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"It's time for us to cut our losses and move on...Jeff Atwood's dream is dead. Our dream is dead. It was not a natural death, but a drawn-out starvation and deprivation, possibly the most cynical way to kill something." - Ian Kemp Source

"No one likes waiting for glaciers to calve, but that's mostly what we've been relegated to." and "The Stack Overflow I wish to build and participate in is no longer supported." - Makoto Source Source

"I guess I can stop holding my breath for the Stack Overflow that I knew and loved to return. This isn't the site that I joined, helped build, and loved for so many years. It's no longer a site that I am proud to be associated with." and "I feel duped, taken advantage of, and embarrassed about my association with this platform." - Cody Gray Source Source

"Hypothesis: SE no longer values its veteran users. We have already produced all the content that matters. Now they are focused on fixing their image by appeasing the vampires and withholding the tools needed for site curation." - Mysticial Source

"There is no doubt we've stopped making changes for core users and your observations about how that's gotten worse ring true to me." - Jon Ericson Source

"SE employees hasn't stopped reading or interacting with meta because people are uncivil, they're said to have done so because SO is "negative". So apparently putting forth criticism in a civil manner is unacceptable to them. They appear to have a problem with what is being said, not how it's being said." - Servy Source

"If the solution to "beginners are not welcome" ends up being "experts are not welcome" then it is game over. I resisted it for years, too, but a separate, beginner focused stack overflow (with beginner oriented rules, and special beginner tooling) feels inevitable to me at this point if the site wants to survive." - the one and only Jeff Atwood Source

Dang!

The majority of these users are ones that I've grown to trust and respect over my time quietly reading in the background on MSO, and they seem rather upset.

For the life of me, though, I can't find more than one or two examples of the actions from the SO company that are so (frankly) despised. Where are the rest?

Essentially, I see that lots of people are upset. Why?

In defense of this question not being a dupe: Yes, this will likely rehash some of the points discussed in Makoto's post. But -- (and lol, this is my first meta post; I could be waaay off) I feel like I'm trying to drink from a firehose with 95% choclate syrup. There's plenty of water, but it isn't I dunno consolidated. Easy to isolate and examine. Succinct. In one location where I as an inexperienced new user can breathe and find out for myself what's going on without being the next Agatha Christie (or at least a good data visualist).

And as I said to Yvette - if nothing else, the multiple dupe targets for my question will help people out.

I'm not trying to stir up the pot and make people upset all over again. Hopefully this post does not degenerate into a debate. There's a time and place for that, but that's not the point of this post. I just want to know (and I suspect a lot of "little people" like myself want to know) exactly why these fairly popular users are upset so that I can evaluate what's going on for myself.

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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – user3956566
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:56

3 Answers 3

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Stack Overflow (and the Exchange sites) are a technology platform and a community. The community is the people who use and curate the site and their shared values. These work together to produce a superior outcome to other Q&A sites which appear to rely on gamification alone. SO the company is in complete control over the platform but not the community though it has previously enjoyed good relations with the community as the values were aligned. Community feedback was appreciated and acted upon.

The problem is that now SO is trying to monetize the values are changing. A focus on quality is being replaced by growth; a clean and stable interface is being disrupted to suit marketing metrics; values driven advertising is being replaced by the Wild West from the rest of the web. The company is leveraging its control over the platform to try to control the community and sees any pushback as a problem with the community ("unwelcoming").

This is leading to a fracturing of the core essence of the site. The company and the community see the future through different lenses which are mutually incompatible.

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    @George "Now those values are changing, and likely those that can't change with those values will stop participating as much and be supplanted by those that do share those values." You may not mean it this way, but that reads as "Your contributions were once valuable, but they no longer hold any value under our new value system, and we would like you to leave so that people with contributions that we find valuable according to our current value system can take over." Yet all of those people that are basically being kicked out have heavily invested themselves into the success of the site.
    – user4639281
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 20:19
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    "The community is the people who use and curate the site" and produce literally all of the content for free. Don't forget that!
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 15:45
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit I had intended "curate" to encompass creation too, but perhaps I stretched the definition a little too far.
    – James
    Commented Aug 27, 2019 at 15:36
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    Well that was largely tongue in cheek
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Aug 27, 2019 at 16:16
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In one location where I as an inexperienced new user can breathe and find out for myself what's going on without being the next Agatha Christie (or at least a good data visualist).

