Stack Overflow's Radical New Plan To Fight AI-Induced Death Spiral (thenewstack.io) 73
DevNull127 writes: Stack Overflow will test paying experts to answer questions. That's one of many radical experiments they're now trying to stave off an AI-induced death spiral. Questions and answers to the site have plummeted more than 90% since April of 2020. So here's what Stack Overflow will try next.
1. They're bringing back Chat, according to their CEO (to foster "even more connections between our community members" in "an increasingly AI-driven world").
2. They're building a "new Stack Overflow" meant to feel like a personalized portal. "It might collect videos, blogs, Q&A, war stories, jokes, educational materials, jobs... and fold them together into one personalized destination."
3. They're proposing areas more open to discussion, described as "more flexible Stack Exchanges... where users can explore ideas or share opinions."
4. They're also licensing Stack Overflow content to AI companies for training their models.
5. Again, they will test paying experts to answer questions.
1. They're bringing back Chat, according to their CEO (to foster "even more connections between our community members" in "an increasingly AI-driven world").
2. They're building a "new Stack Overflow" meant to feel like a personalized portal. "It might collect videos, blogs, Q&A, war stories, jokes, educational materials, jobs... and fold them together into one personalized destination."
3. They're proposing areas more open to discussion, described as "more flexible Stack Exchanges... where users can explore ideas or share opinions."
4. They're also licensing Stack Overflow content to AI companies for training their models.
5. Again, they will test paying experts to answer questions.
...and then licensing it back to AI companies... (Score:5, Insightful)
So that the cycle of slop will continue, though I guess the AI companies will just steal it if they don't get what they want whenever they want it. May as well at least make a buck on it.
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Legacy legacy products growing (Score:2)
When you look beyond AI based or AI connected products, much of mainstream technology is 10 or more years old.
They are no longer the cool new technology to learn, hence less new Stack Overflow questions.
May it's the mainframification of the web + cloud tech stack.
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Thing is the AI is better than the average Stack Overflow user.
Most people's experience of Stack Overflow is that they ask a question, doing their best to meet the requirements of the site, get berated by some 100k score asshat who loves to criticize but hates to actually help, and if they are lucky enough to get an answer it's probably wrong or at least the worst possible solution to their problem.
Meanwhile AI is polite and encouraging, to a disturbing level sometimes, and you can have a conversation with
Re: ...and then licensing it back to AI companies. (Score:2)
To overcome the recent famine challenges, I have decided to
1. Acquire a plot suitable for growing potatoes
2. Reach out to neighbors to pool resources
3. Establish a secure bunker for storing emergency reserves of grain
4. Mapping out the foraging, hunting and fishing opportunities in the nearby hills
5. Cutting off and eating my remaining leg.
not a bad idea, but way too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly relaxing some of the rules could have helped a lot, 7 or 8 years ago.
I still tool around superuser.com, but over the last 10 years its become a husk of its former self, with fewer and fewer multi-visit users every year, because everyone has a horrible first experience navigating the strict terms of service for the site and the remaining overzealous userbase.
Now, its probably far to late to do much about it.
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> the remaining overzealous userbase.
That is a huge part of why I never likes using them. Thogh it is not only "the remaining" in my view, but the whole site always seemed full of "You are an idiot!" posters. Although one could get good answers there at times all too often there was a high level of passive agression in replies.
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> the whole site always seemed full of "You are an idiot!" posters. Although one could get good answers there at times all too often there was a high level of passive agression in replies.
Exactly, and often not just passive, but straight out aggresive. Sometimes quite sarcastic and derogatory. from the know-it-alls who strut their stuff. This is a common thread I've seen of why people are put off the site.
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Fuck that overzealous userbase. Last time I asked them for help with a problem, no answer came. Instead somebody decided to edit my post. Correcting spelling mistakes, that's fine, but I hardly recognized my own writing. After a few days I had solved the problem on my own and decided to share it. Apparently I didn't do that according to the rules and another nazi came in to point that out.
