the process of being closed was about a full month's worth of question volume (this doesn't include questions that did get closed or questions that didn't yet start the process of being closed).
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upvoteby fps-hero5 hours ago|
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There is something about the gamification of social interaction which breeds a hostile community. Power hungry users chasing internet points, or moderators needlessly raising their hammer.

I am not going to miss Stack Overflow. "Question already asked" for some hyper specific question where this is the first google result. "Not enough status" to do x/y/z (sorry, can't answer that unanswered question!), out of date answers, wrong answers being accepted as right, a right answer left high and dry.

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upvoteby cwillu5 hours ago|
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The “can't answer” thing is probably the reason I never contributed. I don't know the specific reasoning behind it, but it's such a self-defeating solution to whatever problem they thought they were solving.
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upvoteby minitech3 hours ago|
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I’m curious what both of these comments are referring to, since it’s not supposed to take any privileges to answer a question on Stack Overflow (you can even answer without making an account). Maybe some anti-spam block?
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upvoteby worthless-trash5 hours ago|
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My favorite point was when you're the single person to have worked on a problem, published an answer, published a paper had the answer accepted and some MUPPET edits your answer to mean something else entirely, and it has your 'name' now beside an incorrect answer.
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upvoteby kstrauser3 hours ago|
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That infuriated me and I revoked those edits constantly, until I gave up and left the site altogether. I'd rather you steal my answer and put your name on it than put your own words under my name. Fix some dumb typo I made on mobile or something, sure, fine. Edit my answer to change the meaning or phrasing whatsoever? Oh hell no. Go make your own answer, and don't lie and say that I was the one speaking your words.
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upvoteby EvanAnderson5 hours ago|
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I didn't do much community stuff on Stack Overflow, but Server Fault suffered from a certain class of user who was more interested in curating and rules-lawyering the "quality" of questions than actually helping people. It was hard work to keep those people in check, and the Stack Exchange metaphor seemed to draw those kind of people like moth to flame.
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upvoteby bombcar4 hours ago|
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Those people are always drawn to these unpaid positions of power and they’re absolute death-knells for the community. Time and time again you see it.
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upvoteby tintor6 hours ago|
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ChatGPT bans you for asking it to list all malware that comes with your Samsung TV, or anything biotech related.
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upvoteby gerdesj5 hours ago|
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Does it really? I'm not going to mess with biotech because I have no idea what I am on about there. I did ask about Samsung TVs:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6ae2955c-9ff0-83eb-9ad4-e936f99db8...

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upvoteby yongjik5 hours ago|
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Well, maybe it does, but it seems that an average developer asks which IDE to use a thousand times more often than what malwares are installed in their Samsung TV.

So there's a clear difference in expected utility.

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upvoteby 5 hours ago|
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upvoteby eluru5 hours ago|
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it does not
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upvoteby damowangcy2 hours ago|
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In a dystopian fufure where a few or ONE AI company bested the rest, the company might banned you from using the AI for coding because the AI thinks you're incompetent or require you to pass a test to activate the coding function, because it's dangerous.

Assuming that there's still SWE jobs, when you attend an interview, the AI interviewer from the same AI company may just reject you because you asked which IDE to use just a week ago and it thinks you're not fit for the job.

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upvoteby ergocoder2 hours ago|
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I always hate it when a person tries to "X Y problem" me.

I have to explain that, yes, I'm looking at other options, but I'm also exploring this option and need to answer this specific question.

People try to use "X Y problem" to feel superior somehow.

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upvoteby kstrauser2 hours ago|
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To be fair, there was a lot of X Y question asking there. "Would it be better to use MySQL or PostgreSQL to implement a clone of the Redis protocol? We're deploying an app that needs a 100% compatible Redis API. We own the Linux server it'll run on. Which should we use?" Uh, can you just use Redis? "Don't XY me!"

I'm not saying that's the problem you had, not at all. I do see why some of the answerers were quick to jump to it though.

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upvoteby ranger_danger4 hours ago|
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Most online platforms I have used to ask questions or make comments (whether it's real-time chat, mailing lists, forums, etc.) were extremely hostile and always have been... I guess it's just human nature.

StackOverflow, Reddit, Lemmy, Matrix, IRC (esp. Freenode/Libera), Mastodon, Bluesky, Lobsters, Phoronix, GNOME Forums, Discord, Twitter, LKML, ... over time I quit all of them because of just how unbelievably abusive, dogmatic and out of touch people were.

Even on HN I have had to block dozens of different accounts due to breathtaking entitlement, self-righteousness and arrogance.

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