this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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Programming
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I stopped asking in like 2020 for the most part. Everything I asked was getting.akred as a duplicate even though it wasn't because someone believed an ANSWER on a different question answered my question (they didn't).
Plus StackOverflow Meta has been a fucking joke for years. They removed a site from HNQ because of a tweet. Why are they listening more to random Twitter users than folks on Meta?
And the whole Monica fiasco still has me upset.
But seriously. Every time I asked a question on StackOverflow I'd spend like 30 minutes wording it correctly and looking for duplicates. I'd find things that were sort of duplicates and explain preemptively why they aren't. And every fucking time some doofus marks it as a duplicate. I just can't take it. Like it literally makes me so angry even thinking about it. They had a problem with their humans LONG before AI came around. If they'd fixed that problem they could've really positioned themselves nicely when AI happened as a boutique place for humans answering humans. But no, their culture cultivates assholes who believe they're following rules to the letter.
Yeah that is actually their official position. Your question is duplicate if an answer elsewhere might answer it, which is clearly absurd. Essentially they think "what's 1+3?" is a duplicate of "what's 2+2?".
I think fundamentally they gamified moderation too well, and for many people they turned the site into a mod-maxing game, which obviously makes it an abysmal place to be for normal users.