Re: not a bad idea, but way too late... (Score:2)
I think some of their stacks, like ServerFault, suffered to cannibalism from StackOverflow. Everything even tangentially related to what a software developer may wish to do ended up there, instead of on one of the more dedicated sites.
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That part doesn't bother me so much. what i _hated_ was how many things were closed as off topic because they're opinion based or whatever. In the last couple of years probably a third of the interesting SO questions i landed on via search were closed that way.
Which makes sense because i was often looking for things that required some judgement, not just like the syntax for a list comprehension in python or something. ( although ofc i was looking for the syntax ones also on other days)
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Now, its probably far to late to do much about it.
Probably true. Regardless of the fate of Stack Overflow the current replacement seems to be online chat tools. The advantage of Stack Overflow is that despite the issues with it all of the questions and answers can be read by anyone, even years after the initial question. None of the chat tool sessions are publicly accessible unless the user chooses to publish the chat. Ongoing it currently seems that the entirety of the next decade of technical question and answer sessions are going to be owned by various
Job Board (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Job Board (Score:1)
_AI_ needs new content to work (Score:2)
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Not so much for Stackoverflow. Take a model that is trained well enough to comprehend stuff and then augment it with the documentation of a software library and it will help you to use the library in your code. No need for new training, and the data comes from the official documentation or even the source code, more accurate than some of the half-baked answers on Stackoverflow.
Missing the point (Score:3)
Have they not realized that answers to questions on their site are often outdated and therefore useless? AI saves people a lot of time by at least attempting to come up with an answer that's not wrong because the information is stale. Granted, the answer may still be wrong because the language in question doesn't have the functionality that the AI thinks should be there (and it should).
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Have they not realized that answers to questions on their site are often outdated and therefore useless?
Realizing that is the easy part. The hard part is fixing the problem, especially if you don't have an active user base who is willing to update the answers.
And of course AIs will run into the same problem, unless there are well-informed human beings available to update their knowledge base.
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In the absence of substantial amounts of new training data, then the public AIs built wi
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It's really hard to retrain an AI onto new, fresh data, because the bulk of its parameters are tailored to the massive amount of historical data that you used. So now you have a moving transatlantic and you give a little nudge, nothing is really going to change.
The internet as it was, collaborative spaces, has run its course. mostly because people are obnoxious idiots. Stackoverflow died of its moderation. Reddit is next.
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Oh man, what was that Oracle SQL blog back in the day.... DR something maybe... let's see what perplexity.io has to say whan i use the foregoing as a prompt.
please stand by...
It sounds like you might be thinking of "Dr. DBA" or "Dr. DBA Blog," but based on the clues "DR something" and the Oracle SQL focus, the most prominent and long-running Oracle SQL blog that fits a similar pattern is "Ask Tom" (by Tom Kyte), though it doesn't start with "DR." However, another well-known Oracle-related blog is "Database Heartbeat," which covers disaster recovery (DR) topics for Oracle databases ...
as it says it was Ask Tom. welp we humans had a good run. no need for us here...
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Was that the stunt they pulled about firing someone for using the wrong pronoun or some such nonsense?
Re:So long, farewell (Score:4, Informative)
Monica Cellio was reportedly fired when she asked if it was OK if she used gender-neutral language that does not use pronouns at all, since that can help avoid misgendering situations. She also said that use of preferred pronouns was the right thing to do, and that knowingly misgendering someone is wrong. She said that she was told by other moderators that avoiding third-person singular pronouns was itself misgendering. It's not clear from what she wrote if she was fired for asking the question, or fired preemptively for potentially not following in the future a policy that was still under development, and she may not have known at the time. From what I've read, I'm not sure if that was ever entirely established.
