Stack Overflow: A year in moderation

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On the 13th March, last year I was elected as a Stack Overflow moderator. I am using this opportunity to thank everyone who who voted for me back then.

It has been an interesting year. The "Chinese curse" kind of interesting, but I can't talk about that too much.

The world is flooded with AI slop, and everyone and their dog is using it. And Stack Overflow users are no exception. Low-reputation users, high-reputation users, the magical song of AI is too hard to resist.

Literal thousands and thousands of users have posted AI answers, thinking they will get away with it. Thousands and thousands have failed.

When someone asks me why am I so skeptical about AI?

The answer is really simple: I have seen it all. I know what it can and what it cannot do. And while it is certainly a useful tool when used carefully and for specific purposes, most of the time it is a huge time waster.

Responsible use of AI is a rare occurrence on the site. I think I can count the number of cases where AI was used on Stack Overflow in a responsible way, using my hand. In all other cases, it was not.

Because of that and the harm such answers pose to the site's quality, Stack Overflow has a very strict AI policy. Any post where AI is used in any way is subject to removal. Even if you use it only for grammar and rephrasing of the content you wrote, such use is not allowed. The reason is simple. Moderators cannot verify the accuracy of each and every AI answer, and doing selective deletions would take too much time.

See: Policy: Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is banned and What is this site’s policy on content generated by generative artificial intelligence tools?

If you get tempted to use AI when posting on Stack Overflow or any other site in the Stack Exchange network, please, please, please: just don't.

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