@Sklivvz CoC doesn't really bother me that much as most of these are easily-avoided edge cases anyway. This is just the strangest act of "inclusion" I have seen in quite a while.

→ 4 messages moved to Trashcan

@Sklivvz Can... we please stop dumping on things for a bit? Getting really tired of it.

@Sklivvz There's a thought (not unique to this situation) where people take stands to 'find their tribe'. It may be that Stack Overflow (the company) has decided they want the people that use Stack Overflow to be really interested in ensuring that everyone feels welcome, and that Stack Overflow's MO reflects that. They're also probably 100% aware and banking that people who don't want to be a part of that tribe self-select out.

It's important to note that this is a normal event in communities sooner or later, and some communities become stronger for it, some die out, and some resist the change until it's effectively beat out of them.

(it's normal for forces to want to change the MO; sometimes it's community directed, sometimes it's company imposed)

we can rule out community-driven dynamics here

I'm not so sure. Keep in mind that any change either needs 1) the tacit agreement of its community, 2) moderation enough to make it happen, or 3) enough people don't care to raise a stink about it. I mean, people could protest loudly, and continue to protest loudly; and moderators could step down and boycott SO. It may or may not work; but I never discount community driven action.

None of us know what's going to happen next.

Even those of us that agree with the change and want to see it succeed.

SO has made it clear in the past years that the community is not a tugboat, if anything it's an inflatable raft that's being pulled on a string. I guess it's not impossible for public outrage to effect change, but I highly doubt anything of that magnitude could happen.

Partly because I don't know what kind of signal the company would take as a hint. Would they notice if power users boycotted moderating main? (Which they never would). I doubt it.

@user3956566. uh, well, has the site really changed? Only in the outrage sense I guess.

@GeorgeStocker There were quite a few different levels where SE could have set the threshold for this. They chose one where they knew a lot of people that agreed to prettyy much 90% started to become uncomfortable. They're turning it into an us vs. them situation, and they're putting a lot of people into the "them" category.

I don't know what they would notice or not notice; I know they're focused on engagement and audience metrics.

@MadScientist Yea, I unsuccessfully tried to make a "You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater" argument.

@GeorgeStocker can you explain what that means? They sound intangible to me, but I'm not a native.

@AndrasDeak A public website (this one or any other) that sells ads needs 1) Users to come back. 2) More users today to visit the site than yesterday.

So to do that you'll measure audience and engagement. Who comes, who sticks around, and is that number going up or down,.

I see, thanks

I think they're throwing the bathtub as well but eh

If the CoC conduct change makes that number go up, they're happy.

If that number goes down and continues to go down, they're sad.

The recent CoC drama will not last long, I think

But for this set of sites, questions and answers are also important.

Are questions getting answered?

Are users sticking around to ask more than one question?

Are users sticking around to provide more than one answer?

@M.A.R. No drama lasts long, at least not the flames. The embers do, but that doesn't matter until the next batch of oil is poured over them.

When do users leave? Why do they leave?

because this isn't a helpdesk

:shrug:

I hope for the new CEO to provide clarity to the site's mission.

@GeorgeStocker if you put it that way that almost sounds like catering to the low-quality flood of askers could be a corporate goal :/

@AndrasDeak wat

Because a lot of people are upset that the whole "knowledge repository" bit isn't being respected in company actions -- and I think all we're missing is someone acknowledging that the company's focus is no longer a knowlege repository but a general purpose resource for all developers to get the help they need.

@AndrasDeak well, relatively, I think this would be a typical announcement drama. People mostly respect each other not to hit CoC bars, and the only lasting impact would be trolls having an extra thing to pick on, I reckon

that could eventually pit quality control against investor interests against each other

@AndrasDeak The funnel has to start somewhere.

@202324 please elaborate

@M.A.R. yeah, I think so

To be honest, the positive change some folks are looking for is mostly not going to happen on these sites IMHO, since they simply aren't geared towards it

Irrelevant.

In other words, it's becoming a general forum

@AndrasDeak SE is a Q&A site, not a repository of knowledge. There's no big deal in what you name low-quality askers.

@AndrasDeak I guess. If part of that, though, is making moderating such questions less painful, it might as well pay off.

@KevinB mostly an admiral

@GeorgeStocker people are saying they find tutoring and repo'ing incompatible

@202324 my opinion is irrelevant, yes

If there was a reliable way to extract the info in such interactions and add it to the repository, it would have been great

@AndrasDeak if you don't work at the company, I bet it is.

@GeorgeStocker Most of them won't tell you why. To SE/SO they are just number changes in how often this site gets accessed ... as I learned when I made an appeal on one of the SEs to treat question askers as human beings first when deciding how to respond via answer or comment. What I was informed then was the over 99% of site visits are more or less anonymous. A very small subset of those are who sticks around

data means more than opinions

@202324 the question would then be how to ensure knowledgeable people would stick around. If it were something like Twitter or Facebook where people just are around, that would have been possible. Very invasive probably

@KevinB it means purple and green dots.

