The Decline of Stack Overflow: Which Questions Are Most Affected by AI?
Posted by tomaz_weiss@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 98 comments
Posted by tomaz_weiss@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 98 comments
m-sasha@reddit
LLMs are the killer of stack overflow, but like hunter and prey, when SO is dead, the LLMs will have nowhere to get their software question/answer training data from.
They can only exist together, so if by then AI can’t completely replace software engineers, the AI companies will need to set up something like SO.
UntdHealthExecRedux@reddit
Who wants to answer questions on SO just so it can be hovered up by some AI company at no compensation to the answere? I used to answer questions on SO because I wanted to help out other people but there’s no way I’m volunteering my time and expertise to make Sam Altman even more money off of repackaging my work. So I just stopped answering, I can’t be the only one.
m-sasha@reddit
Maybe they will have to pay people who answer.
turnipsurprise8@reddit
What a depressing world. Human interaction amd knowledge sharing should not monetised - seems everything has to be behind a pay wall now
minno@reddit
Then 99% of the answers will be AI-generated slop as long as the payout is higher than the subscription price.
thedarph@reddit
People never answered questions to get or prevent another from getting compensated. Stackoverflow is still superior to ChatGPT because it teaches a developer how to think. It gives you wrong answers that are often the inspiration for exploring a path that leads to a novel and correct way of doing something.
Sure, it’s nice to just get the straightforward correct answer but ChatGPT is not always doing that. I recently was on SO trying to figure out how to wake my Mac from sleep mode so I could ssh in when connected to Tailscale. Even with all the relevant info ChatGPT told me the technically correct answer that did not work. It missed a very critical piece of information about how magic packets generally don’t work over WiFI. The good people on Stackoverflow, however, did have a lot of great clues that I investigated to find a solution. ChatGPT was just a starting point. I could easily have just started my journey on SO to begin with.
Anodynamix@reddit
True. But now that AI is vacuuming up the entire content of SO, they're packaging your answers up as a service that they are selling to replace you in the workforce.
Whereas before one could write on SO, comfortable in the knowledge that you were helping others, now you know you're helping companies whose explicit goal is to reduce your employability.
There's now a massive disincentive to do this for free.
thedarph@reddit
You’re not totally wrong here. I am not anti-AI for development or art generally but think it’s important to make a distinction that a thing that’s human created is more valuable than what an AI generates regardless of whether it’s beautiful or correct. It would be so much easier to accept AI into our lives if the technology was socialized. Rather than a few companies owning the tech and selling it off to the detriment of people without giving people an alternative way to make a living it should be given to the masses for our benefit rather than our entertainment and to train it.
I mean, what are we going to do? Farmers aren’t needed. Tech workers are being devalued. The arts are being devalued. Are we all just going to go work on Wall Street now since that’s all anyone cares about anymore?
Sorry to take this this discussion off topics. It felt like I was making a point but went off the rails
shevy-java@reddit
I think AI autogenerating images is somewhat useful; I saw it used for some free to play games, browser games and what not.
It's a different topic with AI just stealing answers from humans and repackaging that as "new".
aueioaue@reddit
AI is also just stealing art from humans and repackaging that as "new".
AI is also just stealing code from humans and repackaging that as "new".
It's not a different topic.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
It doesn't steal , it learns , the same way you learn from so and fron artists
Full-Spectral@reddit
It doesn't learn, it's consumes. If it learned, they'd only have to train it once and never again. They continue to retrain because it doesn't learn. It can regurgitate what it's consumed, in a way that allows for plausible deniability wrt to outright theft.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
Did you trained once in your life? No , learning is an active processes that never stops
Full-Spectral@reddit
Someone doesn't come over to my house with a big tank of information and re-fill me. I do that myself, because I can learn.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
You do that by your self the same way ai does by TRAINING
You find info online, from books , from videos etc ai does the same
Halkcyon@reddit
You talk like a bot, bot.
Rattle22@reddit
AI does not give back to the community. An artist or coder learning from previous work oftentimes comes back into the community to show their own work and progress, bringing in a new perspective and potentially really cool things.
When I teach a friend to code, I get to behold the beauty of their work eventually. When my code teaches an AI, this effort vanishes into the vapid void.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
You are delusional if you thiyit doesn't give back to the community, so you know how many ppl use ai to learn coding/do their job?
