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0 pointsKarrot_Kream10mo ago0 comments

The "good" thing is, they're back to 2009 levels of postings. Now obviously that's what the mods let through but my guess is that traffic to the site is down precipitously as well. They can roll back their bureaucracy and head back to a lean path that worked for them in the past.

But I don't really think that's the problem. Reading zahlman's responses in this thread makes me think that the mods fell into the age old trap that's happened since Usenet, IRC, and still happens to this day wherever there's mods: they got tired of doing unpaid labor and instead of deciding to quit decided to become meaner and stricter. The age old mod trip.

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zahlman10mo ago

Barely any of the people involved are mods. I said that repeatedly before your post yet you chose to ignore it, despite apparently singling out my posts specifically for consideration.

Objectively, people are nicer now. Informal policies turned into a proper Code of Conduct over time and moderators (the actual moderators) take it very seriously.

Being strict about this is objectively correct and it has absolutely nothing to do with power tripping. Nobody wants to close and delete questions. They want those questions not to have existed in the first place, or rather to have been asked properly in the first place.

The system does not incentivize any of this curation effort; it happens entirely thanklessly and driven purely by intrinsic motivation to produce a specific valuable thing.

This is not a matter of "bureaucracy".

As far as I can tell there is no issue with site traffic:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/08/08/insights-into-stack-ov... https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1901940/

bookofjoe10mo ago

Thank goodness dang has so far avoided this path.

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