TBH asking questions on SO (and most similar platforms) fucking sucks, no surprise that users jump at the first opportunity at getting answers another way.
I will never forget the time I posted a question about why something wasn’t working as I expected, with a minimal example (≈ 10 lines of python, no external libraries) and a description of the expected behaviour and observed behaviour.
The first three-ish replies I got were instant comments that this in fact does work like I would expect, and that the observed behaviour I described wasn’t what the code would produce. A day later, some highly-rated user made a friendly note that I had a typo that just happened to trigger this very unexpected error.
Basically, I was thrashed by the first replies, when the people replying hadn’t even run the code. It felt extremely good to be able to reply to them that they were asshats for saying that the code didn’t do what I said it did when they hadn’t even run it.
Damn, lol
According to a Stack Overflow survey from 2025, 84 percent of developers now use or plan to use AI tools, up from 76 percent a year earlier. This rapid adoption partly explains the decline in forum activity.
As someone who participated in the survey, I’d recommend everyone take anything regarding SO’s recent surveys with a truckfull of salt. The recent surveys have been unbelievably biased with tons of leading questions that force you to answer in specific ways. They’re basically completely worthless in terms of statistics.
Even before AI I stopped asking any questions or even answering for that matter on that website within like the first few months of using it. Just not worth the hassle of dealing with the mods and the neck beard ass users and I didn’t want my account to get suspended over some BS in case I really needed to ask an actual question in the future, now I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to any stack website and it does not show up in the Google search results anymore, they dug their own grave
The humans of StackOverflow have been pricks for so long. If they fixed that problem years ago they would have been in a great position with the advent of AI. They could’ve marketed themselves as a site for humans. But no, fuckfacepoweruser found an answer to a different question he believes answers your question so marked your question as a duplicate and fuckfacerubberstamper voted to close it in the queue without critically thinking about it.
I used to moderate and answer questions on SO, but stopped because at some point you see the 500th question about how to use some javascript function.
Of course I flagged them all as duplicate and linked them to an extensive answer about the specific function, explaining all aspects and edge cases, because I don’t think there need to be 500 similatlr answers (who’s going to maintain them?)
But yeah, sorry that I didn’t fix YOUR code sample, and you had to actually do your homework by yourself.
My questions weren’t homework problems with 500 duplicates. Maybe that type of shit being the most common in the vote to close queue is why fuckfacerubberstamper can’t be bothered to actually think about what they’re closing as dupes.
If the alternative is the cesspit that is Yahoo Answers and Quora, I’ll take the heavy-handed moderation of StackOverflow.
You don’t think there’s any middle ground between the two? None whatsoever?
Well, no. If there were a middle ground, we’d all be using it.
Like Lemmy? The site we’re all using?
But no my point wasn’t about a specific site, it’s about the moderation approach. Do you really think there’s no middle ground in approach to moderation between Yahoo Answers and StackOverflow?
Lemmy isn’t a Q&A application in the way that the others I mentioned are.
Like I said, I’m not talking about specific sites, I’m talking about moderation style.
Like Lemmy? The site we’re all using?
Cute. Except Lemmy hasn’t helped me solve any programming problems. StackOverflow has.
And I think you missed my point, so I’ll restate it: If this theoretical middle-ground moderation were actually viable, it would have eaten StackOverflow’s lunch like a decade ago. People were SALTY about SO’s hostility even before the “summer of love” campaign in 2012.
It’s viable, StackExchange as a company is just shit. See: then never listening to meta, listening to random Twitter users more, and defaming their volunteer moderators.
Of course there’s a middle ground, that’s much closer in my ideal world to StackOverflow than it is to Yahoo Answers or Quora.
Nobody here is suggesting for you to use Yahoo Answers.
I’m just using it as an example of what a Q&A site with inadequate moderation looks like. If you can’t see that then I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye no matter how long this discussion continues.
Okay? But why? StackOverflow’s moderation is inadequate as well.
If Stack Overflow is a 3/10 then Quora is a 1/10 and Yahoo Answers is -5/10.
I stopped using it once I found out their entire business model was basically copyright trolling on a technicality that anyone who answers a question gives them the copyright to the answer, and using code audits to go after businesses that had copy/pasted code. Just left a bad taste in my mouth, even beside stopping using it for work even though I wasn’t copy/pasting code.
And even before LLMs, I found ignoring stack exchange results for a search usually still got to the right information.
But yeah, it also had a moderation problem. Give people a hammer of power and some will go searching for nails, and now you don’t have anywhere to hang things from because the mod was dumber than the user they thought they needed to moderate. And now google can figure out that my question is different from the supposed duplicate question that was closed because it sends me to the closed one, not the tangentially related question the dumbass mod thought was the same thing. Similar energy to people who go to help forums and reply useless shit like RTFM. They aren’t really upset at “having” to take time to respond, they are excited about a chance to act superior to someone.
I call it “comic book guy” syndrome. The desperate need to feel superior.
That last part is so true, some people are just miserable and want to spread that misery to others to make themselves feel better
Hear hear, it was the hostile atmosphere that pushed me away from Stack Exchange years before LLMs were a thing. That very clear impression that the site does not exist to help specific people, but a vague public audience, and the treatment of every question and answer is subjugated to that. Since then I just ask/answer questions on platforms like Lemmy, Reddit, Discord, or the Discourse forums ran by various organisations, it’s a much more pleasant experience.
The stupidest part is that their aggressive hostility against new questions means that the content is becoming dated. The answers to many, many questions will change as the tech evolves.
And since AI’s ability to answer tech questions depends heavily on a similar question being in the training dataset, all the AIs are going to increasingly give outdated answers.
They really have shot themselves in the foot for at best some short term gain.
This was my issue. The two times I posted real, actual questions that I needed help with, and tried to provide as much detail as possible while saying I didn’t understand the subject,
I got clowned on, immediately downvoted negative, and got no actual help whatsoever. Now I just hope someone else had a similar issue.
But what will the mods close for arbitrary reasons before there are any responses?
Already before the LLMs for me it was the last chance before I would post over there. The desperation move. It was too toxic and I would always get pissed to get my question closed because too similar or too easy or whatever. Hey I wasted 15 minutes to type that, if the other question solved the problem I wouldn’t post again…
In the beginning it wasn’t like that…
I went to watch my stack overflow account and the first questions that I posted (and that gave me 2000 karma) would have been almost all of them rejected and removed
The Redditification of SO
“Search before asking!” - Stack Overflow
I think a lot of good information is being scrubbed or controlled and, very soon, what was once free, you will be charged for.
Who is going to ask there to be harresed
Every question has been answered, pack it up boys.
It’s all already been used to train AI at this point.
I can’t even sign up to their website for some wird reason. Guess its their fault then.
I often feel like every question has been asked and answered already.
I still like SO
Respect for StackOverflow not selling out to an AI training company despite being their biggest source of training. But their moderation still sucks.
Good. That site has been a toxic hole in the ground for a decade or more.
That site is an incredible resource
Archive it and move on
How much longer will 15 year old answers be useful?
It’s shocking how many posters update their posts regularly
I asked a question like 8 years ago, and people are still replying with new answers either due to new APIs or tooling, and for some reason just alternative ways that already existed for years.
Start archivin’
Its been less than useless for a decade. Full of toxic trash and old wrong answers.
