Seems like the exit was very well timed.
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/408138/what-will-ha...
Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
21–30 of 1001 posts
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#22Approaching 0 is wild
Moderator team must be over the moon
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#23Many users left because they had had overly strict moderation for posting your questions. I have 6k reputation, multiple gold badges and I will remember StackOverflow as a hostile place to ask a questions, honestly. There were multiple occasions when they actually prevented me from asking, and it was hard to understand what exactly went wrong. To my understanding, I asked totally legit questions, but their asking policy is so strict, it's super hard to follow.
So "I'm not happy he's dead, but I'm happy he's gone" [x]
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#24Do I read that correctly — it is close to zero today?! I used to think SO culture was killing it but it really may have been AI after all.
It's surely both.
Look at the newest questions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions?tab=Newest
Most questions have negative karma.
Even if somehow that is "deserved", that's not a healthy ecosystem.
All that is left of SI are clueless questioners and bitter, jaded responders.
SO worked when "everyone" was new to it, and they felt energized to ask questions ( even "basic" questions, because they hadn't been asked before ), and felt energized to answer them.
SO solved a real problem - knowledge being locked into forum posts with no follow-up, or behind paywalls.
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#25Do I read that correctly — it is close to zero today?! I used to think SO culture was killing it but it really may have been AI after all.
There are tabs to change to a table view. I see a peak of 207k in 2014 and the last month was only 3,710.
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#26Do I read that correctly — it is close to zero today?! I used to think SO culture was killing it but it really may have been AI after all.
Still a couple thousand away from 0.
But yea the double whammy of toxic culture and LLMs did the trick. Decline already set in well before good enough LLMs were available.
I wonder how reddit compares, though its ofc pretty different use case there
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#27[deleted]
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#28Seems like the exit was very well timed. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/408138/what-will-ha...
[deleted]
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#29They will no doubt blame this on AI, somehow (ChatGPT release: late 2022, decline start: mid 2020), instead of the toxicity of the community and the site's goals of being a knowledgebase instead of a QA site despite the design. PS - This comment is closed as a [duplicate] of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46482620
If you ignore the early pandemic bump, it even looks like the decline started in late 2017, though it's more variable than after the bump
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
#30They will no doubt blame this on AI, somehow (ChatGPT release: late 2022, decline start: mid 2020), instead of the toxicity of the community and the site's goals of being a knowledgebase instead of a QA site despite the design. PS - This comment is closed as a [duplicate] of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46482620
It is sort of because of AI - it provided a way of escaping StackOverflow's toxicity!