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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#21

Post by smeagull »

readingnews wrote: post #3

I was promoted to one of those "mod" type people who reviews new answers, first posts, etc, a few years back. I can tell you that I quit in the last 6 months. All new answers are answers on questions from first time posters, answering questions that have good solid answers from 8+ years ago (mostly 10 years), and it is pretty obvious, they are just doing it to get points. The question/answer is not something that has…

> answering questions that have good solid answers from 8+ years ago (mostly 10 years),

I hit upon those useless answers all the time. I have no need to know about solutions that might have worked a decade ago and are obsolete. Stack Overflow is useless now.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#22

Post by whynotmaybe »

BatFastard wrote: post #4

They were and are an excellent resource. Is it inevitable that traffic would decrease as questions are answered? Has traffic gone somewhere else? Has AI replaced it?

For me, a few months ago, when I had a question, I used to google/bing it and try to find my solution between 2-3 different SO answers (even the questions themselves were often helpful).

Now, AI kinda replaced for me, it's copilot first, then ChatGPT if copilot is not enough, then google/bing if ChatGPT is not enough and maybe finally SO.

Conservative figure from my side would be 15-25% less stackoverflow in a regular day.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#23

Post by capableweb »

dylan604 wrote: post #12
hirundo wrote: post #2

This is a large decline. It does not correlate well with the rise of LLMs, which have shifted my own habits away from Stack Overflow recently. Looking through the graphs, the most dramatic shift was the large drop in new visits in the first half of last year, by two thirds or more. That seems late to be a Covid effect. There were some political controversies, but it would surprise me if they had such a large effect.…

You trust LLM responses? I feel they are not worth the paper they are written on

No, no one sane would. Just like no one sane would trust random SO authors with any authority either. You still have to verify the information somehow, but at least in the LLM case I instantly get replies 24/7, and it's been reading more papers than any of the authors on SO.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#24

Post by swyx »

fishtoaster wrote: post #20

Interesting that this seems to have started around Spring 2021 when posts + votes started tailing off, followed by traffic starting to decline around spring of 2022. I can think of a few theories that I don't think hold water: 1. The rise of ChatGPT to answer many questions that StackOverflow would previously have been used for. This seems unlikely, since the timing doesn't really work out. 2. The perennial complaint…

github copilot was launched in Oct 2021 as well https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1683640691124224000

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#25

Post by Legend2440 »

dylan604 wrote: post #12
hirundo wrote: post #2

This is a large decline. It does not correlate well with the rise of LLMs, which have shifted my own habits away from Stack Overflow recently. Looking through the graphs, the most dramatic shift was the large drop in new visits in the first half of last year, by two thirds or more. That seems late to be a Covid effect. There were some political controversies, but it would surprise me if they had such a large effect.…

You trust LLM responses? I feel they are not worth the paper they are written on

ChatGPT has gotten quite a bit more accurate over the last few months. It does seem to have lost some creativity in the process, but it's much more true to the training data now.

Code is easy to verify anyway.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#26

Post by vbezhenar »

dylan604 wrote: post #12
hirundo wrote: post #2

This is a large decline. It does not correlate well with the rise of LLMs, which have shifted my own habits away from Stack Overflow recently. Looking through the graphs, the most dramatic shift was the large drop in new visits in the first half of last year, by two thirds or more. That seems late to be a Covid effect. There were some political controversies, but it would surprise me if they had such a large effect.…

You trust LLM responses? I feel they are not worth the paper they are written on

I trust AI as much as I trust random answer on SO. It is a direction for further research and evaluation.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#28

Post by krackers »

fishtoaster wrote: post #20

Interesting that this seems to have started around Spring 2021 when posts + votes started tailing off, followed by traffic starting to decline around spring of 2022. I can think of a few theories that I don't think hold water: 1. The rise of ChatGPT to answer many questions that StackOverflow would previously have been used for. This seems unlikely, since the timing doesn't really work out. 2. The perennial complaint…

SEO games resulting in SO clones ranking higher than SO itself?

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#29

Post by readingnews »

smashed wrote: post #19
readingnews wrote: post #3

I was promoted to one of those "mod" type people who reviews new answers, first posts, etc, a few years back. I can tell you that I quit in the last 6 months. All new answers are answers on questions from first time posters, answering questions that have good solid answers from 8+ years ago (mostly 10 years), and it is pretty obvious, they are just doing it to get points. The question/answer is not something that has…

Thanks for your work as a mod. While I understand it's a lot of work, and some (most?) might be posting low quality answers, my main problem with stack overflow has been exactly that over time, the top answer becomes stale. The question is still relevant, but the best practice or library, platform whatever changed... That is a problem the stack overflow model has a hard time adapting too.. and it just gets worst over…

From my purview, and again I am a tiny data point of one, the new answers to old questions are really:

Original accepted upvoted to +20 answer: "Take Y and drive it into X, grep output for Z and place in AZ for processing with the -kombucha switch"

Answer posted yesterday by "NewUserXX123", a first post: "Take A and drive it into B, grep output for C and place it in DD for processing with the -kombucha switch"

It gets pretty tiring responding with a custom comment and downvoting, only to have "NewUserXX123" then cuss you out in a DM about how you are a total @!#$%()&!@$%.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#30

Post by [deleted] »

fishtoaster wrote: post #20

Interesting that this seems to have started around Spring 2021 when posts + votes started tailing off, followed by traffic starting to decline around spring of 2022. I can think of a few theories that I don't think hold water: 1. The rise of ChatGPT to answer many questions that StackOverflow would previously have been used for. This seems unlikely, since the timing doesn't really work out. 2. The perennial complaint…

[deleted]
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