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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

#671

Post by closewith »

brabel wrote: post #637
fabianholzer wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone with an ounce of self-respect try to beg an stranger with enough internet point to look if their question is worthy of being asked? Do you not realize how the proposal must sound to someone who is not already in the SO in-group?

Hm… as the person was new to SO it’s very possible they don’t understand what a good question looks like and I thought it may be helpful to give feedback on what may have gone wrong… but if you see that as “begging” and you don’t think you need any feedback, you have it all sorted out after all, then yeah it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

This comment sums up everything wrong with Stack Overflow.

I strongly suggest you re-read your comments here and self-reflect.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#672

Post by sevenseacat »

zahlman wrote: post #493
shevy-java wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

To the extent that moderation ever prevented questions from getting answers, that was by closing them. When a question gets closed before an answer comes in, the OP has nine days to fix it before it gets deleted automatically by the system. The value proposition is getting an answer to a question that is useful to a reasonably broad audience . That very often means a question that someone else asked, the answer to wh…

And that was the core problem with Stack Overflow - they wanted to build a system of core Q&As to be a reference, but everyone treated it as a "fix my very specific problem now".

99% of all the junk that got closed was just dumps of code and 'it doesn't work'. Not useful to anyone.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#674

Post by Flow »

StackOverflow didn't feel like a welcoming and humane place the last 10+ years, at least for me.

Actually I think it never did.

It started when I was new there and couldn't write answers, just write comments and then got blasted for writing answer-like comments as comments. What was I supposed to do? I engaged less and less and finally asked them to remove my account.

And then it seems like the power-users/moderators just took over and made it even more hostile.

I hope Wikipedia doesn't end up like this despite some similarities.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#675

Post by ethagnawl »

vintagedave wrote: post #4

Do I read that correctly — it is close to zero today?! I used to think SO culture was killing it but it really may have been AI after all.

It's not zero but it's very low. You can glance at the site now for confirmation.

I was using the site recently (middle of a US workday) and the "live stats" widget showed 10s of questions asked per hour and ~15K current users. I have not done the work to compare these values to historical ones but they're _low_.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#676

Post by abanana »

marcosdumay wrote: post #352
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, asking why someone wants to do something is often a good question. Especially in places like StackOverflow where the people asking questions are often inexperienced. I see it all the time professionally too. People ask "how do I do X" and I tell them. Then later on I find out that the reason they're asking is because they went down a whole rabbit hole they didn't need to go down. An analogy I like is imag…

> Especially in places like StackOverflow where the people asking questions are often inexperienced. Except that SO has a crystal clear policy that the answer to questions should be helpful for everybody reaching it through search, not only the person asking it. And that questions should never be asked twice. So if by chance, after all this dance the person asking the question actually needs the answer to a different…

Yes exactly. The fact that the "XY problem" exists, and that users sometimes ask the wrong question, isn't being argued. The problem is that SO appears to operate at the extreme, taking the default assumption that the asker is always wrong. That toxic level of arrogance (a) pushes users away and (b) ...what you said.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#677

Post by yaroslavvb »

sky2224 wrote: post #344
0xfaded wrote: post #225

I once published a method for finding the closest distance between an ellipse and a point on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22959698/distance-from-g... I consider it the most beautiful piece of code I've ever written and perhaps my one minor contribution to human knowledge. It uses a method I invented, is just a few lines, and converges in very few iterations. People used to reach out to me all the time with…

This is a perfect example of an element of Q&A forums that is being lost. Another thing that I don't think we'll see as much of anymore is interaction from developers that have extensive internal knowledge on products. An example I can think of was when Eric Lippert, a developer on the C# compiler at the time, responded to a question about a "gotcha" in the language: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8899347/10470363 Devel…

I used to look at all TensorFlow questions when I was on the TensorFlow team (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/tensorflow/info). Unclear where people go to interact with their users now....Reddit? But the tone on Reddit is kind of negative/complainy

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#678

Post by sevenseacat »

zahlman wrote: post #515
znpy wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree with most comments that the brusque moderation is the cause of SO's problems Just to add another personal data point: i started posting in on StackOverflow well before llms were a thing and moderation instantly turned ne off and i immediately stopped posting. Moderators used to edit my posts and reword what i wrote, which is unacceptable. My posts were absolutely peaceful and not inflammatory. Moderation…

> Moderators used to edit my posts and reword what i wrote, which is unacceptable. My posts were absolutely peaceful and not inflammatory. 99.9% probability the people who made those edits a) were not moderators ; b) were acting completely in accordance with established policy (please read: "Why do clear, accurate, appropriately detailed posts still get edited?" https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/403176 ) Why d…

Thank you for being the voice of reason in this comment section!

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#679

Post by sevenseacat »

cletus wrote: post #452
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…

As an early user of SO [1], I feel reasonably qualified to discuss this issue. Note that I barely posted after 2011 or so so I can't really speak to the current state. But what I can say is that even back in 2010 it was obvious to me that moderation was a problem, specifically a cultural problem. I'm really talking about the rise of the administrative/bureaucratic class that, if left unchecked, can become absolute po…

> This manifested as the war of "closed, non-constructive" on SO. Some really good questions were killed this way because the moderators decided on their own that a question had to have a provable answer to avoid flame wars.

It's literally a Q&A site. Questions need actual answers, not just opinions or "this worked for me".

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#680

Post by m-schuetz »

brabel wrote: post #637
fabianholzer wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone with an ounce of self-respect try to beg an stranger with enough internet point to look if their question is worthy of being asked? Do you not realize how the proposal must sound to someone who is not already in the SO in-group?

Hm… as the person was new to SO it’s very possible they don’t understand what a good question looks like and I thought it may be helpful to give feedback on what may have gone wrong… but if you see that as “begging” and you don’t think you need any feedback, you have it all sorted out after all, then yeah it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Thing is, if that's how you are greeted at stackoverflow, then you'll go elsewhere where you're not treated like an idiot. Stackoverflow's decline was inevitable, even without LLMs.
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