this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
606 points (99.8% liked)
Technology
81451 readers
4451 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The humans of StackOverflow have been pricks for so long. If they fixed that problem years ago they would have been in a great position with the advent of AI. They could've marketed themselves as a site for humans. But no, fuckfacepoweruser found an answer to a different question he believes answers your question so marked your question as a duplicate and fuckfacerubberstamper voted to close it in the queue without critically thinking about it.
I used to moderate and answer questions on SO, but stopped because at some point you see the 500th question about how to use some javascript function.
Of course I flagged them all as duplicate and linked them to an extensive answer about the specific function, explaining all aspects and edge cases, because I don't think there need to be 500 similatlr answers (who's going to maintain them?)
But yeah, sorry that I didn't fix YOUR code sample, and you had to actually do your homework by yourself.
My questions weren't homework problems with 500 duplicates. Maybe that type of shit being the most common in the vote to close queue is why fuckfacerubberstamper can't be bothered to actually think about what they're closing as dupes.
If the alternative is the cesspit that is Yahoo Answers and Quora, I'll take the heavy-handed moderation of StackOverflow.
You don't think there's any middle ground between the two? None whatsoever?
If Stack Overflow is a 3/10 then Quora is a 1/10 and Yahoo Answers is -5/10.
Of course there's a middle ground, that's much closer in my ideal world to StackOverflow than it is to Yahoo Answers or Quora.
Nobody here is suggesting for you to use Yahoo Answers.
I'm just using it as an example of what a Q&A site with inadequate moderation looks like. If you can't see that then I don't think we're going to see eye to eye no matter how long this discussion continues.
Okay? But why? StackOverflow's moderation is inadequate as well.
By "inadequate" I don't mean having room for improvement. I mean: lacking, weak, light-handed. By that definition, SO's moderation is if anything, overdone, not inadequate. Personally, I love it as a technical resource, even if contributions are difficult to make in line with moderation policies.
Well, no. If there were a middle ground, we'd all be using it.
Like Lemmy? The site we're all using?
But no my point wasn't about a specific site, it's about the moderation approach. Do you really think there's no middle ground in approach to moderation between Yahoo Answers and StackOverflow?
Lemmy isn't a Q&A application in the way that the others I mentioned are.
Like I said, I'm not talking about specific sites, I'm talking about moderation style.
Cute. Except Lemmy hasn't helped me solve any programming problems. StackOverflow has.
And I think you missed my point, so I'll restate it: If this theoretical middle-ground moderation were actually viable, it would have eaten StackOverflow's lunch like a decade ago. People were SALTY about SO's hostility even before the "summer of love" campaign in 2012.
It's viable, StackExchange as a company is just shit. See: then never listening to meta, listening to random Twitter users more, and defaming their volunteer moderators.
Oh, don't misunderstand me. I'm not here to defend stack overflow or anything. They're absolute rubbish as a company. I just thought your "third way" comment was misguided.
But - codidact went nowhere. Reddit and now lemmy have never been helpful for my programming problems. What's taking SO down is their deal with the AI devil? It's funny in sort of a sad way.