It actually helps more ppl than you would help in your entire life
Rattle22@reddit
What I see over and over and over again is people saying that they're structurally replacing reaching out to people with asking AI instead. The fundamental mode of operation preached by AI advocates and that materializes is people not talking and sharing and building community, but isolating and replacing social behaviors with AI.
Thousands may benefit individually, but the social fabric suffers and I think that is worse than any material gain we can have.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
That's an opinion, a wrong one but still an opinion
aueioaue@reddit
I was addressing shevy-java's claim that SO and and art were somehow to be treated differently, which I disagreed with. The use of 'stealing' was just a play on their own wording for dramatic effect.
But if you want to discuss that... does a trained generative neural network "steal" its training data?
I think it's nuanced, but I'll try to argue in favor of yes for the purpose of debate.
Well, first, if the terms of use of the input data did not permit this, then absolutely yes, it's theft. And while this varies, I claim it's quite public knowledge at this point that a non-trivial portion of AI training data is in fact in direct violation of the data's terms of use.
But many lawyers are trying very hard to claim that the AI is simply using the data as a basis for completely novel content, akin to your argument that it is just like humans taking inspiration and technique from other humans.
But this is demonstrably false, as AI has been shown time and time again to reliably produce input data verbatim. AI is in effect a variably-lossy compression algorithm, and some data ends up being stored losslessly, and can be reproduced under the right circumstances. And while a human can also do this, AI is currently not being held accountable for this to the same standards as humans, nor taking the same corrective actions that a human would to avoid this.
The result has been widespread duplication of copyrighted material. This is absolutely theft.
Further, given the current state of AI technical implementation, they are very specifically trained as predictors, on the basis that the correct outputs ARE the inputs themselves, plus the space of outputs in the vicinity of the inputs. This is almost a definitional basis for theft. They are quite literally ontological compositions of their inputs by construction.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
"ai is not being held accountable"
Ppl are not held accountable too , all these artist that make fan art are not held accountable even when they sell that art , but no one asks from big xorpos to sue these artist (you see the double standard?)
Yeah the ai technically does copyright infringement when it stores the data on the disk to train on them BUT the we do exactly the same , I copy code from so to learn (or do my job) , artist copy material they don't own to learn
We all do the same but for some reason they want ai to be held accountable in a standard that doesn't exist and the worst is that AI has no copyright in the work it creates EVEN if that works ia 100% new while artists can get copyright protection from the smallest thing like taking a ohot with their phone (yeah that's true)
They don't actually care about copyright infringement when they do to , they care when ai does it because it will cost a lot of the their jobs
It's not about training it's about stopping the progress
aueioaue@reddit
This is not true, as a glance at the mountain of copyright cases will show, but yes, a whole lot of people get away with it.
Yes and no. In general, small-fry copyright violations are ignored. It's honestly just not viable to go after fanfic authors, and probably does more harm than good in many cases, not only the cultural impact of suppression of expression, but, for example, in the case of fanfic specifically, it's often really good marketing to allow it. But then, you can also find examples of Nintendo going after nobodies whenever they're lawyers are having a slow day.
But you're comparing apples and oranges. AIs in particular are not fans having fun on a non-commercial social group. They're major commercial and economic powerhouses of the modern technological era.
As I'm arguing, this isn't true. The standard does exist. Agreed... no one is going to care if you draw Darth Vader, or probably even if you try to sell a mug with a deviantart artists's stolen work on your merch store or whatever if you have 3 subscribers. Maybe you get a nasty email.
But let's see Ubisoft try to sell Star Wars merch without a license, and they'll be sued into the ground. The standard exists, but we enforce it only when there is economic, social, or political motivation to do so.
I get that you want to argue "no, it should be all or nothing", but that just isn't feasible... too many practicalities prevent that.
As for AI though, one company making one AI model can effect entire global industries and disrupt the social and economic landscape as we know it. This creates enormous incentives for everyone to get involved.
I don't agree with this as an absolute statement, but I understand the motivation behind it. Yes, a subset of the conversation is about the impact AI is having on industries, and a desire to mitigate it job loss.