I can sympathize with this request. To a new user, this whole explosion must look completely bizarre ("SE changed one small feature, and then everyone flipped out and wrote like five different questions about how terrible everything is"). Unfortunately, it's not that easy. The long version of this story is in this MSE post, but in short, it's not one big thing, it's a lot of little things over a very long period of time. More specifically, Stack Exchange the company has repeatedly made announcements both large and small without consulting or warning the community in advance, while (seemingly*) ignoring long-standing feature requests, mostly in the area of content moderation. SE employees have also made a rather large number of public statements which, while well-intentioned, nevertheless undermined our confidence in the company and its employees. Again, this happened repeatedly over a very long period of time and each example will seem trivial on its own.

Many other people have already written lengthy essays about how this is unsustainable, how SE needs to change, how the community needs to change, and so on. This will not be another of those essays. I think both the problem and the (wide) range of plausible solutions are actually rather obvious once you look at the full history here. It's just a matter of how the company chooses to move forward. Unfortunately, it is apparent to me that the community does not have the practical ability to affect how we move forward. I write this not as an indictment of Stack Exchange the company, but as an acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. We can't fix this. They have to do so, one way or another. Fortunately, they are making an effort at improving the situation. Time will tell.

* In their defense, their bug tracker is not public, and we don't actually know what they are working on at any given time.

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    Thanks for the answer! I appreciate it. "SE changed one small feature, and then everyone flipped out and wrote like five different questions about how terrible everything is" was kind of how I felt lol. I'm beginning to understand now - through this post and a little digging. The MSE post is VERY helpful, I'd suggest drawing more attention to it in your answer if you have time.
    – Brandon_J
    Commented Jul 31, 2019 at 3:20
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    To be complete, they've also made promises before right after a fallout so while the "effort" is appreciated it is a long road back
    – LinkBerest Left - SO is AI Now
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 0:13
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    @JGreenwell: Indeed. I do not foresee this problem being fixed overnight. It will likely take years. However, they have at least stated that they are aware of the problem, and I don't really think we have much alternative to giving them the benefit of the doubt, aside from leaving the site altogether. Some people may have already done that, of course.
    – Kevin
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 17:16
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I'm not upset with the stated changes; mostly because as a small business owner I get the pressure to make money to stay in business.

When you're living off of VC dollars you can defer that conversation for a while but not forever. We've reached the end of 'a while'.

Presumably (and I won't look at SO's site stats so as not to cloud my answer with inside information), there is a slowdown in growth, and the company has received a bit of bad press about how it's fitting into a world where programming is evolving to the "diverse teams build better software" mantra (we will all benefit from this for decades to come).

The community had long shared the company's goal of an 'encyclopedia of knowledge'; unfortunately, that goal also represents an understanding that not every problem a programmer has should be in that encyclopedia.

When it was Jeff and Joel directly driving the vision, the features oscillated between the two camps (Open to new users vs. Only good question that add to that encyclopedia stick around). Now that there's an entire product team devoted to Q&A and they see the downsides of the "only new good questions stick around" as gatekeeping, and the disadvantages to the life of the product that gatekeeping has, they're making changes to ensure that Stack Overflow will continue to be relevant to this and the next generation of programmers.

Those people who started out with Jeff and Joel are still here (I'm one of them), and now some are upset because they don't feel like the original goal is important to the company, and part and parcel to that is that they don't feel listened to or cared about since their critical features as power-users is not the features that will allow the company to grow. There's a natural (or unnatural) attrition rate for users on this site; the power-users make up a tiny fraction of the site's total population, and in a time of limited resources, the company has to prioritize either keeping the tiny-fraction of power-users happy or continue to ensure the site is relevant to the larger programming community.

For the record: I believe that we have to change in order to continue to be successful. I have come to realize that keeping people out because their question is "too simple" or "they could have googled it" is not how you would mentor a junior programmer, and we should model the behavior we want to see out of programers. We want junior programmers to reach out for help instead of keeping it in.

I believe that it is normal to be upset when the goals change; but I also believe that you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. The people who own this platform are deciding what the vision of this platform is. We can either agree with that vision and work towards it, or disagree and stop participating.

