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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

#251

Post by rcxdude »

Dragas wrote: post #189
brap wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can totally see myself asking questions on SO even these days, but there’s a good chance they’ll lock my post so why bother. Something about the SO incentive system created the most hostile platform imaginable.

During the last decade that I've been asking/answering questions I only ever had 1 question locked as offtopic, and it was when they introduced question types. The several questions which I did report as invalid/offtopic/etc. were just error messages thrown by compiler without any substance of what you are supposed to look at to even determine how to help the author. I'm genuinely confused whether people just parrote…

It's not uncommon for me, while debugging, to find that someone has had the exact same problem as me, asked the question on stackoverflow, and that it has been closed a duplicate of a question which is only slightly related to it (and therefore any answers to that question are pretty useless).

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#252

Post by formerly_proven »

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…

You can even see the clear download slope starting in 2016 and (sans COVID) not changing slope substantially until about 2023. This part was not caused by AI at all.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#253

Post by cheesecakegood »

mort96 wrote: post #104
inigyou wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ellen Pao was the glass scapegoat CEO designed to take all the flak for what the other investors and board members wanted to do. BTW Reddit is now verifying your ID with Persona before you can open anything it thinks is NSFW.

Only the new Reddit, old.reddit.com still works for that too. Though I'm not sure how long that'll last. I would be surprised if old.reddit.com is still functional in a couple of years. When it gets removed, or when it bit rots to the point that it's no longer really feasible to use it, I'm off that site. New Reddit doesn't work for me.

I knew reddit was in its terminal phase when I started seeing FarmVille-style ads for some stupid reddit homegrown minigame in the top right of new reddit

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#254

Post by cs02rm0 »

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…

> 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.

I'm no Jon Skeet, but I've had an account since 2009, I answered a question early on that's had well over 1000 upvotes, which I think is 10k of reputation for that answer alone.

Yet I certainly couldn't ask a question without suffering the same. That terrible experience wasn't reserved for newbies. I learned to stop contributing pretty quickly, well before AI.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#255

Post by jeanlucas »

_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.

The sale is relevant. The spike in activity right before the sale already shows the management hand and how they actively ran the org to optimize for this sale. The rebound right after is hard, and it was (right) before chatgpt

They accelerated the downfall with this and then chatgpt came over

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#256

Post by danparsonson »

b112 wrote: post #148
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…

You know, there's a lot of really good data on Stack Overflow, regardless of all the issues. I hope somebody saves it all.

They used to publish a regular torrent of everything, not sure if they still do that? Maybe you could grab yourself a copy for posterity.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#257

Post by nolok »

skillina wrote: post #173
mort96 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Q&A site where the community asks questions and the community answers them. That doesn't work without a community.

Community won't stick around if the questions they're shown aren't stimulating, either.

Which is exactly why "extended discussion" should have been nurtured in their own way rather than fought against, that's how you get stimulating conversations.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#258

Post by Esophagus4 »

wisemanwillhear wrote: post #242
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 s…

This seems like the most likely answer to me - though we all have our grievances with SO, the culture likely didn’t contribute to its decline as much as simply AI being a better tool.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#259

Post by nottorp »

suzzer99 wrote: post #191
nottorp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making it inclusive to the long-time users on the site, but exclusive to the newbie participants I used to look for questions to answer on my morning coffee. Then two things happened: 1. Rep chasers that rushed to answer anything with a copy/pasta from manuals (or at best semi related tutorials) showed up so there was no point or time in typing a complex answer. 2. Those long time users started downmodding "teach t…

At least 50% of the time on SO, the best answer is 3rd or worse, and I'm always thinking, "Why is this not the top answer?"

Because the person who asked the question has accepted the first answer that looked decent enough and moved on.

Usually the most superficial, not that it's always a bad thing.

Oh, also on SO there's this kind of exchange:

Q: "I want to do X because of this and that - or because I simply fucking want to".

A: You should never do X, do Y or Z instead.

Re: What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

#260

Post by danparsonson »

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…

Do you mean that curious growth spike in mid 2020? If so, can you think of anything else significant that happened in mid 2020...?
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