Although that is a whole other topic with lots of nuance. I assure you it isn't merely about not getting fired, and there are arguments by artists who are unhappy with the state of AI right now, but not against AI as a concept. There are many artists unions fighting for rules and structures for working in a world with AI, recognizing that AI is absolutely inevitable and unstoppable.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
That's not true , how many cases (lawsuits) you know about that ? They are non existent, even ppl that do copyright infringement on YouTube with MILLION views don't get sued(xqc) (there are exceptions like copyright trolls )
That's country by country and company by company bases ,
Nintendo gonna sue you no matter the size and country BUT big corps (like Ali express) sell a lot of copyrighted material without license and they don't get sued , even Amazon does that 😅😅😅
Yes and no , if you ask most artist they are asking to make the ai illegal in art (Go ask in art subreddit or art Facebook group etc)
Unions on the other side are delusional in the matter, like asking for royalties for ai usage and refusing to accept some artist want to sell their voice to train an ai , like they think artists (VA) shouldn't have the right to sell their voice for ever ,which is funny because its the most absurd thing ever , they are the only ppl (artist ) who feel so entitled that want to get paid every time you see their movie/play their game/listen their song , they can't accept you bought it once and they get paid once
IanAKemp@reddit
You are not the only one who feels somewhat hopeless about the state of affairs in today's world. Hedge funds and private equity are destroying society bit by bit and none of the people who should be standing up to this, are doing so.
Full-Spectral@reddit
The difference with something like SO, whatever its other problems, is that it's not just an answer, it's an answer with discussion. You can see if other people are saying, this answer is not correct, or only correct within these limits. With AI answers, you get one (possibly stupid) answer and no one to argue that it's wrong.
thedarph@reddit
Yes, and I meant to address that. In my example of me asking ChatGPT a question I had to spend a good 20 minutes continuing to ask questions and clarifying what was going wrong and what assumptions it made that were wrong and in the end it got me part of the way there but was still not solving the problem. On SO that discussion almost always covers those things from the get-go and that’s why I appreciate it more. The final AI answer was basically a blog post with generic list of tips, much less helpful than the SO discussion
mkantor@reddit
Who wants to comment on Reddit just so it can be hoovered up by some AI company at no compensation to the commenter?
UntdHealthExecRedux@reddit
My shitposts are worth a lot less than my expertise.
Silver_Tip_6507@reddit
Because you still help other ppl but twice as much now
Weird that you were ok with so getting some monay but have problem with openAI getting some money
poply@reddit
Easy solution. AI company buys SO. You get compute credits for answering questions on SO.
/s
aueioaue@reddit
This not sarcastic. This is the economic solution. If AI depends on SO, AI must incentivize SO. Offering value (AI credits) for a resource they depend on (SO data) is completely legit and quite possible the sort of thing we will see very soon as AI companies struggle to scale their needs for long-term sustainable human-generated source material.
DuckDatum@reddit
Nobody gets on stackoverflow because that’s what they decided they want to do that day. It’s a necessity, which is why ChatGPT can so easily take market share. ChatGPT is being used as an easier alternative, so user needs are being met more easily. But if those needs stop being met, people will work up the chain of slightly more laborious methods until they find one that works. So if the quality of gpt goes down, stackoverflow usage should go up.
The question is really whether stackoverflow can survive this climate change, or if the now rocky waters are too much for it to bear.
QuentinUK@reddit
That’s why Microsoft is incorporating its own AI, which it calls the CoPilot, into Visual Studio.So that it can see how programmers design code, make errors, and correct code. It will use that training data to make CoPilot better.
Full-Spectral@reddit
What does an inbred AI look like?
Halkcyon@reddit
Hey, who turned out the lights?
shevy-java@reddit
Yeah - like parasites. Damn the AI monsters.
To be fair: I think SO died way before AI though.
WTFwhatthehell@reddit
Back in the olden days when I actually used stack overflow I remember thinking it had a natural symbiosis with AI.
They were always so obsessed with deleting duplicate questions even when the questions weren't actually quite the same thing.
Also many questions would languish with nobody answering them.
The obvious option would be to have an LLM offer up possible solutions, let humans flag problems with the answers (shadowbanning anyone who just marks all AI answers wrong "because AI" ) because it would
1: make sure everyone gets a quick answer that's probably correct most of the time.
2: save the time of people willing to answer questions letting them focus on the trickier ones.
3: allow improvement of the AI based on flagged issues and flagged errors.
kylotan@reddit
To some degree it suffers from a similar problem as Wikipedia, in that you can get kudos and a sense of power by deleting or editing someone else's work, and with far less effort than it takes to create new work yourself.
IanAKemp@reddit
The fact that you don't understand the importance of curation tells me you're wholly unqualified to be commenting on this topic.
kylotan@reddit
The fact that you think I was suggesting curation is unimportant says the same about you.
IanAKemp@reddit
That's not how Stack Overflow works.
That's not how Stack Overflow works.