Lots and lots of dots

@KevinB Data is a first step. Figuring out what it means takes some analysis and interpretation, or so I have found in real life in the engineering work I have done (and in other pursuits ..)

@M.A.R. because of the joy of helping and the reputation thing, as always

@202324 The former seems to appeal to a lot of users who stick around.

@202324 there's virtually no reason to watch the number go up anymore after a certain level

i suspect for a lot of people, that joy only lasts as long as they can tolerate answering the same questions with slight differences repeatedly. For me, that lasted till a little after 20k... when there were no more privileges to chase. but it felt like sticking around for voting/moderating meant something. now... not so much

Helping is a great but inconsistent feeling. It doesn't guarantee persistence

Helping people who want to learn is great. Helping people who are trying their hardest not to learn is infuriating.

"Escape velocity of asteroid" I love how the OT questions still flow, like a fundamental and indifferent force

@user3956566. I don't see how respectful expressions of extreme dissatisfaction are against the CoC. The staff would be within their rights to ban all dissent, but that would not be wise at this time.

@KevinB My participation has waned quite a lot; I would be more interested at this point if the tools available to me made it easier to maintain/curate the existing corpus of questions that get the bulk of the site's search traffic

it's just very demoralizing to cast a vote on a question that's clearly incomplete... only to see it get upvotes and awful guesses as answers.

SE is not a place for a good answer, a mailing list is, an IRC conversation is. But SE is a good place for a quick handy answer.

@KevinB it would be nice for mods and power users to treat open questions by new users less like tickets to be completed and closed.

They need to be improved.

they need to be clarified

posting wild guesses and upvoting them doesn't help the problem.

Your expectations from the grey mass of people are too high and impossible to fix unless restricting access or harder ban hammers or hardening already existing and tight rules for asking.

I'd also personally like to see an activity year range for duplicate question candidates. That way, it would be easier to see if the answer might be outdated. Something like:

I'd like to actually be able to find duplicates without needing to resort to google... but that'd require people giving questions better titles.

How do I read a UTF 8 text file in Python? (2009-2012)

Of course, none of this matters to me if I lose confidence in the capabilities and judgment of the staff.

for example, asking Looping through Json object in Jquery apparently didn't direct the user to How do I loop through or enumerate a JavaScript object?

which, yes, is an older question, but it's answers have been kept up to date.

@KevinB one thing you can do is ask clarifying questions of the author or edit the question. If you’re wrong the author won’t hesitate to let you know and if you’re right you’ve helped everyone and you’ve made the question better

which i do, almost every time i leave a downvote.

(you can see evidence of that in my question list)

@KevinB hence why it would be nice to have a date range. If it hasn't been touched in 10 years, it could be out of date.

could be... but the score of the post is a more useful indicator of that.

coupled with views etc

highly popular questions get updated answers

But those answers would not have the years of upvotes (or acceptance) of the earlier answers.

so fix the earlier answers

All the different ways you could possibly want to iterate over an object are included here. Yes, the top answer shows an older way of doing it. Fortunately that way still works, but all the other ways are right there, easy to find.

But the earlier answers aren't "wrong" exactly, and edits aren't supposed to change the meaning of the message to something completely different.

Creating a new question for just the new shtuff will simply result in a dupe closure, but if it didn't, it would just end up with all the same answers, just in a different order.

Why duplicate?

Better to provide the new info in the old question so that all the duplicates pointing at it reach the new info

So each question is meant to be a "living wiki" that lasts forever?

Yes

literally

@KevinB it varies

@KevinB though in theory and practice

the python 2 vs 3 divide is so huge and ongoing that there's not much point ditching the former for the latter yet

dupes work both ways

So you could, with enough community support intentionally close an old question as a dupe of a new question

see also meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390235/…

@JourneymanGeek happens all the time if it's merited

not brand new usually, but much newer

Yup

@AndrasDeak yhm

what's wrong with treating them as seperate languages?

@GeorgeStocker I disagree with the assumption that either one is with Stack Overflow or they are not interested in making the community inclusive. I think that SO is doing absolutely nothing to make the communities inclusive. A CoC change is cheap and completely ineffective.

Which is one of the reasons I'm resigning.

@Sklivvz eh, that's kind of another thing - they are not going to get anything moving by fiat

@JourneymanGeek only that they're not different enough. Unlike perl 5 vs 6, from what I've heard

I've never gotten the obsession with COCs, to be honest.

Or more precisely - COCs are not worth the paper they are on if folks don't really feel engaged in them

well bits? whatever the digital equivilent of paper is

And that needs trust

and that's at an all time low :/