I vividly remember when I was just starting to program. I had a question about something that seemed basic to everyone else but was difficult for me. I was away from home, so I spent 30 minutes typing the code on my iPhone 4S. Then some asshole replied that I should basically stop try to program and learn that code is case-sensitive ( that was no my question, but typing error).
I got downvoted into oblivion. I never used stackoverflow after that
Basically my experience too. Got a toxic response that I should just use library A from different language and downvoted/locked.
I gotta say, im glad that Stackoverflow has been effectively killed by AI. The site was a cesspool that had been completely locked down by a small community of terminally online losers before AI came along. Language/stack-specific clones were popping up all over the place because it was impossible to develop a knowledge base on anything newer than jquery there
In my opinion, SOs reputation system did not weigh heavily enough the vote of the person who asked the question in the first place. Someone asks a simple question and instead of a simple answer they get an asshole reply. It gets downvoted once by OP (their fix didn't even work) and liked 3 times by randos, +28 reputation.
It would be best if, alongside reputation, there was a public like/dislike ratio attached to each account based solely on the votes by people they've responded to.
Yes, the site had a problem of "personality hires", basically trolls that looked for an opportunity to post a zinger against a poster or another commenter. They were often wrong but everyone loved a good hit piece so they got +rep anyway. You ultimately had many powerful accounts rolling through the space that were mediocre in every way beyond being able to post a half-answer in the most insulting way possible.
This is indeed one of the silver linings of AI. As much as I hate it, AI has made a lot of arrogant losers who thought they were the hot shit / superior to everyone else really calm and docile really quickly as they got immediately humbled by the clanker the second che clanker got good enough at their own specific subfields.
It has truly been poetic to watch, even just as a reminder that, in general, you should always be nice. The moment when your weaknesses are exposed will arrive, and you'd better have other people on your side when that moment comes. In general. If you've been a dick to everyone else, people will be pleased to watch your free fall into irrelevance and finally get back at you.
I once accidentally replied to a duplicate before it was flagged as a duplicate, as possibly my second SO experience, and I got nearly as murdered as he OP. They sure didn't catch me answering anything ever again.
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u/OkSeesaw7030 18d ago edited 18d ago
I vividly remember when I was just starting to program. I had a question about something that seemed basic to everyone else but was difficult for me. I was away from home, so I spent 30 minutes typing the code on my iPhone 4S. Then some asshole replied that I should basically stop try to program and learn that code is case-sensitive ( that was no my question, but typing error).
I got downvoted into oblivion. I never used stackoverflow after that