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Stack Overflow drops to 1,442 questions in July, down 99% from 2014 peak (ppc.land)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (14 children)

On Lemmy or Stack Overflow?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    I'd love to answer questions on here. I don't see many.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (7 children)

    Here is an example community that refuses to migrate here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/.

    The top-upvoted comments are... eye-opening, to say the least. In this arena of man vs. bear, they have chosen the bear (Reddit), rather than subject themselves to our overall lack of moderation to make a place that mainstream normies - even ones technical enough to be interested in F-droid - can stand to exist in.

    That said, actually I thought that programming.dev was fairly chill though, so I am not certain that I understand the reasons why, if we are specifically talking about the instance you are on? Many communities on hexbear, and some of the more extremist content on Lemmy.ml, are even hidden by default for a new account.

    Perhaps it is the overall lack of transparency about such matters? Someone browsing by https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=Active would still see "funny meme" content such as https://lemmy.world/post/50297816, even without an account, which can be quite off-putting.

    And there are so many people who have come here, remained for literally years, and then decided to leave. We stayed, so it's a bias effect for sure, but their stories are quite a turn-off to new users.

    Many instances have put in a great deal of effort to make the Threadiverse more palatable to new users. But... when you read the responses to posts like this one, it does reveal how large swathes of this place go mostly unmoderated, or at least what is left is annoying and tiring to have to wade through.

    Example comment: "What a fucking chud loser you are", which aside from representing a personal attack on the user rather than their argument (a direct violation of that community's rule #2), also detracts from rather than adds to the subject under discussion.

    The people in that subreddit are already having discussions in that space - Reddit is getting more annoying all the time, but they can persist. Is there is any particular reason then that they should come here and subject themselves to our toddler fights over whether Russia invaded Ukraine vs. the other way around? (which isn't even something up for debate, realistically speaking?)

    Anyway in case you are interested, there is a !ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev community that you could join, although there has been only one post within the last four months, so while not quite dead it is definitely struggling rather than thriving. There is also https://programming.dev/c/cs_career_questions and https://programming.dev/c/no_stupid_questions, although they are also struggling.

    Maybe we can do things to reduce our toxicity level, but I fear that the word is out about Lemmy being mainly a tankie bar, and I don't know how to convince anyone (especially myself) that it is not the case - especially bc that is well and truly what we are, and yet I also think that it needn't be all that we could ever be?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe I am bad at finding communities to subscribe to. For the most part, I'm mostly subscribed to programming-related subreddits (although I was missing. cs_caeer_questions and no_stupid_questions – thanks!)

    I don't personally think Lemmy's "tankie community" reputation is that harmful:

    1. It helps explain federation and instance selecting instances to outsiders.
    2. Reputations can change. Over a decade ago, Reddit got a lot of media attention for hosting some nasty subreddits, and before they were banned, were accepted in the name of free speech. Few seem to know or care about that anymore.
    3. Twitter and 4chan are still extremely popular despite their reputations of being preferential to Nazis and pedophiles.

    I don't even think Lemmy needs to be overly attractive to outsiders, but it kind of sucks when I search for an equivalent to an active subreddit and find a wasteland (like the fossdroid community. I've also just joined that wasteland). I'd settle for a few quality posts per week for each niche. I think what a lot of communities need are simply signs of life for others to see.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago*

    It's not your fault, the tools for community discovery are exceedingly poor on Lemmy (this is one arena where PieFed really shines, having virtually solved that issue). Sorting communities by total rather than active users preferentially highlights those that died off 3+ years ago after the Rexodus waned, rather than the most highly active ones currently, which is the polar opposite of what would be most helpful.

    And then sorting posts by All as people keep recommending will by definition not show those communities that are not posted to on practically a daily basis. Thus we can have meme and comics communities here, but to have such discussion communities is exceedingly difficult due to the network effect, even among those of us already here.

    About tankies: I really have no desire to keep bringing it up over and over and over again, farming the downvotes that result each time. Rather I was saying that this, after the network effect, is the top response that I see on Reddit as to why they refuse to come here. i.e. I'm not spreading my own opinion here - just block people and move on, you know - I'm reporting a diagnosis as to how we can, or rather are blocked from, moving forward.

    Indeed though, things change. I would argue the principle of inertia in that they do not simply change all on their own, but rather as a result of effort. Reddit had something to offer - an experience that was superior to what came before. But the experiences here are not superior: over the years there have been network timeouts, whole instances up and disappear (e.g. lemm.ee), the content is for the most part not here, and that network effect is truly real.

    And the network effect and the name recognition of Twitter (X) and 4chan works for them. It does not (seem to?) work for Lemmy. I dunno, you could try to go to that subreddit and others like it and explain what Lemmy has to offer? They might ban you but then it would have been tried.

    As for me I am still learning - e.g. I did not know until a few days ago about https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/. This seems like kind-of a game changer to me⁉️ Now I want to know: why don't people recommend programming.dev more often? Do they, like me, not know about this? Surely many do not want this kind of curation to be performed for them, even though it is easily reversed? (At least, I think it is? I don't really know... perhaps I need to make an account and find out? or find a hidden community on my own instance to test that out?)

    It is not only community discovery that is so poor on Lemmy, it is also knowledge of how such things work - especially hidden communities. (De-)Federations have their own list and people have talked about them extensively over the years, whereas the concept of hidden communities has no such public exposure, either in Lemmy or PieFed. And if even we who have been here and at least a quarter paying attention to matters as they came out don't know, then I certainly cannot blame Redditors for not knowing either.

    It is also extremely frustrating that the pace of feature development is measured in significant fractions of a decade rather than more quickly, especially when Redditors already have access to so much such as user & post flairs, polls, multi-communities, notifications sent upon moderation events, a modmail (who is a Threadiverse user supposed to ask when their content is removed why that was done - are they supposed to simply DM each one and see who responds?), and posts that are not "deleted" but instead remain active & accessible to anyone with the URL, so that discussions began in them can finish despite the moderator's decision to no longer platform the post in the subreddit's community feed listing. PieFed has most of these things btw, while Lemmy lacks all of them, and it strongly looks like that situation will largely continue for the next 5-10 years.

    What happened to Stack Overflow is happening here too. People come here less and less often, as the reasons to do so decrease alongside each user that flees from here. It would be nice to see this trend reversed. Which means attracting some new users and moreover retaining existing ones - not at the scale of millions but if the goal was to at least to retain an even distribution then at the scale of tens of thousands?

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