CVisionIsMyJam@reddit
Wouldn't they train on the Q&A happening on their own platform?
axonxorz@reddit
I'm not sure if any system out there is set up to collect the metadata required for training. The crowdsourcing of points for solution ratings and ability to mark accepted solutions is key to ensuring they're not just regurgitating garbage from conversations with other users.
When I ask the JetBrains model for assistance, it's rarely 100% correct, I nearly always have to adapt what it provides, and if I don't continue the conversation to tell it that I've done just that, it doesn't know.
AI-first IDEs probably have some more ability here in having a tighter understanding of everythomg you write, but a lot of enterprise environments aren't going to allow that.
CVisionIsMyJam@reddit
I think I agree, I don't really see how they could train on their Q&A; especially for really niche subjects related to specialized hardware or new operating system features.
Even if they extracted the Q&A in which a user came back and said "that worked :D" the user could be wrong as well. SO is providing only labeled correct information.
According to this article, really basic questions are in steep decline whereas more advanced subjects have seen significantly less impact. I do think there's still space for SO and it won't necessarily die; it just won't have the level of activity it did when it was the first stop most developers made when looking for answers.
IanAKemp@reddit
The problem is that the volume of really basic questions, mostly posted by idiots who are incapable of using a search engine and/or thinking, drown out the advanced ones. And nobody has time to sift through that cesspool in the hope they'll find a nugget.
bkervaski@reddit
This. AI’s are going to be stuck in the proverbial past.
LoopVariant@reddit
Stack Overflow has been like a toxic friend that is helpful but a pain to be around. When there was no alternative place to get help, everyone used it despite the obnoxious tone maintained by the moderators and several of the participants on the platform.
Now that there are alternatives, everyone is distancing themselves from the toxic friend. For me, the Stack Overflow culture is much more of a reason and an interesting story than another “AI killed it” piece…
elperroborrachotoo@reddit
Stackoverflow was conceived and designed as a User-maintained Knowledge Base, it positioned itself as an AI training database long long before it was clear that it would become an AI training database.
A lot of the "hostility and friction" comes from the disparity of its design and most users treating it as yet another Question-and-Answer site where they can basically ask others for help with their specific issue.
The rest of the issue is what plagued all Q&A sites and forums. Places like codeguru, experts-exchange and codeproject did shine and wane.
All shared the same popularity problem: too many technical experts that couldn't exercise their expertise because almost all new questions are either "do my homework/job" or the zillionths rehash of the same problem already answered ad nauseam. Or both.
Stackoverfow ran the show - and ran it very well - for a surprisingly long time. It moved most of the hostility to meta, so that at least silent readers were spared. It served its purpose at becoming a repository for whatever comes after, and now has ascended. Our egos are collateral damage.
No-Champion-2194@reddit
SO did not run the show well as it grew, when it should have been maturing and providing a better community experience. Part of its problem was not architecting itself well, part of the problem was social.
It did not provide a good ramp for new users. When newbie questions are closed with responses that amount to 'write better questions', it shut out new users. SO should have bifurcated itself into a 'newbie' and an 'experienced' section. The newbies could ask basic questions, and get answers from mid-level devs who could learn how to effectively answer issues. The experienced devs would have a cleaner environment with issues that would form the canon of SO knowledge; eventually, newbies would start asking and answering these issues. Simply rejecting questions that didn't meet some ill-defined standard of being worthy of SO chased users away.
SO also started to collapse under its own weight as it aged as new language versions came out, but it did not do a good job of versioning answers. When questions on a new version of a language are closed as duplicating an question that was asked on an old version, and that answer is no longer applicable, the site would fail to keep up.
The gamification of the site insured that those who were doing the curating would be highhanded, arbitrary, and hostile - basically the online version of a Homeowners Association board. The rudeness and unkindness created a death spiral, where those who just wanted to help the community would get fed up.
Ok_Construction_8136@reddit
Mailing list renaissance incoming
Maykey@reddit
Let's just hope it will not be discord 🤮
elperroborrachotoo@reddit
!RemindMe 6 months
;)
I understand the appeal of technical simplicity, but UX wise they are somewhat stumped, and in my (admittedly very limited) experience with them, they tend to become problematic with a certain amount of visitors. People start to get annoyed by repeated trivial questions, and some seem to believe that channeling scathing Linus is an important stepstone on their way to genius rank.
RemindMeBot@reddit
I will be messaging you in 6 months on 2025-10-02 23:37:59 UTC to remind you of this link
CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) ^(delete this message to hide from others.)
