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The Fall of Stack Overflow

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Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#121

Post by svachalek »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #86
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…

> Even though StackOverflow in the common use case has been taken over by ChatGPT Claim asserted without evidence.

I have 110% replaced it with ChatGPT. Perhaps SO would still have a chance back in its glory days but there's no comparison to having a direct, specific, instant answer vs having to fight against SEO or moderators for hours.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#122

Post by raincole »

Every time I posted on SO(or other SE sites) I always have to clarify my question with something like "I know it's probably not good idea to do A, and I understand B could be a better solution, but in my specific situation I really want to do A."

Then people will still try to close my question because it's a duplicate of B.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#123

Post by [deleted] »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #114
Nonlin wrote: post #102

I wonder is this is the cannery in the coal mine for the internet as a whole. Will the internet grow more and more quite as folks chat with local AI bots.

But what will ChatGPT 10 be trained on, if no one is posting blog posts, answering questions on stack overflow, or updating Wikipedia? OpenAI will have to change the logo to a snake swallowing its own tail.

[deleted]

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#124

Post by SantalBlush »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

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/v…

Or a StackOverflow-scraped site peeled off users looking for quick solutions, while those with SO accounts still used it for posting and voting.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#125

Post by nurettin »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #81
dhosek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the people who took on Rust questions to be actively hostile on SO when I started learning Rust. The Reddit community was much better, so I’ve tended to hang out there for Rust q&a. Most of my time in the Stack Overflow world these days is mostly in the more specialized StackExchange sites. tex.se tends to be pretty good, as does latin.se japanese.se seems dedicated to stomping out anything that is remotely a…

Reminds me of being on IRC in 97 asking questions about Assembly. When someone did finally respond it was "Did you read the manual yet"? It's ironic that SO became what it was replacing.

I was on IRC circa 2002 asking C++ questions. Next year I was the one answering. Weirdly best time of my life.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#127

Post by iJohnDoe »

Blackarea wrote: post #113
iJohnDoe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s interesting is that Google was known for how hard it was to figure out the Google algorithm. Remember, when people were hired because they knew the secret sauce on how to get the best Google ranking. Google experts? Well, it turns out that the person at Google that was responsible for keeping the algorithm fresh and the search results fresh retired and everything went to shit when they left. Actually, I’m bett…

Really sounds as if your made up story is deeply rooted in your own experience. I am sorry if something like a new guy taking your position and claiming to be smarter has happened to you but creating imaginary stories is not quite what this comment section needs and you'd probably be better off dealing with this in a different way

Not at all. Nothing personal. Although, it looks like you are the one self-projecting here.

It’s simply how times change and people with it. Knowledge is lost when people move on and the reasons why certain decisions were made are not transferred.

At any rate, I imagine people at Google are trying to figure out why there is such a negative opinion on their search results lately.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#128

Post by andirk »

JohnMakin wrote: post #109

The problems I’ve noticed with Stack Overflow are a few and hard for me to narrow down but basically: - google used to return really relevant results for SO, and it stopped doing so at some point a while ago - moderation on SO has gotten progressively more horrible. can’t tell you how many times I found the exact, bizarre question I was asking only to see one comment trying to answer it and then a mod aggressively sh…

I have seen similar. I wonder if a new set of people are old enough to use SO now, and their style is different than the original community.

Re: The Fall of Stack Overflow

#129

Post by galaxyLogic »

culopatin wrote: post #99
lawgimenez wrote: post #83

My SO account is almost 12 years, with just over 2k reputation and I don't really care. Until now I am still somewhat helping answer some basic questions in the mobile development area tags, my only gripe with SO is the hostile nature of some mods with large reputation. Some seem to get a kick out of this and forgot that reputation does not translate to expertise. For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New…

I think that with the rise of push notifications, no one really goes to a site to check notifications anymore. So the new user may have not developed the muscle memory to go back to SO and participate. I suspect this also has something to do with the decline of forums. Reddit still works because the app sends 200 notifications a day, but without it, I don’t think it would be as popular. Also SO is participation hosti…

At least part of the reason for the hostility is that SO is a game. You get points, but you can also prevent others from getting points by voting down or removing their questions and answers.

On SO this hostility is pronounced because participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job.

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