[zahlman]

>the current StackOverflow moderators

Overwhelmingly, the people you're talking about are not moderators. I explained this to someone else a week ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927665) and you replied to that comment.

> Sure, but in the past, StackOverflow was growing

So what? Stack Overflow users get $0.00 for this, whether they're moderators, active curators or just signed up. For users, growing the site isn't the goal. Growing interaction with the site is not the goal. The goal is building a useful artifact (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254770). This frequently entails removing, closing or duplicating questions, for the same reason that building a useful program frequently entails removing lines of code, deprecating parts of the API, and refactoring.

> and now it's dying

Why should a reduction in incoming questions mean that it's "dying"?

> Maybe something was better before

Who do you think should get to decide what's "better" here? More importantly, why?

If the YC team decided to prioritize increasing site traffic (and introduce ads to capitalize on that) on HN and maximizing the rate of new submissions, at the expense or ignorance of the quality of the discussion, that would be clearly be bad, right? You'd leave, right? I would.

The same principle applies to sites that aren't about having a discussion. Bigger is not better.

[palata]

> Overwhelmingly, the people you're talking about are not moderators.

I was actually thinking about you. You keep saying everything is great. My observation is that I used to be on SO every day, and I completely stopped contributing even though I would have plenty of stuff to add (more than ever, actually).

> Why should a reduction in incoming questions mean that it's "dying"?

There is "a reduction", and there is "being back to the amount of questions SO had in 2009 when it launched".

[zahlman]

>You keep saying everything is great.

I say it's fine, because it is. I say that a reduction in question volume has advantages in terms of accomplishing the site's goals, because it does.

There are many things about the site that I'm unhappy with, mainly to do with initiatives the staff are taking that are also very much not true to the site's goals or purpose.

> My observation is that I used to be on SO every day, and I completely stopped contributing even though I would have plenty of stuff to add

... And?

> There is "a reduction", and there is "being back to the amount of questions SO had in 2009 when it launched".

If the amount of questions went to zero per day I would still not consider this a problem. It would be an opportunity to refine the existing publicly visible questions.

As a reminder: there are already more than three times as many of those as there are articles on Wikipedia. You say it's a problem that we don't see thousands more per day like we used to. I say it's a problem that we already have so many; and that if we had perhaps a tenth as many, it would become easier to find what you want.

[palata]

> ... And?

And as far as I can see, it is dying.

> If the amount of questions went to zero per day I would still not consider this a problem.

So on the one hand you find it okay to delete old questions, and on the other hand you find it okay to not add new questions. But it's not dying.

> it would become easier to find what you want.

It has never happened to me that I could not find what I wanted on SO because there were too many similar questions. It has happened, though, that I could not find what I wanted because it was not there. And when I added it, I was closed by people who obviously had no understanding of my question (together with its answer).

Again, I am not saying that it should be forbidden to close questions. What I am saying is that SO has become a place where even good questions get closed. By people who know better, like you.

[zahlman]

> And as far as I can see, it is dying.

And why are you the one who gets to make this judgment?

> So on the one hand you find it okay to delete old questions, and on the other hand you find it okay to not add new questions. But it's not dying.

Yes.

You write this as though you think there is a contradiction here. I genuinely don't understand why. There is no contradiction here.

QuickDraw wasn't "injured" when it lost 2000 lines of code, either (https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html).

> It has never happened to me that I could not find what I wanted on SO because there were too many similar questions.

Back when I was trying to sort out the mess more actively, it happened to me daily. I distinctly recall multiple instances of spending hours at a time tearing my hair out over it, and complaining in the corresponding chat about the terrible questions, the unintentional clickbait, and the sensitivity of search engines to minor variations in the query.

> closed by people who obviously had no understanding of my question (together with its answer).

This is said by perhaps 90% of people complaining about their question being closed, and trivially shown to be incorrect in perhaps 90% of those cases.

But also, "people can't figure out what you're trying to ask" counts against your question. By design. Because questions are expected to communicate clearly. So that other people who read them don't have to waste their own time making sure they're in the right place.

Of course, there are other reasons a question might not be understood. But it's not hard to distinguish between "this person can barely write coherent English" and "I don't know anything about this technology". People are, broadly speaking, just not going around the tags for technologies they don't know about in order to close questions. What on Earth would they get out of that?

> What I am saying is that SO has become a place where even good questions get closed. By people who know better, like you.

Again: please show a link to an example of a question that you believe was unjustifiably closed, and make sure that you can clearly explain, in terms of existing policy why you believe the closure was invalid.

Do this on https://meta.stackoverflow.com, where it belongs.

Or if you have done this in the past, link me an example of that. That's fine here.

[palata]

> it's not hard to distinguish between "this person can barely write coherent English" and "I don't know anything about this technology"

Sorry, I hadn't realised I could barely write coherent English.

> QuickDraw wasn't "injured" when it lost 2000 lines of code, either

Talking about writing coherent English, what the hell does this have to do with the current discussion?

[zahlman]

> Sorry, I hadn't realised I could barely write coherent English.

I was clearly referring to different kinds of questions, not to your writing.

> Talking about writing coherent English, what the hell does this have to do with the current discussion?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[bdangubic]

And why are you the one who gets to make this judgment?

the reality makes this judgment. something that was worth billions of dollars could probably be bought for $50m (this is too much…). a definition of dead

[zahlman]

I don't think that is relevant, either. Nobody who asks or answers a question on Stack Overflow, nor comments, nor edits an existing post, does so with the specific intent of increasing the market cap of Stack Exchange, Inc.