Return to Answer

I have to join this discussion a little later due to being mostly offline in the last few days.

Let me start with a personal consideration. I won't sugarcoat it. You have reached a new low. This is pathetically bad.

In the last months I have asked you multiple times if you were trying to remove anonymous access (this is just one example) and you conveniently ignored that (like you ignored my questions about the options in the data request page...). Now I come here to see I was right.

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post's passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps," I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify who posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second that the community—mostly made of devs—decides to revolt. Also, please remember that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will forego here any argument about the legality and morality of the company actions. I think others have already done a great job.

I will instead point out what—in my opinion—the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company's recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents:

1. The company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly shows how you hope to increase user "activation." There is no doubt about that.

   Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions: (Look at these shiny numbers! 1k more users on the site... Yeah, they didn't post anything, but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account and never posting anything worked great!)

2. It is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / using the data as training material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the training material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least until some clamorous mishap ends this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there).

   Like before, I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content—freely reproducible under a CC BY-SA license—without it made available somewhere else? Or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care; for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and performing any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE.

I have to join this discussion a little later due to being mostly offline in the last few days.

Let me start with a personal consideration. I won't sugarcoat it. You have reached a new low. This is pathetically bad.

In the last months I have asked you multiple times if you were trying to remove anonymous access (this is just one example) and you conveniently ignored that (like you ignored my questions about the options in the data request page...). Now I come here to see I was right.

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post's passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps," I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify who posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second that the community - mostly made of devs - decides to revolt. Also, please remember that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will forego here any argument about the legality and morality of the company actions. I think others have already done a great job.

I will instead point out what - in my opinion - the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company's recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents:

1. The company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly shows how you hope to increase user "activation." There is no doubt about that.

   Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions: (Look at these shiny numbers! 1k more users on the site... Yeah, they didn't post anything, but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account and never posting anything worked great!)

2. It is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / using the data as training material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the training material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least until some clamorous mishap ends this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there).

   Like before, I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content - freely reproducible under a CC BY-SA license - without someone making it available somewhere else? Or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care; for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and performing any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE.

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps." I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify WHO posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second the community - mostly made of devs - decides to revolts. Also please remind that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will instead point out what -in my opinion- the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents.

• first, the company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly show how you hope to increase user "activation" there is no doubt about that. Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work... or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions (look at these shinny numbers! 1k more users on the site... yeah, they didn't post anything but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account - and never post anything . worked great!)

• second, it is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / use the data as train material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the train material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least as long as some clamorous mishap will end this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there). Like before I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content - freely reproducible under a CC-BY-SA license - do not have that made available somewhere else or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care - for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and performing any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post's passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps," I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify who posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second that the community—mostly made of devs—decides to revolt. Also, please remember that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will instead point out what—in my opinion—the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company's recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents:

1. The company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly shows how you hope to increase user "activation." There is no doubt about that.

   Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions: (Look at these shiny numbers! 1k more users on the site... Yeah, they didn't post anything, but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account and never posting anything worked great!)

2. It is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / using the data as training material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the training material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least until some clamorous mishap ends this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there).

   Like before, I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content—freely reproducible under a CC BY-SA license—without it made available somewhere else? Or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care; for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and performing any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE.

I have to join this discussion a little later due to being mostly offline in the last few days.

Let me start with a personal consideration. I won't sugarcoat it. You have reached a new low. This is pathetically bad.

In the last months I have asked you multiple times if you were trying to remove anonymous access (this is just one example ) and you conveniently ignored that (like you ignored my questions about the options in the data request page...). Now I come here to see I was right.

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps." I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify WHO posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second the community - mostly made of devs - decides to revolts. Also please remind that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will forego here any argument about the legality and morality of the company actions. I think others have already done a great job.

I will instead point out what -in my opinion- the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents.

• first, the company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly show how you hope to increase user "activation" there is no doubt about that. Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work... or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions (look at these shinny numbers! 1k more users on the site... yeah, they didn't post anything but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account - and never post anything . worked great!)

• second, it is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / use the data as train material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the train material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least as long as some clamorous mishap will end this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there). Like before I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content - freely reproducible under a CC-BY-SA license - do not have that made available somewhere else or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care - for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and I will any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE

I have to join this discussion a little later due to being mostly offline in the last few days.

Let me start with a personal consideration. I won't sugarcoat it. You have reached a new low. This is pathetically bad.

In the last months I have asked you multiple times if you were trying to remove anonymous access (this is just one example ) and you conveniently ignored that (like you ignored my questions about the options in the data request page...). Now I come here to see I was right.

The company is trying to put a login wall on the availability of the data dump. Given this post passive aggressive threat that "when you breach the agreement that you make when downloading the dumps file, we do have the option to decline to provide you with future versions of the data dumps." I suspect the company thinks they can watermark the dumps to be able to identify WHO posted a downloaded file to a public facing site... and not get their attempt utterly destroyed the second the community - mostly made of devs - decides to revolts. Also please remind that the worst option is RPA, and despite you thinking you can detect that easily... trust me you don't want to force people to organize.

I will forego here any argument about the legality and morality of the company actions. I think others have already done a great job.

I will instead point out what -in my opinion- the company are actually trying to do because I didn't see this mentioned a lot.

The company recent actions clearly point at two parallel intents.

• first, the company want to artificially inflate the userbase numbers. Constantly showing a "pwetty plez, make account" prompt in the face of anonymous users clearly show how you hope to increase user "activation" there is no doubt about that. Yet what I am not sure about is if everyone in the company really thinks this is going to work... or if this is just a "mad cell" trying to scam the top management with bigger numbers that won't translate to actual contributions (look at these shinny numbers! 1k more users on the site... yeah, they didn't post anything but that is 1k more users still!!! Our plan to annoy them to the point of creating an account - and never post anything . worked great!)

• second, it is also clear that the company doesn't care at all about the site purpose. The only value Prosus sees in the site is selling the data / use the data as train material. Considering the recent OpenAI partnership I think it is pretty safe to assume that Prosus is desperate to try to get the exclusivity to the train material the community is making available and is willing to do whatever it takes to that goal, at least as long as some clamorous mishap will end this story in disaster (and to be honest I think they are really getting there). Like before I am also not sure of the actual reality here: does Prosus really think they can restrict access to the content - freely reproducible under a CC-BY-SA license - do not have that made available somewhere else or is this just pretending to be able to in order to mislead their OpenAI partner into thinking they have the "strategic advantage of exclusive access to Stack Data"? To be honest, I don't care - for us users the result is still the same.

I think there is only one reasonable course of action. Starting today, I will officially stop contributing new Q/A content to the network and performing any curation activity. I will only stay active on posting on Meta.SE