yes its from reddit, but its fairly interesting.
https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1hwj0sq/fired_from_meta_after_1_week_prolog_engineer/
Can this be explained by the fact that the Internet already has satisfactory answers to more and more questions, so there is less need to actively ask new ones?
Can you please tell me why? I read about it and made a lot of noise but I forgot what it was about.
If i recall A lot of power user even threaten to delete their post as strike?
I think the big one recently is the opt in ai training. A lot of people were not happy with their data being hoovered up and making so a ton of $$. So they are replacing their answers with nonsense/deleting them. Plus there’s now ai bots that are on so…such a strange world.
SO is only useful if it’s filled with things that help out users. If it starts getting less foot traffic, an evaporation effect occurs where more and more uses leave thereby making it even less useful.
I would imagine it’s more ChatGPT getting about as good as stackoverflow.
Couple that with the ability to ask a question without someone closing it as off topic, or a duplicate, or telling you you don’t actually need to do the thing you need to do, or bringing up the XY problem, or… well the list goes on.
ChatGPT might hallucinate sometimes but it’s nice about it and it fundamentally changes the barrier to entry to ask a question in the same way that stackoverflow once did.
Stackoverflow was a step change because it excelled at being a a great place to ask questions because they gamified people actually answering them.
ChatGPT is another step change because it makes it so you can get a similar quality answer instantly and without any of the social baggage. It also allows you to have follow-ups and get into a groove of question and answer. It’s not always right but I was pleasantly surprised using it to navigate unfamiliar libraries and apis and being able to drill down on something. Even when it got something wrong it got it right enough that I could course correct without having to argue back and forth with someone.
Bleh, maybe I’m an old man, but when I’m searching stackoverflow, I find the context of stack overflow answers really helpful.
I.E. the top result may include caveats itself or have comments indicating why an answer might be problematic. And sometimes the best answer isn’t even the top answer. I’ve not used AI code assistance very much, but these all seem like things that the model is likely to take for granted.
But I also never contribute to stackoverflow, and agree I’d much rather engage with with an AI than do THAT.
but these all seem like things that the model is likely to take for granted.
I see it pretty often saying “you could do it this way, or XYZ other way”
I assume this is a mix of AI stuff being a more common Oracle for this stuff and StackOverflow clinging to old answers and questions as being forever relevant.
I asked a very good, thoughtful question yesterday and within 5 minutes got a downvote with no comment or explanation or feedback as to why. Ive got around 3k rep, not while im not a poweruser or whatever i aint new to it.
Glad other people engaged with it productively, but yea was a real “this is what people have been talking about”
Find myself wondering if the quality of the remaining questions is higher. There definitely has airways been some of the gate keeping that people complain about, but a lot of it has also legitimately been people upset that they get redirected upon asking low quality or duplicate questions.
It doesn’t help that some of the duplicates aren’t duplicates at all but some SO admin or mod hasn’t read or understood the question properly and points the asker at something that’s actually only vaguely related or irrelevant.
I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard of askers providing links to other questions that are similar to but not quite what they’re interested in, explained why their question is different and yet it’s one of those linked questions that ends up being identified as being identical to the asker’s question.
There may also be at least one pair of questions that each point back at the other as being the original, and there’s no useful information in either. (I don’t know why this idea is in my head though, so maybe it was a joke I read somewhere.)
Either way, the admins and mods there do not like to be told they are wrong and will shut things down fast if it starts looking like they’ve made a mistake. Unfortunately for them, stories like this get out anyway.
Petty little overlords of the toxic waste dump of their own making.
See this is what I’m talking about. You’re saying you’ve heard stories. I bet some of them are legitimate criticism, but I’m also positive many of them are from people that couldn’t put on the bare minimum of effort when asking for help from strangers on the internet.
They can go fuck themselves. I don’t even post and it’s aggravating how many questions I see go unanswered because they declare it a duplicate or something else to make it invalid. I see it more commonly now when I have more complex issues. Thanks but that post you linked to being the “original” is not the solution. They don’t even gain anything from doing this. Don’t you WANT more traffic by having more questions posted and answered?!
