Tried using StackOverflow back in my college days and was confronted by a barage of people practically telling me I am stupid fuck in subtle and not so subtle ways. I am sure people on there being rude and demeaning didn’t help their case.
Stack Overflow has been nearly useless as anything other than an archive of old questions for a long time. It’s a case study in how gamification can backfire.
For me it was over was before the peak as shown. The gamification that got it started in the first place eventually led to it becoming almost unusable for its intended purpose. Instead it functioned as more of an online-only augmented reality game where people worked to moderate away new questions as efficiently as possible rather than actually answer questions.
Exactly, and the data shows that too. The number of questions were falling ever since the ‘game’ of the site became being able to shut down new questions with a variation of “this is a duplicate” in the exact mix of mean/demeaning/dismissive that would get the most clicks.
People were so rude there, we shouldn’t mourn its end
Right, but there isn’t really a good alternative, as shitty as it is. And I don’t think relying on slop generators is a good alternative
There are lots of good alternatives, just nothing that mirrors Stack Overflow’s goal exactly. Lemmy instances, subreddits, forums like code ranch, platforms like dev.to, etc.
Indeed, they were the OG powertrippingbastards
Apocalyse sign…
