Right. I often end up on Stack Exchange when researching various engineering-related topics, and I'm always blown away by how incredibly toxic the threads are. We get small glimpses of that on HN, but it was absolutely out of control on Stack Exchange.

At the same time, I think there was another factor: at some point, the corpus of answered questions has grown to a point where you no longer needed to ask, because by default, Google would get you to the answer page. LLMs were just a cherry on top.

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oofbey 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I agree there was some natural slow down as the corpus grew - the obvious questions were answered. But if the community was healthy, that should not have caused growth to stop. New technologies get created all the time, each starting with zero SO questions. (Or Google releases v2.0 which invalidates all answers written about v1.)

SO just stopped being fun for me. I wish more systems would use their point systems though.

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martin-t 4 days ago | parent [-]

I think about better voting systems all the time (one major issue being downvote can mean "I want fewer people to see this", "I disagree", and "This is factually wrong" and you never know which.

But I am not sure if SO's is actually that good, given it led to this toxic behavior.

I think something like slashdot's metamoderation should work best but I never participated there nor have I seen any other website use anything similar.

	▲	oofbey 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Arstechnica used to have different kinds of upvotes for "funny" vs "insightful" - I forget exactly all of them. But I found it awesome. I wanted to and could read the insightful comments, not the funny ones. A couple years back they redid the discussion system and got rid of it. Since then the quality of discussion has IMHO completely tanked.

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zahlman 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'm always blown away by how incredibly toxic the threads are.

They are not "threads" and are not supposed to be "threads". Thinking about them as if they were, is what leads to the perception of toxicity.

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jappgar 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's funny that people blame the site for this.

That toxicity is just part of software engineering culture. It's everywhere.

	▲	VLM 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Its karma farming. Number must go up regardless of the human cost. Thats why the same problem is seen here, to a lesser extent. Karma in social media is a technology to produce competitiveness and unhappiness, usually to increase advertising engagement. Compare how nice the people are on 4chan /g/ board compared to the declining years of SO. Or Reddit for that matter.

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gfhifd42 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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ajkjk 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

well you can say all that but it doesn't hold up to experience. The culture feels very different here. So, no, it's not the same.

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gfhifd42 4 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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malfist 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

For someone with a green username, you sure do have strong opinions about hn

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gfhifd42 4 days ago | parent [-]

I literally said I've been here longer than someone who has been here since 2013 so you attack my profile age.

This is the toxic destruction of hn I'm talking about.

You are the toxic one. You offer negative value.

	▲	malfist 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you meet one asshole on your way to work, they're probably an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, you're probably the asshole.

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fragmede 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Well I've been around here longer than you

Prove it. Use your main account, you coward.

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gfhifd42 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't have anything to prove to you.

You are the toxicity I'm talking about. You've added zero value to the discussion. I've offered value.

You attack my account age and I've already said why it's not old.

Because idgaf.

	▲	fragmede 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Integrity usually means owning your words. Pseudonymity can be fine, but pretending it signals higher principle is backwards.

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ajkjk 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

maybe I think those things, or maybe I think totally different things; you have no way of knowing

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gfhifd42 4 days ago | parent [-]

I know because i click your username and see your email and website.

Click on my name you get nothing.

Yours is full of hope of someone reaching out to you. Mine is idgaf.

I don't need to defend the status quo. I don't want karma pOints.

I want integrity.

	▲	ajkjk 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		What you seem to want is to fill the comment section with deranged rambling

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hahn-kev 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This response sounds quite toxic actually

	▲	gfhifd42 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Because you don't want to hear it, that's all. It's not toxic, it's idgaf.