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Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

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Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#141

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Few hundred k rep here, across Stack Exchange.

I recently had a look at my stats (last time I checked was maybe 10 years ago) and I noticed the SO and security line stagnating fir a good few years. They used to be the one raising steeply, but at some point the sites because so toxic, with unsufferable downvoters that I completely gave up.

But other sites rised steadily. There are wonderful sutes in the SE network where you get great answers from very helpful people.

SO and a few other sites are dragging the whole idea to the bottom.

If you want to see unhinged psychopaths in action have a look at SE or SO Meta. Or maybe not.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#142

Post by axus »

beachy wrote: post #66
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #23

This is happening to Reddit too, albeit in a different way. Almost every other comment on popular subreddits is from surreptitious LLM bots.

I feel reddit is having a near death moment. There are prowling bots trying to strike up engagement with stupid open ended questions "do you find that using a golf simulator improved your golf?" And some subs seem infested with submarine advertising, posts that mention a single product name almost in passing. Nearly always these people have their posts hidden. Reddit has always been looser, people can edit and delete…

The government shills in /r/worldnews get paid the same if their conversation partner is a bot or a human

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#145

Post by tayo42 »

conradfr wrote: post #5

Call me crazy but sometimes I still find a better solution on StackOverflow than what Claude Code insists to do. I'm not sure we're better off without SO in the long run.

What are you looking for and finding on stack overflow that isn't begginer to intermediate level?

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#146

Post by jrflo »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #129
jrflo wrote: post #34

I knew that stack overflow must be suffering because of AI, but I find it hard to believe that questions asked per month has gone from 200k pre-chatbot to (what appears to be) ~1k. Although, I suppose I have not gone there at all in the last 4 years...

It makes sense to me. There's literally no use for Stack Overflow anymore. LLMs, for all their faults, are a far better way to get answers to coding problems.

It's just rare to see something accelerate to zero like that. I feel like most dying products have a fade out over time where there still remains a niche use for them, they don't nosedive to almost nothing.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#147

Post by echoangle »

dorgo wrote: post #124
IshKebab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. StackOverflow itself didn't really change for any of that period. Any changes in users must have been due to external factors.

hmm, I got rid of WhatsApp the day it was sold to Facebook and never touched it since. I don't think anything in the app changed that day.

You think a significant number of people started boycotting SO after the sale?

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#148

Post by ceejayoz »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #134
ceejayoz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it isn't fun to do, and simply causes frustration, that hypothetical person constructed in the comment could just step away for the day. That frustration is likely part of the decline, yes.

And also part of the decline from the asker side, once a less abrasive alternative became available

Again: the "less abrasive alternative" is built off the labor and knowledge of those abrasive folks. They're a large part of the reason it knows what to less-abrasively suggest.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#149

Post by hintymad »

legitster wrote: post #82

Stack Overflow might be the greatest receptacles of human knowledge on programming. But I would argue that it usefulness only extends to its body of knowledge. As a service and/or community it has been pretty terrible for a long time: If you were a new user trying to learn programming, it was maybe one of the most toxic resources available. I don't think I have posted a question since 2019. And even there, the only t…

StackExchange is pretty friendly to beginners in my experience. I used to post straight-forward questions on math and stats on math SE and stats SE. I got answers within hours and sometimes minutes, and the answers were spot on.

Re: Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking

#150

Post by Brendinooo »

BrenBarn wrote: post #122

One thing I've been curious about is how the other sites on StackExchange have fared. A lot of those are pretty interesting. Anecdotally the few that I check occasionally also seem to have declined a lot.

I was wondering the same thing! I was pretty involved in the graphic design SE to get it out of beta, and even back then you could kind of tell that the format can start to struggle once the lower-hanging fruit has been picked.
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