Comment by znpy
13 hours ago
> but exclusive to the newbie participants who found themselves blocked for asking questions. They slowly killed the site in this manner.
i got stung by exactly this.
i saw some of my early questions rewritten because some idiot mod that had not touched grass in a while thought that some words were better suited for stackoverflow.
and don't get me wrong: i'm not talking about profanity, n-word or racial slurs, derogatory terms or other controversial words. it was quite literally stylistic and tone changing.
dumb example: i like to end my posts with something like
thanks in advance,
--
znpy
which in my opinion is just common courtesy in a conversation between me and whoever will be kind to answer my questions. it's harmless and not controversial. and yet, some mods edited that out and left some irrelevant wording on that. my guess is they were farming points on the site.
I'm so glad stackoverflow died and I don't miss it at all.
The founders of SO had a theory, that irrelevant noise was what drove a site into insignificance over time. Even if it was just polite chit-chat. They took pains to automate out as much as they could, and put in place a culture that actively discouraged and removed it when possible. That culture remains even though the founders are long gone.
1. Even if the pleasantries/signature were edited out of your question, is that so bad?
2. But yeah, I think of SO as not really being set up like a bulletin board - I think of it as closer to a wiki of questions and their answers.
3. Maybe other people editing out pleasantries/signature is actually a good thing as others will then see your question as higher quality?
> 1. Even if the pleasantries/signature were edited out of your question, is that so bad?
It pissed off znpy so bad that many years later they still recall on HN how irritated that made them! Now you could argue that letting znpy's pleasantries stay would have cumulatively pissed off more people in the long wrong. But I very seriously doubt it would.
> Even if the pleasantries/signature were edited out of your question, is that so bad?
Yes.
Erasing the personal touch out of someone’s writings is erasing them.
Ironically, erasing that kind of stuff is likely very good good for training large language models.
>> Even if the pleasantries/signature were edited out of your question, is that so bad?
> Erasing the personal touch out of someone’s writings is erasing them.
Yeah, as I mentioned in the grandparent comment, I think the site was better thought of as a wiki of questions/answers than a forum. Including things like pleasantries/signatures on a wiki-adjacent site probably is not the right use for that kind of site. (Personally, I was incredibly frustrated by SO but for a very different reason - edits to questions or answers, etc. that fixed typos, pointing out that an answer's linked app had been down for years, etc. were often rejected.)
I once had a fairly popular answer to a general question that included the word “mankind.” Someone changed it to “humankind,” another person changed that to “humans,” and eventually someone removed it altogether for no apparent reason. Then even more pointless edits followed. It became far too much hassle for absolutely no benefit.
There was a gold badge given out if you got 100 edits approved. And another if you got 100 edits reversed.
Ending a question with "thanks" is explicitly forbidden because it is noise.
This is an example of a functional cultural trait -- question and answer style should not be larded up with irrelevant pleasantries and redundant signatures that waste time for everyone reading the question thereafter. They took the time to fix it for you and you should have assimilated.
This is different from closing your question and depriving you of an answer or making you feel dumb. It's just teaching you how to communicate professionally.
I put my name on my professional communications.
Communicating professionally and coming across as polite are not mutually exclusive.
Stackoverflow was not the K&R.