vishym

When I choose a new platform, I try to assess how long the platform my survive. APIs, ease of development and ease of use are important too. But when I am going to spend many hours trying to learn a new platform, I try to as sure as possible that the platform is going to last for at least 5 years.

Now it is easy to judge this for well established platforms like Linux, GitHub and software in the similar league but it is not so easy to judge this for new upcoming platforms offered by emerging technologies and startups. For the latter I look at what people are talking about the platform online, how much financial or community support it has got. For example, I would be more willing to put effort into learning a new open source platform with 1000+ GitHub stars and 100+ forks than I would be willing to learn a platform with 20+ GitHub stars. Similarly, I would be more willing to put effort into a new startup's platform that has got several millions of dollars of funding and good reputation than I would be willing to put into a platform with little to no funding. These are not perfect metrics but they make a good start.

Stack Overflow has really forgotten how to engage with the community and especially so with the community of moderators. These moderators are not getting paid. It is a huge amount of volunteer effort they put as hobby. SO should express a lot of gratitude for these moderators who keep SO in sane condition. But SO has been bringing one policy change after another without getting the full support of this community. I think it started with CoC changes that required everyone to become overly polite which many users and moderators did not really agree with. The recent debate on gendered pronouns has frankly been a real mess done in haste and without transparency. If SO does not fix their ways of engaging with the community, I am afraid more and more moderators are going to leave this place.