alt Hacker NewsI wonder how many people actually had bad experiences with SO vs how many people found it genuinely helpful. I'm going to guess the people with bad experiences are much more likely to comment about it loudly than all the people who found it helpful. (I always feel this dissonance when reading about the mean mods ruining the site, since I never experienced them firsthand.)
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I found it quite helpful at times. Learning in my own projects, and some professional things that I got stuck on I found some incredible help at times.
In my niche, we also had an absolute dictator of a moderator who was a condescending jerk online. Open belittling of people asking questions, connecting new questions to those which had been asked years ago in a different part of the stack and then closing the question, etc. Real tin pot tyrant nonsense, and frankly, a bully.
There was a day where I saw they had been denied a role they interviewed for since they posted about it. I already knew they were in my city. It was a role I had advertised and was the chair for. Im still not sure exactly which candidate, but have my suspicions. In any case, bullet dodged.
My experience was both - I got some real valuable help esp. when I was learning how to program.
But... I also came across some real jacka*es. Those were on my questions, but also reading the responses from other peoples questions.