AD7GD@reddit
I don't object to the mission, I object to the fact that many people put more energy into complaining about how other people used the site than they put into improving it themselves. If you don't like the formatting of an answer, click "edit" and fix the formatting. Don't add a condescending comment about the preferred answer style.
elperroborrachotoo@reddit
I'm not going to defend those "many people", and I know that bashing SO has become a kind of group activity, and maybe that's justified, but please consider:
SO wouldn't have become the still-valuable resource it is if it hadn't been amazing for a long time.
Codeguru was amazing for a while. I went away for a bit, came back, and there was bitter infighting about who answers what. Because points. Because rules. Because there weren't enough good questions for all the people who wanted to answer them.
EE was amazing for a while, they had gamification almost nailed down - except for thinking that "fake internet points" need to work like a currency. It didn't matter, though, because most people asking questions also answered others, so mostly everyone had enough points. Then they got bought out by VC, it was very ugly and the relaxed attitude of insiders was gone, and it got advertised and popular and point availability tightened and people asking question expected value for their points and people answering questions expected maximum points in return for their answers and thre was infighting between people answering questions because they didn't want to see their points to go to someone else, and complaints were raised, and it was ugly.
Codeproject... I never felt the amazing. It was a home for a while, and there was help to be found, but beyond that, the technical forums never clicked for me. And, without fail, with popularity there was a huge influx of novices people asking questions expecting copy&paste answers but they got questioned ("why?") and lectured ("that's not how it works."). As I understand, CodeProject tried to steer that to a Q&A separate from the Forums, and it kind-of worked.
Compared to that, SO did everything right for a long while. But it, too, suffered from similar symptoms. it even was okay for a while because those "offending" questions weren't just offending, but explicitely against its rules and intent. Again, only for a while, until moderation, too, was overwhelmed and tone and attitude turned strict and sour. Meta became a toxic cesspool - but also those assholes and village autocrats were the ones preventing the actual Q&A repository to become swamped with toxic "me" discussions.
Looks like the bad vibes are a social scaling problem, and if we are honest, we don't have a solution. But we've learnt that we can shape this by details in design and site rules, which is fucking hard (because large-scale social), and resources will come and go.
elperroborrachotoo@reddit
'm not going to defend them - my point is: it's a problem that seems to be bound to popularity.
Codeguru was amazing for a while. I went away for a bit, came back, and there was bitter infighting about who answers what.
EE was amazing for a while, they had gamification almost nailed down - except for thinking that "fake internet points" need to work like a currency. It didn't matter, though, because most people asking questions also answered others, so mostly everyone had enough points. Then they got bought out by VC, it was very ugly, and the tone changed, and it got advertised and popular point availability tightened and people asking question expected
LoopVariant@reddit
\^ This.
kylotan@reddit
This is 100% true and I think, especially now, people have lost sight of this.
But what I think is perhaps equally pertinent, is that sites like StackOverflow actually helped to kill off many of the forums that did welcome Q&A and discussion, due to their popularity and network effects. (The same happened for more mainstream forums and Facebook.) Thus it became the thing it was trying not to be.
Having revisited some old-style forums recently, lots of them do have surprisingly high quality information there, especially if moderated to the extent that StackOverflow is. It's just hard to compete with the VC-backed monoliths.
Maykey@reddit
It was not helpful for a long time. Instead of answering it was full of useless shit like "why would you do it", turning from site for questions answering to site for autobiography which idgaf about when google lead to the question, and always useless pieces of shit with no expierence who asked it never gave the answer when oop explained why
semmaz@reddit
Yeah, but it’s kinda heritage in a sense. Without it, many of us wouldn’t be with jobs we have.
CVisionIsMyJam@reddit
What do you mean by this?
semmaz@reddit
I mean, you had to research a shit tone of docs instead of asking the people that did it before you?
Ok_Construction_8136@reddit
I recently started reading docs over using stack overflow and I found that, whilst the initial time investment is much larger the, the payoff is much greater because I’ll come away with a far deeper understanding of everything going on. Barring that I ask on IRC or a mailing list for a more thoughtful discussion. Stack Overflow has made devs worse imo
semmaz@reddit
Disagree, but can see your standpoint. Reading the docs for what you specialize in should be a default. However - practically, you don’t work just within your specialty, so, you must learn how to debug new framework specific error message, and where you land in before llms? SO
R3PTILIA@reddit
Stack overflow was doomed before AI. ai just acelerated it
Llms dont need SO
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
The only questions that will be most affected by AI at the ones where:
If you're ok with one (or none) of those things, then Stack Overflow is the perfect choice.
semmaz@reddit
Can I ask you - from where exactly ai/llm had answers you seek?
