Hacker News

points by Unai 1 day ago | 0 comments

People used to add "reddit" at the end of their search queries, and now I'm sure many of those people just ask a bot. But reddit is still there (even if in the form of a grotesque mutation of itself) because people like to talk to each other.

So yeah, AI surely didn't help, and I concede that the SO case is even worse given its nature (and how good of a substitute AI is), but if it wasn't a pool of acid I could see it existing as a place for people who want human help and opinions. So I don't think it's fair to say the drop is "100% because of AI", as you put it.

Then again, it's been a pool of acid since forever and it kept going for a long time like that, so maybe you are both right. AI did kill it, but because it was hostile.

[–] zahlman 1 day ago

> But reddit is still there (even if in the form of a grotesque mutation of itself) because people like to talk to each other.

I hear they're drowning in AI bots. I guess a fair amount of people also don't mind talking to those.

But SO was never intended to be a place where people "talk to each other". It was specifically intended and designed (sort of; the design was faulty) to avoid chatter because that gets in the way of others coming by later and finding a question and reading its answer.

[–] socalgal2 1 day ago

To me your description is mythical reddit. Actual Reddit is every bit as hostile as stack overflow and unlike stack overflow, old questions can not be updated with new answers when existing answers get out of date.

[–] cwnyth 1 day ago

I think Reddit is even worse. You could get banned from SO for using pretty foul insults, but in some places of Reddit, it's business as usual.

[–] mahboi 1 day ago

Reddit is full of rage and also people getting banned for no reason. But crashing out on StackOverflow, now that's when someone needs help.

[–] cwnyth 1 day ago

I'm a mod on two SE sites. It definitely happens. And yes, (imo) they typically need help.

[–] 8n4vidtmkvmk 23 hours ago

What kind of help? Mental help, or getting their server back online?

[–] mahboi 23 hours ago

I meant mental, but now that you mention it, probably both

[–] cwnyth 1 day ago

But SO was never a place to just talk to others. It's not a general purpose discussion site. It could have been a friendly place, but users still would have left, because it's just far easier to get an immediate answer from AI, and those answers have only been getting better.

Yeah, the place could be very hostile, but that hostility didn't crater questions before ChatGPT was released.

[–] cowlevel 1 day ago

In the early years it very much was. You could ask just about anything that was programming related and had a question mark. In the middle times of SO a lot of those became "locked for historical preservation" and new ones weren't allowed.

[–] zahlman 1 day ago

It wasn't supposed to be like that. Atwood and Spolsky had an insufficiently refined concept of what makes a good question, that was overly tied to "keeping the riff-raff out" and insufficiently based in having a searchable reference that covers a full spectrum of "difficulty levels" but still having every question clearly posed and properly scoped.

Also, they had the usual incentives to avoid doing things that would slow down initial growth. They were trying to build a community, and they definitely succeeded at that.

It took until the "middle times" for people to really develop an understanding of how questions for a Q&A site are supposed to look. And then the rest of the time was spent trying to convey those standards accurately, caught between the usual archetypes of angry forum users, in a place that was not supposed to be a forum.

[–] NoMoreNicksLeft 22 hours ago

And yet it was best when it was before everyone really developed an "understanding of how questions for a Q&A site were supposed to look like". That's the time everyone in this thread is looking back at fondly.

[–] zahlman 9 hours ago

No, no it really wasn't. People were yelling about the flood of crap back then, too.

For reference, here is the verbatim (except for code formatting for HN) Markdown of the initial version of a question asked in 2010, my answer to which became my highest-ever scoring answer (and which ended up getting over 2 million views):

  if I have list of numbers as [1,2,3,4,5...........etc ]
  and I want to calculate as that (2+1)/2
  and for the second
  (2+3)/2
  third
  (3+4)/2
  ...... etc

  how can do as that ?
  like sum the first point with the second and divide it by 2 .. then sum the second with third point then divide it by 2 .... etc ?

  also how can i sum a list of number ?
  a = [1,2,3,4,5,......ect ]

  is it:

  b = sum(a)
  print b

  in i get one number !?
  it doesn't work with me 
  help me plz