Stack Overflow has been nearly useless as anything other than an archive of old questions for a long time. It’s a case study in how gamification can backfire.
For me it was over was before the peak as shown. The gamification that got it started in the first place eventually led to it becoming almost unusable for its intended purpose. Instead it functioned as more of an online-only augmented reality game where people worked to moderate away new questions as efficiently as possible rather than actually answer questions.
Exactly, and the data shows that too. The number of questions were falling ever since the ‘game’ of the site became being able to shut down new questions with a variation of “this is a duplicate” in the exact mix of mean/demeaning/dismissive that would get the most clicks.
The graph shows me that Chatgpt had almost nothing to do with the stagnation and decline.
Tried using StackOverflow back in my college days and was confronted by a barage of people practically telling me I am stupid fuck in subtle and not so subtle ways. I am sure people on there being rude and demeaning didn’t help their case.
And in about 2017 they started with “ThIs Is A DuPlIcAtE QuEsTiOn”, while pointing to a 10 years old answer.
- Looking answer for A.
- Find stack overflow post about it
- “This is a dublicate”
- Link goes to question with answer to B.
- And B while being close to A is not A.
Peak stack overflow experience.
It was around 2017 my questions just stopped getting answers. Even if it wasn’t closed, I’d just get nothing. Eventually gave up asking.
Like every experience, where I tried to actively engage with StackOverflow, was entirely negative. It was good for finding knowledge, but the moderators eventually killed it by this very behavior. This is also why you see the growth stalling, which should not happen. ChatGPT was only the final nail in the coffin and even made the existing knowledge disposable.
Sometimes I wonder how many of the StackOverflow moderators were also Reddit moderators.
People were so rude there, we shouldn’t mourn its end
Indeed, they were the OG powertrippingbastards
Going to have to go much further back than that to find the OGs. Bastards have been power-tripping since long before the internet even existed.
Right, but there isn’t really a good alternative, as shitty as it is. And I don’t think relying on slop generators is a good alternative
I rather liked stackoverflow, and was fairly popular in the electronics one. I never found it overly rude, but there absolutely were certain individuals who were.
I mourn its inevitable passing; I haven’t found anything that worked as well as it did, and the fact that you can get the data dumps is awesome.
I did like browsing the Popular page and diving into interesting questions in the various sub-sites. One sad, under-discussed consequence of AI is that people no longer turn to each other for expertise (since the AI knows it all), which previously brought people together into communities like SO.
A popular book doesn’t receive new pages either.
Maybe Stack Overflow is “complete” or “stable”? :)
This is the issue.
It wanted to be a repository of knowledge. People used it like a forum. Instead of capitalizing on that disconnect by having a place for those questions they just shut it down, which alienated many people.
Might be worth a preservation effort.
Silver lining of the AIpocalypse, honestly. That place could be pretty awful.
*Closed and marked as duplicate of [deleted].
