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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

#361

Post by cyral »

porcoda wrote: post #169
ivewonyoung wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For all their flaws, LLMs are so much better But LLMs get their answers from StackOverflow and similar places being used as the source material. As those start getting outdated because of lack of activity, LLMs won't have the source material to answer questions properly.

I regularly use Claude and friends where I ask it to use the web to look at specific GitHub repos or documentation to ask about current versions of things. The “LLMs just get their info from stack overflow” trope from the GPT-3 days is long dead - they’re pretty good at getting info that is very up to date by using tools to access the web. In some cases I just upload bits and pieces from a library along with my quest…

The amount of docs that have a “Copy as markdown” or “Copy for AI” button has been noticeably increasing, and really helps the LLM with proper context.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#362

Post by Forgeties79 »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #316
Forgeties79 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously where will we get this info anymore? I’ve depended on it for decades. No matter how obscure, I could always find a community that was talking about something I needed solved. I feel like that’s getting harder and harder every year. The balkanization of the Internet + garbage AI slop blogs overwhelming the clearly declining Google is a huge problem.

Usenet?

I guess? I feel like it’s too small now. It can’t cover all my interests

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#363

Post by seb1204 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #296
erikig wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The various admonitions to publish to a personal blog, while encouraging, don't really get at the 0xfaded's request which I'd summarize as follows: With no one asking questions these technical questions publicly, where, how and on what public platform will technical people find the problems that need solving so they can exercise their creativity for the benefit of all?

Seriously where will we get this info anymore? I’ve depended on it for decades. No matter how obscure, I could always find a community that was talking about something I needed solved. I feel like that’s getting harder and harder every year. The balkanization of the Internet + garbage AI slop blogs overwhelming the clearly declining Google is a huge problem.

Keep using SO?

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#364

Post by Night_Thastus »

Not surprising. It's very often a toxic, unhelpful, stubborn community. I think maybe once or twice in years of use did I ever find it genuinely welcoming and helpful. Frequently instead I thought "Why should I even bother to post this? It'll just get either downvoted, deleted, or ignored."

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#365

Post by culebron21 »

Some commenters suggest it's not the moderation. I think it is the key problem, and the alternative communities were the accumulated effect. Bad questions and tough answer competition is part of it, but moderation was more important, I think. Because in the end what kept SO relevant was that people made their own questions on up to date topics.

Up until mid-2010s you could make a seriously vague question, and it would be answered, satisfactory or not. (2018 was when I made the last such question. YMMV) After that, almost everything, that hadn't snap-on code answer, was labelled as offtopic or duplicate, and closed, no matter what. (Couple of times I got very rude moderators' comments on the tickets.)

I think this lead some communities to avoid this moderator hell and start their own forums, where you could afford civilized discussion. Discourse is actually very handy for this (Ironically, it was made by the same devs that created SO). Forums of the earlier generation, have too many bells and whistles, and outdated UI. Discourse has much less friction.

Then, as more quality material was accumulated elsewhere, newbies stopped seeing SO on top of search, and gradually language/library communities churned off one by one. (AI and other summaries, probably did contribute, but I don't think they were the primary cause.)

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#366

Post by marcosdumay »

braiamp wrote: post #280
eterm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surely both. Look at the newest questions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions?tab=Newest Most questions have negative karma. Even if somehow that is "deserved", that's not a healthy ecosystem. All that is left of SI are clueless questioners and bitter, jaded responders. SO worked when "everyone" was new to it, and they felt energized to ask questions ( even "basic" questions, because they hadn't been asked befo…

Most? 3 out of 15 is most? What's wrong with youngsters today?!

Right now, at the first 15 one has a positive vote, 6 have negative votes, going down to -3.

The 8 at 0 are just taking longer to amass those negative votes. It's incredibly rare that a positive one ever goes somewhere.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#367

Post by Forgeties79 »

seb1204 wrote: post #363
Forgeties79 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously where will we get this info anymore? I’ve depended on it for decades. No matter how obscure, I could always find a community that was talking about something I needed solved. I feel like that’s getting harder and harder every year. The balkanization of the Internet + garbage AI slop blogs overwhelming the clearly declining Google is a huge problem.

Keep using SO?

When I grew up shakes fist at clouds I had a half dozen totally independent forums/sites to pull on for any interest or hobby no matter how obscure. I want it back!

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#368

Post by beepbooptheory »

echelon wrote: post #151
fabian2k wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixing loads of LLM-generated content is neither easy nor fun. You'll have a very hard time getting people to do that.

Hardly. - A huge number of developers will want to use such a tool. Many of them are already using AI in a "single player" experience mode. - 80% of the answers will be correct when one-shot for questions of moderate difficulty. - The long tail of "corrector" / "wiki gardening" / pedantic types fill fix the errors. Especially if you gamify it. Just because someone doesn't like AI doesn't mean the majority share the s…

I just think you could save a lot of money and energy doing all this but skipping the LLM part? Like what is supposed to be gained? The moment/act of actual generation of lines of code or ideas, whether human or not, is a much smaller piece of the pie relative to ongoing correction, curation, etc (like you indicate). Focusing on it and saying it intrinsically must/should come from the LLM mistakes the intrinsically ephemeral utility of the LLMs and the arguably eternal nature of the wiki at the same time. As sibling says, it turns it into work vs the healthy sharing of ideas.

The whole pitch here just feels like putting gold flakes on your pizza: expensive and would not be missed if it wasn't there.

Just to say, I'm maybe not as experienced and wise I guess but this definitely sounds terrible to me. But whatever floats your boat I guess!

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#369

Post by cubefox »

shevy-java wrote: post #341
johnfn wrote: post #210

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 mode…

> The fundamental value proposition of SO is getting an answer to a question But the horrible moderation was in part a reason why many SO questions had no answers. I am not saying poor moderation caused all of this, but it contributed negatively and many people were pissed at that and stopped using SO. It is not the only reason SO declined, but there are many reasons for SO failure after its peak days.

There was, obviously, only one main reason: LLMs. Anything else makes no sense. Even if the moderation was "horrible" (which sounds to me like a horrible exaggeration), there was nothing which came close to being as good as SO. There was no replacement. People will use the best available platform, even if you insist in describing it as "horrible". It's was not horrible compared to the alternatives, web forums like Reddit and HN, which are poorly optimized for answering questions.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#370

Post by sockaddr »

braiamp wrote: post #277
garganzol wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with duplicate questions is that they weren't duplicates at all, and mods weren't competent enough to tell a difference.

Show me one that was closed by a moderator. Just one. And I will tell you exactly what happened.

I think the poster you're responding to is correct. I've seen it many times myself. And just so you know, asking for a piece of data and not getting it is not going to be proof that you're right.
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