Stack Overflow later posted a very legalese response "regretting" how it all turned out and any damage to Monica's reputation, while also offering to allow her to apply for reinstatement. Monica stated in the same thread that she could not say anything for legal reasons, suggesting that there was a settlement. She did not attempt to get reinstated, and left SO entirely a few months later.
What SO really needs to do to survive: EMBRACE AI (Score:2)
A reverse-StackOverflow for AI-assisted work — where users post:
**** The problem they started with (a well-framed question).
**** The final solution they arrived at, potentially after AI iteration.
**** Maybe a short summary of the key insight(s) or stumbling blocks overcome.
**** No need to document all the back-and-forth steps unless helpful.
This could serve as:
**** A curated knowledge base of AI-assisted solutions.
**** A way to share polished resolutions others can quickly learn
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Why do you write in half-formed bullet phrases? Don't you know how to write a full sentence anymore? It's difficult to know what the point is that you are trying to make when you do this. It's difficult to know even which "point" is the more important, and which is subordinate. It's difficult to know how to reply to the relevant ideas or decide if there are any.
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I stopped reading after the first bullet point.
Why do you write in half-formed bullet phrases? Don't you know how to write a full sentence anymore?
Fantastic example of the canonical StackOverflow answer style, bravo :)
Barriers (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Barriers (Score:2)
Yeah, me too. SO was a great site, but some of the mods are apparently a bit drunk on power. Having to jump through hoops to prove yourself worthy isn't a good way to promote content creation.
Every once in a while I almost 'crack' and start to mentally compose an answer to a question or whatever, but then I just close the tab and move on because it's just not worth it.
The sad thing is, there isn't a competitor (no, Reddit really isn't) that's any better - so walking away from SO is just "data loss".
Jumped the shark (Score:1, Interesting)
Posting anonymously. I have six digits worth of karma in my tag. I stopped posted and haven't logged in for, let's say, quite a while, after I turned rather sour on SO. After doing some soul searching, I drew the following conclusions:
SO's moderation-based model runs counter to the general principle of free and open exchange of ideas and opinions. Some years ago, when the death spiral started, SO's administration hastily concluded it's because of, basically, mean tweets, and instituted a ridiculous code of
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I'm a bit confused here. If you love freedom of speech so much why can't SO, a private entity, have the freedom to decide what kind of speech happens on it?
And is it not impinging on their freedom of speech to insist you have a god given right to decide how it ought to be on their platform?
All you guys who are always crowing about your freedom of speech don't seem to realize that restricting other people's right to decide how to have conversational rules in their own private paces might actually be anti-fre
Re: Jumped the shark (Score:2)
All you need to know about GP is that they used a hard R as a pejorative. That is no doubt why they got the boot they're crying about now.
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All we need to know about the GP is that it's painfully obviously a leftist writing what they imagine some stereotype in their mind sounds like. I wouldn't be surprised if it was you setting it up for your own response later.
It's almost comical how frequently you get on the wrong side of every issue and wind up defending toxicity, bigotry, and censoriousness. Stackoverflow is a textbook example of a website dying due to toxic and abusive culture fostered from the top down.
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I'm a bit confused here. If you love freedom of speech so much why can't SO, a private entity, have the freedom to decide what kind of speech happens on it?
Can you point out the specific part in my previous post that claims that they don't have the right to do that?
And is it not impinging on their freedom of speech to insist you have a god given right to decide how it ought to be on their platform?
Of course. Now, after you finish patting yourself on the back for thinking that you're so smart and intellectual, all you need to do is to find which part of my previous post claimed that they didn't have some kind of a cockamamie right to do that. You must've overlooked all the shadenfreude, and my gloating at watching that pile of crap crash and burn. I want them to continue doing what they're doi
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I'm not defending censorship, I'm defending free speach against folks who demand their speach trumps others.
my understanding was that your previous post had contradictory ideas. I don't think you ever said they don't have the right to do anything, but you implied that it was morally against free speach to moderate in the way they wanted to. In other words:
1. That SO's moderation was against the principles of free speech .
2. But the principles of free speach, as I understand them, say that part of that is th
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Clearly main AC is (imo) using free speech as a general concept or, in your model, is considering SO a public space.
i.e. he's not talking about The US First Amendment and the limits it imposes on Congress which then later somehow apply to the Excutive branch and were also "incorporated against the states" by the Supreme Courts via the 14th Amendment etc etc etc
but rather the concept underlying it all that in a community one should take a light touch to censorship.
