Why I'm signing the Stack Overflow strike letter
jlericson.com
jlericson.com
> The objective nature of the content on Stack Overflow means that if any part of an answer is wrong, then the answer is objectively wrong. In order for Stack Overflow to maintain a strong standard as a reliable source for correct and verified information, such answers must be edited or replaced.
This hasn't been the case for years.
Stack Overflow lost that claim when diamond mods refused to act upon not-an-answer flags that clearly didn't answer the question in any reading of the title or body of the question and the community of 10k users weren't able to delete it without accusations of targeted voting on an old positive scored question.
It's a nice ideal... but the uncurated, unverified, and clearly incorrect portion of Stack Overflow answer far outnumber the posts provided by people endeavoring to give correct answers.
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It is necessary to moderate content as content and behavior as behavior. Trying to claim moderation of behavior based on content or content based on behavior gets to inconsistencies that are showing up with how both the moderations and the company are attempting to handle GPT content.
If content is correct and is assisted by an AI tool (GPT? Grammerly? something else? Does it matter?) removing it based on the content sends the wrong message.
Likewise, leaving content from someone who is not providing good answers because they are human sends the wrong message (anything is ok). https://stackoverflow.com/a/76402243 (it was edited to make the keys look neat rather than down voted where it doesn't even refer to the right programming tool... and yet, it is an attempt to answer and will likely remain because it was written by a human).
> "Stack Overflow, Inc. has decreed a near-total prohibition on moderating AI-generated content"