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What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

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Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#241

Post by invader »

emdash wrote: post #220
invader wrote: post #196

Step 1: Here emerges a platform where everyone can ask, answer, or discuss questions on software development. Step 2: The platform becomes the ultimate knowledge base with community-curated answers on virtually any question related to software development. Step 3: Another company scraps the community-driven database to train its model. Step 4: The model is so efficient that people start asking questions of the model,…

The platform in question was openly hostile to people asking questions and made discussions against the rules. That's why people left the moment a better option came along

Yes, it had that problem.

But it is hardly unique, and it concerns the community more than the platform itself. Many communities with anonymous access end up toxic. It is nothing new and dates back to early BBSs and FidoNet, where a hostile attitude reached unbelievable levels.

Sure thing, the LLMs will be more polite than humans. For now...

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#242

Post by wisemanwillhear »

lynndotpy wrote: post #24

Any social organization needs to carefully consider their inclusion-exclusion curve with intentionality. I think a lot of people might balk at the word "inclusivity" today, but StackExchange had ridiculously high barriers to participation, making it inclusive to the long-time users on the site, but exclusive to the newbie participants who found themselves blocked for asking questions. They slowly killed the site in t…

Maybe I'm wrong, but with the advances in AI, SO was in for a major reduction in usage not matter how good they were about enabling the community and encouraging collaboration. I realize that your mileage my vary with modern AI, but the AI has an immediacy and interactivity that together are impossible for SO to overcome. At this point their best option might be to find a way to pivot to an AI based interface while still trying to find a way to reward and leverage the expertise of people. Even with that I suspect it's too little, too late.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#243

Post by freedomben »

fabian2k wrote: post #213
fenomas wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think SO was done in by the weird way they handled similar questions. They encouraged veteran users to flag new questions as dupes, even if the "original" question was years old and unanswered. Who does that even help? Imagine if the system had let veteran users link a new question to an existing answer rather than a question, and if the asker finds it solves their problem they can accept it. At least that wa…

The vast majority of duplicate closures use already answered questions as duplicates. So ideally that question should have answers that apply to the new question as well. In my observation this is usually the case, though the answer might be more generic. I have also seen bad duplicate closures that weren't actually exact duplicates. But people talk like this is the only kind of duplicate closure that actually happen…

I was extremely active on SO and other SE sites in the late 00s and early 10s. In those days it wasn't too bad, many duplicates were actually duplicates. However that really did start shifting. This is anecdata of course, but even questions that linked to possibel "duplicates" and pre-expalined why it wasn't the same question were often just closed as duplicates of the exact question that was linked. This happened to me several times before I got fed up and moved on with my life.

SO was a really rewarding place to ask and answer questions in those early days. It really is a crying shame what they did to the community by empowering the worst of the community to be the bosses.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#244

Post by AStrangeMorrow »

duchenne wrote: post #139
lynndotpy wrote: post #24

Any social organization needs to carefully consider their inclusion-exclusion curve with intentionality. I think a lot of people might balk at the word "inclusivity" today, but StackExchange had ridiculously high barriers to participation, making it inclusive to the long-time users on the site, but exclusive to the newbie participants who found themselves blocked for asking questions. They slowly killed the site in t…

I am a long-time user of stackoverflow with 16k points, and even I got all my questions of the last five years downvoted into oblivion.

I know, I am in the same range of points and still asking questions has always been a bit scary.

I remember spending 2h writing a question for what I thought was a complex c++/compiler issue. 10s of thousands of lines proprietary codebase, so I couldn’t include everything obviously, but also couldn’t create a “minimal working example” to reproduce the issue. So I included as many things is I could to try to get pointer on how to track that behavior I was seeing. Of course the second I post it I got a -1 plus “can’t reproduce”/“please add minimal example”.

An other time, I had a question that was very similar to an existing one, but different setup and the answer did not solve my problem at all. Mentioned all that, linked the other question and specifically wrote that it was NOT addressing my problem. Posted it, soon after tagged as duplicate with that one answer that did NOT solve the problem.

After that I rarely asked questions again.

Also the points system made it frustrating as a new user: someone 2 years ago asks a basic language question “+50 upvotes”. You asked a similar question, asking extra clarification on an aspect “-2, already answered, read the doc” and so on. And with such a big deal made about reputation it felt like just being born early and being able to be an early adopter meant you got east points. For new users, though luck.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#245

Post by freedomben »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #223
brador wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math subreddit is awful. Accusing everyone of asking homework questions if they weren’t formatted in perfect math notation. Then there’s the godot subreddit. Asked 2 questions? That’s a ban. Imagine a child learning math or game dev coming up against that. I’d quit. Curiosity extinguished. The godot github has one of those characters now too. Really anti new user. I worry, I worry.

It's ok, the kids learning this stuff these days are on YouTube and Discord.

It's pretty sad that they had to shift to a non-interactive medium to avoid getting smashed. Sad place the world is now in that respect :-(

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#247

Post by Jtarii »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #190
jeanlucas wrote: post #171

I don't have the time to, but I'm surprised there aren't a lot of comments on the decline before chatGPT was released, but after SO was sold to Prosus [1][2] Even the curious growth spike in activity happened just before the acquisition. I wish I had time to do this analysis a bit deeper, but you can look for SO activity up until when chatGPT was released, it is really noticeable. --- [1] Stack Overflow acquired by P…

I don’t think we need to blame that sale. The same steady decline had been going since 2016. Itms clearly there in the graph, but everyone trumpeting the ChatGPT angle conveniently ignores the preceding 5+ years of continual decline.

So you think its mostly just coincidence that 4 years after AI is introduced stack overflow is dead?

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#248

Post by freedomben »

andai wrote: post #110
morningsam wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That basic idea is what made SO attractive in the first place, compared to forums where you had to scroll through pages and pages of in-jokes and tangents and animated-GIF signatures just to try and see if there is an answer. Where they went wrong, in my opinion, is in the implementation details. It's mostly death by a thousand cuts: Requiring reputation to gain the ability to post comments, then having one's answers…

My favorite thing was how for half the stuff I Googled, the top result would be a StackOverflow reply telling me to Google it.

Yep, or the top 10 hits on Google all pointing to a "duplicate" that didn't have the answer (or even the same question). Such a squandering of discoverability it's hard to even fathom who thought that was a good idea.
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