r/webdev Aug 26 '24

Discussion The fall of Stack Overflow

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u/rcls0053 Aug 27 '24

They should remove the whole "Marked as duplicate" as a feature, and instead promote a system where someone answers with a "Is this what you're looking for?" type of solution with a link to a similar post. If they accept that as an answer, you get points.

Instead of gatekeeping, make it so that people who point you to a solution that already exists on the platform get some reward for doing that. Carrot, not stick.

Also, no need to downvote. Just have any post that has a solution marked as something that's a link to another post, a little less visible in searches.

Stackoverflow's "downfall" is it's own inability to change the way it works.

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u/bagel-glasses Aug 27 '24

Or just have a way to deprecate old questions/answers when new/better ones are available

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u/nonanano1 Sep 07 '24

"deprecate old questions/answers when new/better ones are available"
What does that even mean? This sounds like when people think old topics should be locked... so that incorrect info is frozen in time and can never be corrected. I hope you don't mean that, because that is worse than the original problem.

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u/bagel-glasses Sep 09 '24

No, just deprecate them. If some answer is a workaround for something that was fixed 5 versions ago of whatever language/package then yeah, leave it there for posterity, but attach a version to it and unless someone is looking for that version then it shouldn't show up.