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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#51

Post by technion »

readingnews wrote: post #29
smashed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get…

That's going to depend on your domain, because most fronted d questions I come across end in "there is a jquery plugin for that" which don't help modern sites without jquery.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#52

Post by ourmandave »

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…

At least they let you sort by most recent answer date now.

Some really old questions (circa 2009) have the answer to the latest version, that required scrolling through multiple pages.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#53

Post by morkalork »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #48
morkalork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl is a good example because it's stagnant. Googling Python or Java? If the result is up to date, it's a low quality content farm. If it isn't from a content farm, it's a page from 2008 that is no longer relevant at all!

> stagnant I would call that "stable" :) Or "good enough, that it doesn't need constant fixing" :)

Fair enough!

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#54

Post by labster »

morkalork wrote: post #44
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #33

"How to do A?" Comment: "You shouldn't do A, it's better to do B" Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". Yeah sure, in the beginning, there were many more basic questions (how to increase number by 1, how to get division remainder, how to check if file exists,...), and if you're coding in Perl, you can still find all the answers... if you're working in python, you'll find answers for python2, some for python3, some spec…

Perl is a good example because it's stagnant. Googling Python or Java? If the result is up to date, it's a low quality content farm. If it isn't from a content farm, it's a page from 2008 that is no longer relevant at all!

Perl has TIMTOWTDI as a core principle so most of its users are not going to complain about doing things the “wrong” way.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#55

Post by azayrahmad »

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?

Not sure about the statistics, but an anecdote for me: I had a specific programming issue at work I need to solve, and I tried googling for answers in Stack Overflow. There are some answers but ultimately none of what I found can actually solve my issue. Then I ask ChatGPT to suggest a solution, and in about 5 seconds it gave me an answer. Not perfect, but with little editing it is solved.

Now I'm sure that ChatGPT probably scraped StackOverflow, perhaps using the very same answers I got from StackOverflow, but combined with other answers from other sources resulting in the instant answer. That does not necessary mean AI will replace StackOverflow, it just means that people wouldn't ask redundant questions in StackOverflow anymore, just questions that AI can't solve.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#56

Post by jrumbut »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #33

"How to do A?" Comment: "You shouldn't do A, it's better to do B" Closed, duplicate of "How to do C". Yeah sure, in the beginning, there were many more basic questions (how to increase number by 1, how to get division remainder, how to check if file exists,...), and if you're coding in Perl, you can still find all the answers... if you're working in python, you'll find answers for python2, some for python3, some spec…

This is just another anecdote. But here goes.

My experience was that there was a long period where your complaint was quite true.

I believe that they have heard this complaint enough and have lightened up a little. There are still more and stricter rules than most sites, but the obsession with pruning duplicates seems to have cooled.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#58

Post by ourmandave »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #11
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.…

I wonder if Google started de-ranking them in search results, or changed something similar that caused people to click through to Stack Overflow less frequently. It is also possible there's a methodology issue. There's no source for where this data comes from.

I just googled a Microsoft tech question and first was a 3rd party provider plugin, then official MS Learn, then "people also asked...", and 4th was the SO block.

I scrolled down a lot and didn't see any scraper site links.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#59

Post by MontyCarloHall »

These figures show an extremely precipitous (and permanent) decline in traffic over the course of a few days in May of 2022 [0], during which the number of daily new visits dropped from ~1M to ~300K, the number of total daily page views dropped from ~20M to ~14M, and the number of daily sessions dropped from ~9.4M to ~6.1M.

However, there is no commensurate decrease in posts/votes during the same time period. Posts/votes remained relatively constant through 2022 (modulo normal seasonal fluctuations), until February 2023 when both fell off a cliff (I assume due to the rise of LLMs). Traffic data are sourced from Google Analytics, while post/vote data are computed internally by StackOverflow [1]. I wonder if the apparent precipitous drop in traffic in May 2022 is simply an artifact of Google Analytics suddenly changing how it tracks traffic/visitors.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/qMj7Lge.png

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36856249

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#60

Post by azayrahmad »

maxlin wrote: post #43

Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT, I sincerely hope it keeps operating, stays strict (even if it causes collateral) and keeps ban on LLM-generated content. The wheels of this kind of stuff turn slowly, but obviously ChatGPT was trained partly with data only gainable from a healthy StackOverflow-kind of site with users actively asking unique questions and enough people ans…

Hopefully so. As I mentioned in my other comment somewhere here, my optimistic prediction would be that StackOverflow will eventually still keep operating, but only by questions that can't be solved by AI, so hopefully leading into a more high quality discussions.
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