> Is it a strawman if it appears (among other places) in the 2008 launch blog post of one of the two cofounders[1]?
Yes. As you mentioned the blog post is from 2008, that's 15 years ago now. Jeff hasn't had any input on the direction of stack overflow for more than a decade. From Jeff's blog post that you linked:
> I have not worked at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I've had zero day to day operational input since that date, more or less by choice.
So I don't see how his blog post from 2018 has any place in the company's current mission. He says in the blog post that you linked that he had plenty of opinions, but he has chosen to not have any direct influence in the company for over a decade.
And Joel stepped down as CEO in 2019. And Joel's vision has clearly changed. This is from a blog post in 2019, which probably reflects what the current vision of SO has become after seeing what SO has turned into:
> In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0]
So, yes. People are building a strawman by trying to say the rude, snarky, meaningless cruel remarks are necessary to maintain "quality" answers.
> > > In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0]
I would contend that the rudeness and snark are a symptom of failed moderation tools.
On USENET, if there was a user who was bothersome to you - you could kill file them. Plonk and they're gone from what you can see.
On Reddit, you can block a user and you won't see their comments again. Similarly on Twitter you can mute or block a user. And again on GitHub. On HN you can click hide and collapse threads from people you don't want to see.
With all of these, you can make an annoying person not annoy you.
On Stack Overflow, you can't block questions from a user showing up when you look at a tag. You can't ignore answers that they have given on posts that otherwise invoke Duty Calls https://xkcd.com/386/ . You can't prevent a user from commenting on your posts. You can't filter questions to those who have had some criteria.
The combination of all of this means that on Stack Overflow, there are only three ways to handle a user.
You can flag their comments or posts and have a diamond mod step in (note that asking poor questions again and again isn't diamond mod worthy) and note that that sometimes can take days or weeks to get resolved.
You can take your ball and go home. Quit stack overflow and go cold turkey. There are more than a few who have decided that the hassle of dealing with users there isn't worth the headaches.
You can make it uncomfortable for them to stay. Snark, veiled (and unveiled) rudeness, and similar comments. Not that this is an excuse for rudeness - but rather an explanation.
One of the things to lower the temperature and reduce the amount of rudeness is to increase the ability for a user to see what they want and be able to avoid interactions with people who they don't want to interact with.
If the python tag is getting too many new programmer questions in September asking to make a circle with a for loop, the experienced programmer can either close questions (note that some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of close votes, down vote (again, some people regard that as being rude) until they run out of regular votes, and then either ask "have you read the documentation for for loop" or leave.
Rudeness is often an established user running out of moderation tools.
Yes. As you mentioned the blog post is from 2008, that's 15 years ago now. Jeff hasn't had any input on the direction of stack overflow for more than a decade. From Jeff's blog post that you linked:
> I have not worked at Stack Overflow in any capacity whatsoever since February 2012 and I've had zero day to day operational input since that date, more or less by choice.
So I don't see how his blog post from 2018 has any place in the company's current mission. He says in the blog post that you linked that he had plenty of opinions, but he has chosen to not have any direct influence in the company for over a decade.
And Joel stepped down as CEO in 2019. And Joel's vision has clearly changed. This is from a blog post in 2019, which probably reflects what the current vision of SO has become after seeing what SO has turned into:
> In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.[0]
So, yes. People are building a strawman by trying to say the rude, snarky, meaningless cruel remarks are necessary to maintain "quality" answers.
[0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-st...