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
ChatGPT.
semmaz@reddit
Are you really dense? From where it knows the answer?
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
From documentation.
semmaz@reddit
Yeah, right bud, totally not from stackoverflow answers. Which were provided by actual humans that did use the libraries and found out that docks not always up to date or even existent
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
Oh, i thought you were asking an honest question.
I didn't know you were trying to be insufferable.
And as a professional software developer of 27 years, i can tell you, with authority, that it is gratifying that my knowledge and hard work is now going to help people.
Why are you being so miserable?
semmaz@reddit
It’s actually entertaining, thank you, mind sharing a link for your profile on SO?
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
I do mind. And not just because doxxing myself is against the reddit ToS and i don't want to run afoul of that for a 7th time.
araujoms@reddit
Lol doxxing yourself is not against the reddit ToS.
semmaz@reddit
Dm?
Top_Meaning6195@reddit
No, i'm still doxxing myself.
And also: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/stackoverflow
semmaz@reddit
Public key?)
semmaz@reddit
Huh, what a timing 😂
semmaz@reddit
Thing is - not knowing about cryptography with 27 years experience tells me you’re a fraud
Maykey@reddit
Lmao imagine being downvoted for giving an actual link. Not some vague statement but a fucking link. Truth hurts.
walkingcontradict1@reddit
I don't get the hate around SO, being critical about your code isn't cool anymore or what?
accidentally_myself@reddit
Closed as off-topic.
LoopVariant@reddit
The toxicity was never about being critical about your code.
WTFwhatthehell@reddit
"This questions shares some superficial similarity with another. Marked as duplicate and deleted"
LoopVariant@reddit
"Sorry, I've marked this as not a real answer. Please refer to the guidelines."
Few-Understanding264@reddit
i personally find so many questions on SO are actually duplicates.
i bet almost 98% of the questions this week have a HINT OF AN ANSWER somewhere on SO. not an exact answer, but enough that the question should be a duplicate. seriously, it is very rare that a real programming question (excluding problems that should be on github issue) has no HINT OF AN ANSWER on SO. very fucking rare.
unfortunately tho, people want EXACT ANSWERS to their very specific questions and don't want to read anything else, hence all the complaints about their question being a dupe.
IanAKemp@reddit
We call those people "garbage human beings".
WTFwhatthehell@reddit
Wow. You sound like exactly the kind of socially incompetent person who makes communities toxic and drives away all the competent people.
Schmittfried@reddit
Or a troll, which I now realize amounts to the same thing.
solve-for-x@reddit
This Reddit post has been marked as a duplicate.
chucker23n@reddit
This answer should be a comment. But also, you don’t have enough karma to post a comment. Come to think of it, The SO Powers That Be just don’t want you here.
_TheDust_@reddit
I see you have also visited /r/jokes
Ok_Construction_8136@reddit
I’m predicting an mailing list renaissance
shevy-java@reddit
Perhaps AI took a further hit on SO, but the problems of SO have more to do with the design.
I remember several years ago, I was asking a question about mixing licences in a software project. It was a honest question, not a troll question.
Within 5 minutes, I was downvoted to something like -7 or so, in other words a few people simply downvoted it. Ok. Of all who downvoted, how many do you think explained their vote?
Zero. Nada. Nobody even responded to it.
I checked the next few days and nobody wrote anything; and the few who may want to write, were discouraged by the negative votes already as-is. So, I am sorry, but the SO platform simply sucks for asking questions. I still find SO has value in older questions and answers, but this is just one problem of many. I asked a question, expecting people to say something useful, and got zero results. So basically I was wasting my time with SO here.
I am sure others can find related problems and anecdotes, but this is an example of the underlying design of SO simply not being good. They should have changed their voting and participation system a long time already really. They failed to do so, for whatever the reason. Since then it went further downhill.
AI may put the final nail in the coffin, but SO died prior to that already.
rwrife@reddit
I told the LLM to create a “stackoverflow” site and it did a pretty good job, then I told it to populate the site with questions and answers and again, it did a pretty good job. Now it can learn from itself, forever.
semmaz@reddit
Do you know about cannibalism too? Or you just forgot /s?