Ha. I remember I used my points to create a bounty for something I kind of saw as broken with Windows but that eventually expired or something and after that, never looked back. Whole thing doesn’t make sense. Why make a bounty possible if it can just expire. Nobody answered the question… and I couldn’t accrue points to do it again in a reasonable manner so go figure…
Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers
Submitted 6 hours ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
thatradomguy@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 5 hours ago
Maybe, just maybe, most of the big questions have been asked and answered already.
These days when I look something up it’s been answered like 8 years ago, and the answer is still valid. And they aggressively mark questions as dupes, so people aren’t opening too many repeat questions.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
The annoying thing about the dupe policy is sometimes the answer does change and the accepted answer to the existing question is from 5 years ago.
ChillPenguin@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I’ve always been afraid of opening questions on stack overflow. To the point that I’d rather just figure it out myself.
i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk 3 hours ago
Yep, I’ve never needed to ask a question on Stack Overflow as everything I’ve searched for has been answered already… or I’ve looked elsewhere for the answer as I’m not allowed to upvote, downvote or ask questions on it anyway due to lack of karma (or whatever they call it). No wonder it’s in decline if nobody new is allowed to contribute, and every new question is closed as a duplicate anyway.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 5 hours ago
The article also goes into it, but I think the invent of AI and asking somewhat specific questions may also explain the decline. If you can get a result that can get you 90% of the way there with an AI that used stack overflow as a resource, theres no reason to actually ask on stack overflow. Its faster to go on the AI result or go on google/bing/etc...etc... that has the answer right there on the page.
And the redesign....its pretty bad in my opinion.
I was once downvoted answering a question on a library....that I created on stack overflow. Still makes me laugh.
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 5 hours ago
The graph suggests it started declining well before AI became mainstream. I’m sure it accelerates it, but it had already long peaked.
WarlordSdocy@lemm.ee 4 hours ago
I mean there’s always gonna be new libraries or frameworks or whatever that will have their own questions to be asked. I think the problem is at a certain point you’ve reached the maximum audience you can appeal to. Which I feel StackOverflow very much has but of course corporations have to keep making greater and greater profits so once you maximize audience you have to find other methods for profit. Which is what leads to rebrand stuff like this.
RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 5 hours ago
I believe so. Whenever I have a problem, I look for an answer in the following order: search engine > reading a forum post > documentation > writing a forum post. I usually don’t work on bleeding-edge software, so somebody probably has already asked my question and received an answer too. If it hasn’t explicitly been asked yet, it might have already been answered in the documentation. Furthermore, as you said, Stack Overflow would much sooner delete your post for being a duplicate of a 21-year-old post than provide an answer to your question. There are other (and sometimes newer) tools out there that can provide the same answer without putting up so much resistance to you simply attempting to use them. If they want their traffic back, they could start there, instead of “rebranding”.
coolmojo@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
they’re gonna rebrand to ai first or turn it into an experts-exchange aren’t they?
PbNews@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Wow amazing stuff
Clbull@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Maybe StackOverflow is dying because its community is full of incredibly toxic, passive-aggressive and hostile basement dwellers who will berate, downvote and lock the threads of anybody who dares ask a programming question.
ChatGPT hammered the final nail in the site’s coffin because it’s now become a tool where you can ask specific programming questions and likely get an answer that isn’t “use the search bar you fucking dipshit. Question closed as off-topic.”
drmoose@lemmy.world 17 minutes ago
I’ve been contributing on SO for a decade and comments like this drive me nuts.
It was a free self moderating tool and people couldn’t even ask question properly for people to do the work for them for free. The entitlement is astonishing and to have the gal to call SO toxic just shows how undeserving some people are of any assistance.
Yes use the search bar and yes lock the thread if people can’t spend 5 minutes to form their question there is no saving of these fools. Period.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
They took on a very strict ruleset to avoid clutter and chaos.
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Stack Overflow, like Reddit, derives its value entirely from its users—it’s just a host. Now that users (and their knowledge) are moving elsewhere, the platform’s importance is fading.
It’s odd when people worry about Stack Overflow’s decline. Online communities have always shifted: from BBSs and newsgroups to forums, chat, Yahoo Groups, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. Each had its time.
The next gathering spot for tech-savvy users might be the fediverse, but who knows at this point. AI isn’t solely to blame for the shift—people moved to Stack Overflow because it was better than what came before. Now, as it declines in quality thanks to general enshittification of services as companies try to monetise uaers, they’re moving on again.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 5 hours ago
Yep users move over time. Its the natural order of things. I disagree with the article that moving away from SO is "bad news for developers " as long as we have something better in the works. It looks like Discord is the thing everyone is jumping on, which kinda sucks.
0x01@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
“Which is bad news for developers”
Nah, we’ve been through lots of iterations of community for developers, irc, maillists, forums, stackoverflow, etc. Most of my complex questions go through specific discord communities now. I’m not trying to spend a year editing a single post because some swamp ass weanie on stackoverflow has his nose covered in rule dust.
Yes ai has changed the game a bit, but it is not removing community, it’s mostly just cutting down on the question duplication
My most recent foray into a new technology was working with vulkan in rust on a mac, stackoverflow is useless compared to the vulkan discord.
catloaf@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
RIP permanence and discoverability
mesamunefire@piefed.social 6 hours ago
That graph tells a story.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
so the ai kills off all its food sources and then what