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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

#691

Post by cracki »

BoppreH wrote: post #335

The graph is scary, but I think it's conflating two things: 1. Newbies asking badly written basic questions, barely allowed to stay, and answered by hungry users trying to farm points, never to be re-read again. This used to be the vast majority of SO questions by number. 2. Experiencied users facing a novel problem, asking questions that will be the primary search result for years to come. It's #1 that's being canib…

The first actually insightful comment under the OP. I agree all of it.

If SO manages to stay online, it'll still be there for #2 people to present their problems. Don't underestimate the number of bored people still scouring the site for puzzles to solve.

SE Inc, the company, are trying all kinds of things to revitalize the site, in the service of ad revenue. They even introduced types of questions that are entirely exempt from moderation. Those posts feel literally like reddit or any other forum. Threaded discussions, no negative scores, ...

If SE Inc decides to call it quits and shut the place down and freeze it into a dataset, or sell it to some SEO company, that would be a loss.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#692

Post by nkrisc »

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.

And thus SO dies as people will go somewhere they can actually get their question answered.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#693

Post by cracki »

sevenseacat wrote: post #687

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, reading some of these comments. It looks like a pretty clear divide between the people that wanted to ask questions to get solutions for their own specific problems; and those who were aware of what the site wanted to be and how it actually operated, and were willing to put in the time and answer questions, etc. The sheer amount of garbage that used to get posted every day required…

I think 95% of comments earnestly using the word "toxic" can be disregarded.

They were unaware of or unwilling to follow the rules of the site. They mistook SO for reddit, a place for socializing.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#694

Post by cracki »

yatopifo wrote: post #439
BoppreH wrote: post #335

The graph is scary, but I think it's conflating two things: 1. Newbies asking badly written basic questions, barely allowed to stay, and answered by hungry users trying to farm points, never to be re-read again. This used to be the vast majority of SO questions by number. 2. Experiencied users facing a novel problem, asking questions that will be the primary search result for years to come. It's #1 that's being canib…

I’m going to argue the opposite. LLMs are fantastic at answering well posed questions. They are like chess machines evaluating a tonne of scenarios. But they aren’t that good at guessing what you actually have on your mind. So if you are a novice, you have to be very careful about framing your questions. Sometimes, it’s just easier to ask a human to point you in the right direction. But SO, despite being human, has a…

"well posed questions"

And that is exactly why so many people gripe about SO being "toxic". They didn't present a well posed question. They thought it was for private tutoring, or socializing like on reddit.

All I can say to these is: Ma'am, this is a Wendy's.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#695

Post by Flow »

sevenseacat wrote: post #681
Flow wrote: post #674

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…

I don't think the reputation system ever worked that way - new users could always answer questions, but comments required more reputation.

OK, you might be right and I got it backwards. It still felt wrong at the time before I got enough points.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#696

Post by wtetzner »

imcritic wrote: post #650
noduerme wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so it wasn't bad enough to spot bad human answers as an expert on Stack Overflow... now humans should spend their time spotting bad AI answers? How about a model where you ask a human and no AI input is allowed, to make sure that everyone has everyone else's full attention?

Why disallow AI input? Is it that poor? Surely it isn't.

What's the point of AI on a site like that? Wouldn't you just ask an LLM directly if you were fine with AI answers?

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#697

Post by wartywhoa23 »

StackOverflow was immediately dead for me the day they declared that AI sellout of theirs.

Pathetic thieves, they won't even allow deleting my own answers after that. Not that it would make the models unlearn my data, of course, but I wanted to do so out of principle.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/399619/our-partners...

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#698

Post by cracki »

bachmeier wrote: post #254
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #226

Lots of the comments here are attributing the decline to a toxic community or overly-strict moderation, but I don't think that that is the main reason. The TeX site [0] is very friendly and has somewhat looser moderation, yet it shows the exact same decline [1]. [0]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/ [1]: https://data.stackexchange.com/tex/query/1926661#graph

Hate to argue with people on the internet, but your graph doesn't actually show what you claim. The TeX data was stable until late 2021, whereas the SO decline started in 2017. I also would expect some correlation so that SO was a drag on the TeX site.

I would ascribe that to these communities evolving differently. There is no reason to assume that the popularity of LaTeX tracks the popularity of programming languages. It's a type setting system. And that doesn't even take into account communities that exist parallel to SO/SE. Surely there exist communities today for LaTeX that have been around since before SO began its life.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#699

Post by noduerme »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #669
cpa wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I reading an AI trying to trick me into becoming its subordinate?

In 2014, one benefit of Stack Overflow / Exchange is a user searching for work can include that they are a top 10% contributor. It actually had real world value. The equivalent today is users with extensive examples of completed projects on Github that can be cloned and run. OP's solution if contained in Github repositories will eventually get included in a training model. Moreover, the solution will definitely be us…

LOL. As a top 10% contributor on Stack Overflow, and on FlashKit before that, I can assure you that any real world value attached to that status was always imaginary, or at least highly overrated.

Mainly, it was good at making you feel useful and at honing your own craft - because providing answers forced you to think about other people's questions and problems as if they were little puzzles you could solve in a few minutes. Kept you sharp. It was like a game to play in your spare time. That was the reason to contribute, not the points.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#700

Post by wartywhoa23 »

egorfine wrote: post #685

Obviously LLMs ate StackOverflow, but perhaps developers could keep it alive for much longer if they wanted to . LLMs provide answers, but only humans provide human contact. And that last part is where SO failed by allowing a few people power trip over the rest of us. Kind of like reddit does at times, but harder. I'm not sad.

LLMs did not eat SO, it was SO that fed the LLMs too well.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/399619/our-partners...

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