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Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

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Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#201

Post by oofbey »

gfhifd42 wrote: post #164
porcoda wrote: post #13

Not a big surprise once LLMs came along: stack overflow developed some pretty unpleasant traits over time. Everything from legitimate questions being closed for no good reason (or being labeled a duplicate even though they often weren’t), out of date answers that never get updated as tech changes, to a generally toxic and condescending culture amongst the top answerers. For all their flaws, LLMs are so much better.

It doesn't have anything to do with LLMs. It has to do with shifting one's focus from doing good things to making money. Joel did that, and SO failed because of it. Joel promised the answering community he wouldn't sell SO out from under them, but then he did. And so the toxicity at the top trickled down into the community. Those with integrity left the community and only toxic, selfcentered people remained to destro…

How did Joel sell out? Curious as I’m not aware of any monetary changes. I watched Joel several times support completely brain dead policies in the meta discussions which really set the rules and tone. So my respect there is low.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#202

Post by shawn_w »

oxag3n wrote: post #159

Are we in the age of all CS problems being solved and everything being invented? Even if so, do LLM incorporate all that knowledge? A lot of my knowledge in CS come from books and lectures, LLMs can shine in that area by scraping all those sources. However SO was less about academic knowledge but more about experience sharing. You won't find recipes for complex problems in books, e.g. how to catch what part of my pro…

There's https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/ for the more academic CS questions btw.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#203

Post by Cloudef »

secondcoming wrote: post #61
porcoda wrote: post #13

Not a big surprise once LLMs came along: stack overflow developed some pretty unpleasant traits over time. Everything from legitimate questions being closed for no good reason (or being labeled a duplicate even though they often weren’t), out of date answers that never get updated as tech changes, to a generally toxic and condescending culture amongst the top answerers. For all their flaws, LLMs are so much better.

How can we be sure that LLMs won't start giving stale answers?

LLMs are just statistics, eventually they kill themselves with feedback loop by consuming their own farts (literally)

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#206

Post by antonymoose »

vbezhenar wrote: post #68
RomanPushkin wrote: post #23

Many 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 pol…

It's also was a bit frustrating for me to answer. There was time when I wanted to contribute, but questions that I could answer were very primitive and there were so many people eager to post their answer that it demotivated me and I quickly stopped doing that. Honestly there are too many users and most of them know enough to answer these questions. So participating as "answerer" wasn't fun for me.

Once StackOverflow profiles, brief as they were, became a metric they ceased to be worth a helluva lot. Back in the early 2010s I used to include a link to my profile. I had a low 5-figure score and I had more than one interviewer impressed with my questions and answers on the site. Then came point farmers.

I remember one infamous user who would farm points by running your questions against some grammar / formatting script. He would make sure to clean up an errant comma or a lingering space character at the end of your post to get credit for editing your question, thereby “contributing.”

To their early credit, I once ran for and nearly won a moderator slot. They sent a nice swag package to thank me for my contributions to the community.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#207

Post by cellularmitosis »

bborud wrote: post #103
porcoda wrote: post #13

Not a big surprise once LLMs came along: stack overflow developed some pretty unpleasant traits over time. Everything from legitimate questions being closed for no good reason (or being labeled a duplicate even though they often weren’t), out of date answers that never get updated as tech changes, to a generally toxic and condescending culture amongst the top answerers. For all their flaws, LLMs are so much better.

I suppose all sites that have a voting component run the risk of becoming unpleasant. Hacker News, and we who frequent it, ought to have that in mind.

I think it has more to do with the fact that when you offer zero salary for moderators, you have to take what you can get, and it ain't good. I don't really see a connection to the voting mechanic.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#208

Post by whiterook6 »

Alupis wrote: post #107
palata wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I personally stopped contributing to StackOverflow before LLMs, because of the toxic moderation. Now with LLMs, I can't remember the last time I visited StackOverflow.

People in this thread are missing another key component in the decline of StackOverflow - the more experienced you become, the less useful it is. The harder the problem, the less engagement it gets. People who spend hours working on your issue are rewarded with a single upvote. Meanwhile, "how do I concat a string" gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes. The incentive/reward structure punished experienced folks with chal…

Here's my brilliant idea: the longer it takes for an answer to be marked correct, or the more answers there are before one is marked correct, the more points that answer deserves.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#209

Post by stirfish »

Alupis wrote: post #107
palata wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I personally stopped contributing to StackOverflow before LLMs, because of the toxic moderation. Now with LLMs, I can't remember the last time I visited StackOverflow.

People in this thread are missing another key component in the decline of StackOverflow - the more experienced you become, the less useful it is. The harder the problem, the less engagement it gets. People who spend hours working on your issue are rewarded with a single upvote. Meanwhile, "how do I concat a string" gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes. The incentive/reward structure punished experienced folks with chal…

Remember when the R developers would ask and answer their own basic questions about R, essentially building up a beginner tutorial on stack overflow? That was a cool time

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#210

Post by johnfn »

Some comments:

- This is a really remarkable graph. I just didn't realize how thoroughly it was over for SO. It stuns me as much as when Encyclopædia Britannica stopped selling print versions a mere 9 years after the publication of Wikipedia, but at an even faster timescale.

- I disagree with most comments that the brusque moderation is the cause of SO's problems, though it certainly didn't help. SO has had poor moderation from the beginning. The fundamental value proposition of SO is getting an answer to a question; if you can the same answer faster, you don't need SO. I suspect that the gradual decline, beginning around 2016, is due to growth in a number of other sources of answers. Reddit is kind of a dark horse here, as I began seeing answers on Google to more modern technical questions link to a Reddit thread frequently along with SO from 2016 onwards. I also suspect Discord played a part, though this is harder to gauge; I certainly got a number of answers to questions for, e.g., Bun, by asking around in the Bun Discord, etc. The final nail in the coffin is of course LLMs, which can offer a SO-level answer to a decent percentage of questions instantly. (The fact that the LLM doesn't insult you is just the cherry on top.)

- I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but what happens now? Despite stratification I mentioned above, SO was by far the leading source of high quality answers to technical questions. What do LLMs train off of now? I wonder if, 10 years from now, LLMs will still be answering questions that were answered in the halcyon 2014-2020 days of SO better than anything that came after? Or will we find new, better ways to find answers to technical questions?

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