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Think of it this way:
Instead of Stack Overflow, we are talking about a church, another "public space". The church would like people to be quiet and not talk on cellphones during the service.
Main AC, a free speech hero, decides not to follow their commie rules of censorship and spends the entire service loudly talking on his phone. When they tell him to stop he says they are anti-free speech and censoring him and he pressures them to get rid of all their rules about people being loud in church.
I would argue
Re: Jumped the shark (Score:2)
You must've overlooked everything I said about free speech, which anyone with intelligence includes speech that they find offensive. I specifically laughed at all the snowflakes on SO who get their panties wet, from having to read mean posts. Did I call them for being banned from SO? No, I want them continue to get triggered and having meltdowns.
Your speech to tens ... or ones of people would get you rightfully removed from the Wendy's across town but you're entitled to a global platform with an audience of millions because "free speech". That so?
If you're wondering why attitudes towards "free speech" are changing, I'll ask you to consider, maybe, just MAYBE it's got something to do with how you're using it.
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Free speech is the right to not hear things you don't like?? That's worse than thinking free speech is unlimited.
His point was that a failure to promote free expression ran counter to their greatest asset, which was the specialized knowledge being provided for free. Prioritizing heavy handed moderation was not in their own self interest.
Now put away your shotgun. You're an irresponsible gun owner.
Re: Jumped the shark (Score:2)
New name? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it should also get a new name, maybe something like Expertsexchange.
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Whoever modded this as informative didn't get the joke. The poster was being sarcastic [wikipedia.org].
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i get what you're going for, but written that way i'm reminded of
"Every time Sean Connery misread the board on [SNL] Celebrity Jeopardy"
https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveF... [reddit.com]
I gave up on it long ago (Score:4, Insightful)
when you couldn't even post an actual answer (instead having to resort to a 'comment') simply because you didn't have enough "reputation" - this meant many other useful answers were buried amongst useless comments, making the whole site useless (including its search functions and cross-subject snippets making Google searches just as useless.)
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Huh? Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that it's the comments that are restricted until you get enough rep from posting answers and having your answers upvoted. You can still comment on your own questions, until you can't comment on other posts until you get enough rep. If the SO retards also changed this, then the only way remaining way to get your initial karma is by asking and having your question upvoted. To me, that seems harder than posting good answers.
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[...] this meant many other useful answers were buried amongst useless comments, making the whole site useless [...]
Huh? Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that it's the comments that are restricted until you get enough rep from posting answers and having your answers upvoted.
That sounds just as retarded, but resulting in the opposite: a bunch of 'answers' that are really meant to be comments, thereby polluting the whole site.
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That sounds just as retarded, but resulting in the opposite: a bunch of 'answers' that are really meant to be comments, thereby polluting the whole site.
That does sometimes happen, but the non-'answers' are downvoted or deleted quickly, so they don't pollute the site.
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That does sometimes happen, but the non-'answers' are downvoted or deleted quickly, so they don't pollute the site.
Net effect is the same: whatever useful information that remains is presented in the wrong context (as "comments" instead of "answers", or vice-versa), due to arbitrary silly restrictions.
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That and having to wait while it checks if you are robot and then continuously clicking on request to save cookies. Too much overhead.
Re: I gave up on it long ago (Score:3)
If you can't manage to build enough reputation on Stack Overflow, you probably weren't going to meaningfully contribute to the discussion.