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    We can either agree with that vision and work towards it, or disagree and stop participating. That are not the only two options, let's not fall into a false dilemma fallacy. We can also argue that the reason the site is successful in the first place is because of how we've been running things and the value that our experienced users have put into it. Take those things away, let the quality slip, and no one will want to visit anymore. The VC's understandably want money, but they don't understand what made us valuable in the first place, and it's up to us to make them understand by being vocal
    – mason
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 14:54
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    No, I have not been heard, because the company is still continuing down this bad path. I get that you don't agree with me, but stop trying to silence me by sending me elsewhere. I participate in Stack Overflow, I have reputation and a voice here. I don't have one on Meta.SE or any other site, and I'm going to express my disagreement here. Moderators should not be trying to hide our disappointment, don't try to silence us. That's not what you were elected to do.
    – mason
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:04
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    I get the impression that you've been too far out of the loop on Meta, George. What you say is accurate and true from a business perspective - I even touch on that in this answer - but that doesn't make anyone feel better about the situation. If the reality is that we as a community can no longer agree with the company's vision for what the community should be going towards, then not participating is the only logical choice. You cannot ignore the fact that we are the product, and we're not thrilled about it.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:11
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    To be honest, I don't know if the VC's will be able to get enough money to be satisfied, no matter what we or they do. But I do know that if they continue down this path of allowing/encouraging low quality questions, preventing us from moderating effectively, then they will end up with even less money than if they let us continue to uphold the high standards we've always had. This site without quality standards will turn into Yahoo Answers and make it difficult to find a proper solution, eliminating any value it may have had.
    – mason
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:14
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    ...It's up to us to help them see that. Whether it's complaining when they come look at Meta, or organizing a strike, or taking to social media, or telling them in the face to face interviews that the company seems a little more interested in lately. I've seen a few steps in the right directions lately, so I continue to be hopeful.
    – mason
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:16
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    Questions aren't made off-topic by being simple or because the answer can be found elsewhere on the internet. We used to have a close reason for too localized but that has been gone for a very long time now. Could you please clarify: "have come to realize that keeping people out because their question is "too simple" or "they could have googled it" is not how you would mentor a junior programmer"?
    – user4639281
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:18
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    @mason: Just a minor nit - being heard is not the same as getting your desired outcome. The company can hear us all day but choose to do something else, not unlike parents with young children walking through the toy aisle. There's no doubt in my mind that those kids and their whining is heard. Is it honored? Doesn't have to be to accomplish being heard.
    – Makoto
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 15:46
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    I'm cursed with optimism. I see change with what look like good intentions. Those changes might have some unintended consequences. What I don't see is a bunch of idiots ready to kill the world's most popular website for developers out of ignorance. I don't buy it. Changes might be odd or uncomfortable or might even include mistakes, but the sky isn't falling. Those changes could also be awesome. Sara's 'bad day' blog post sounds like something to be excited about, not a reason to worry.
    – Scott Hannen
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 16:50
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    @ScottHannen Agree, the blog post sounded like something to be optimist. The removal of HMP because 'Employees are real human beings that are affected by the way people speak to them' (source) has kind of invalidated it.
    – Tensibai
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 21:09
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    @GeorgeStocker It's been a long time, many years, since Stack Exchange focused its effort on the core premise once causing its success: Provide high quality answers. Maybe things aren't going so well because the company has been doing other things for the past >5 years. So Stack Exchange was going without a clear course for quite a while. Now they realized they are of course, but in reaction they seem to steer further away from what was the successful direction.
    – sth
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 14:05
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    @ScottHannen actually, I liked the blog post (I would have liked some more focus on tooling but it was definitely was looking at the system in a valid way). Most of us (or at least me and I think others based on my reading) are angry about how she then posted on Meta blaming us for everything she pointed to the system for causing in the blog. When someone makes a good point but then goes "but I hate you" that pretty much ends discussion
    – LinkBerest Left - SO is AI Now
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 0:07
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    The power users make up a small fraction of the community, but a large fraction of the value. The people who answer a ton of questions are why this site is useful. Alienate them (and you absolutely are), and when they leave this site will diminish and eventually die. The fact is that the people capable and willing to provide good answers here is a limited pool, once they're gone they will not be replaced.
    – Gabe Sechan
    Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 15:38
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    regarding: "tiny-fraction of power-users vs the larger programmer community", that's a fallacy. You cannot claim that, because the upset power-users are in the minority, that ONLY the minority power-users are upset. The larger programmer community may very well be upset by these changes too. It's just that they don't come to meta and make their voices heard like the power-users do.
    – user773737
    Commented Aug 6, 2019 at 1:26
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    it is how you mentor a new programmer. You teach them to be resourceful, you teach them to look in the docs. You teach them to read through the examples in the docs. You teach them to learn how to pair down their example into the smallest reproducible code. What you do not do it just answer their questions that they should have figured out on their own. Just giving teh codez doesn't help them. The closes, the downvotes, the comments repeating the help are all there to lead them to become better without overwhelming the volutneer answerers or making the site a complete swamp.
    – gman
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 5:11
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    You wouldn't instruct a junior programmer to fish for themselves before asking you a question? A: Presumably, your time is much more valuable than the junior's. B: You're doing a disservice to that junior and their future coworkers if you're fostering an "ask first" behavior. Like mama always said, "Look with your eyes, not with your mouth."
    – canon
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 17:38

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