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StackOverflow has lost 77% of new questions compared to 2022. Lowest # since May 2009.
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this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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Programming
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I stopped asking questions there because I usually spend about twenty to thirty minutes writing them to make sure they're clear and not duplicates. I take time to explain why they aren't duplicates of similar questions. The I get downvoted and I get my question closed. Then the site tells me to do things and I do them but no one else knows what I'm talking about and I get mocked for not knowing how the site works. That community is toxic as fuck. Genuinely, users spend more effort and energy looking for reasons to not answer something than they do trying to make questions answerable. Heaven forbid anyone give a reason for any of this. Just gotta get their daily stats to rank up.
Seriously, the one thing SO could've had going for it in the wake of AI is the human aspect, but they haven't fixed their community problems in years.
Ha yes I've found that if you explain why your question isn't a duplicate of another question and link to it, people are more likely to report it as a duplicate of that question. So stupid.
"An answer to the linked question answers your question, so we've marked your question as a duplicate. Even though your question is different.💜 Also, a bunch of people downvoted your question too did not spotting that an answer on an unrelated question answers your question. And we give you notifications of it. And they're big, scary red numbers! But don't worry, this helps the site!"
And then none of the answers there answer what you're asking. 🙄 Which like, if they did, the whole process might have been worth it.
It’s such a good idea at the base level. Reputation allows additional privilege so that the people who know the most on a topic can contribute more than screaming idiots. But the lust for a higher rep score drives toxic behavior. Thus you get people in control that know how to game the system not the actual experts. I’ve had great experiences in that site, and I’ve had terrible ones. Most the great ones are because I joined in the very early days and we were really all trying to help each other. As the rep addicts took over, I bailed. By that point there were you tube tutorials to fill the gap. I’m nostalgic for what that site was. It’s very sad to see what it became.
My favorite ever SO experience was this time I found a dude who had had my exact problem four years earlier. The thread was the only google result for the error message I was getting that wasn't just random pasted log files, etc.
Two people who had no idea how to fix it gave him some useless suggestions, then crickets.
9 months later, he had come back and posted
I solved my problem!
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=5M
I wish I'd saved the link.
What a saint
So many things about the site sound great on paper. Like Meta? Amazing! But they never listen. I remember when they took Interpersonal.SE off of the Hot Network Questions list over a damn tweet somebody made. Apparently random tweets get more attention than posts in their dedicated community discussion location.
And I still am angry about them dragging Monica through the mud.