Rearranging the deck chairs (Score:2)
on the Titanic.
Their ship has already sailed.
Justanswer.com (Score:3)
Justanswer.com has been doing this sort of thing for years with car repair and other similar topics. Quality of the help given varies widely. In fact I actively avoid justanswer.com links that come up in a search. I guess some avoid stackoverflow links already.
AI not to blame? (Score:2)
InfoWorld claims bad moderation, and not AI is killing SO. [infoworld.com]
I do agree SO's moderation is both condescending and frustrating. Any semi-viable alternative will quickly be explored to get away from SO. Their near monopoly has made them arrogant and complacent.
Low ranking questions and answers should be kept, but merely partially hidden by default, similar to Slashdot (assuming mostly on-topic). Sometimes good clues are in obscure replies.
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Ouch, with that reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment, that really does apply to what happened at SO, I just had not connected those two. Good link find.
Re:AI not to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stack Overflow messed up by not having a "close with explanation" option. They are too focused on experts and data quality.
If you understand How To Ask Questions [catb.org], Stack Overflow is fantastic. I've had nothing but good experiences.
If you're a newbie, you will ask a question that you are so lost on that you'll get closed as a dupe of a question that seems unrelated to yours. The expert will have seen three layers deep into your issue and found the real problem, correctly closing it as a dupe.
On one hand, Stack Overflow gets to have clean data. On the other hand, that newbie doesn't understand why their question was closed, doesn't have their problem solved, and probably jumps on reddit saying how awful Stack Overflow is.
The person voting to close does not need to leave an explanation. A lot don't.
Re: AI not to blame? (Score:2)
Ooh and guess which question search engines will send traffic to!
Not the one that requires already knowing what the problem is.
PeanutsOverflow (Score:2)
If you think any actual experts will get a ywhere near StackOverflow, you are gravely mistaken. You'll end up with self-proclaimed experts who'll end up being first year uni students working for peanuts and providing no real expertise.
Great! (Score:2)
4. They're also licensing Stack Overflow content to AI companies for training their models.
So I guess now we'll start getting condescending answers to our prompts, thanks to SO's "data"?
Prompt: I need to know how to use curl to fetch a website's page.
Answer: Did you RTFM, idiot?
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I honestly never have understood why someone takes time out of their schedule to belittle people on sites with non-answers to questions.
It's like they are compelled to answer without actually answering. It's some kind of psychological disease that has been exasperated by the Internet.
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I honestly never have understood why someone takes time out of their schedule to belittle people on sites with non-answers to questions.
Very often with these question-answer sites (or, really, any discussion forum - I remember running into this in my newsgroups days) people simply get annoyed at the question being merely asked (like, do they expect everyone else hanging around are as knowledgeable as they are??), and instead of answering the actual question and asking any follow-up questions for additional context that may have been left out of the original question (to perhaps offer an alternative answer later), simply lash out with "RTFM"
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I honestly never have understood why someone takes time out of their schedule to belittle people on sites with non-answers to questions.
It's a balance, imo in that for the forum to work well it needs to enforce certain rules. And on SO and previous such part of it is the whole thing about learning how to ask a good question that shows you've done some homework and is ideally both detailed enough but concise enough to get people to help. (like this old-school doc from ESR http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smar. [catb.org]
CEO in over his head (Score:2)
A few weeks SO staff posted a "we're rebranding" post on the site in the Q&A format. They've been throwing out all kinds of supposed strategic expansions lately, which look scattered and less than coherent.This particular post generated comments and the CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar started responding.
Observation: The CEO (unfiltered by editors, legal, or PR) can barely write a coherent English sentence. They're not making any sense at all with their current plans, as far as I can tell. Their goose is prob
Opinions (Score:2)
As I recall it was the caustic opinions on the questions asked that drove people away.
Time For An (Score:2)
RSS feed aggregator page?
meh (Score:2)