so the ai kills off all its food sources and then what
Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers
Submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Either Butlerian Jihad or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
jdeath@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
time for a jihad
GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
MSDN subscription
kadup@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Make sure users trust it so much they can no longer discern hallucinations and lies from reality, then keep the AI training on content generated by itself.
Clbull@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.
crestwave@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
SO did go overboard at times; I’ve seen quite a few instances where posts were locked for being “duplicates” of completely unrelated problems. Oftentimes they were accompanied with unnecessarily rude messages as well.
But yes, the unwillingness of some (most?) people to use the search function baffles me. They’d prefer to write a narrative essay in SO for their FizzBuzz assignment and argue with mods rather than type a few keywords to instantly get the solution.
Clbull@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m not a programmer (last time I seriously dabbled into coding was building a website for an A Level Computing project) and I have never personally posted on StackOverflow. In fact, the only StackExchange site I’ve ever been part of was EpicAdvice, a short-lived offshoot that was for World of Warcraft specific questions. But I do have a sibling with a computer science and software engineering background which is how I became aware of the site in the first place.
This isn’t my personal criticism of the site, it’s me echoing the sentiment of the many who have complained about the community across the web.
sturger@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
In the earlier days of StackOverflow, the founders try to fight the toxicity. I don’t know whether they got overwhelmed or just gave up, but the trolls wound up taking over. Maybe good moderators aren’t willing to put up with both overwhelming toxicity AND no pay.
I still love what StackOverflow once was. I tried coming back and giving a chance a few times. My last question got “answered” by people who clearly had not taken time to read the question. After updating the question with, “Note: I’m am NOT talking about ‘X’, its subtle, please read the question fully.” I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I eventually figured it out and didn’t bother posting the answer to the issue. Fly-by answers by people just looking to improve their stats made continuing to interact with SO frustrating and pointless.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They took on a very strict ruleset to avoid clutter and chaos.
gradual@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
It is very refreshing conversing with AI about technical problems.
I notice AI pretty much always knows what I want, even if it can’t give me the correct answer on how to get there.
When asking for helping among ‘you people,’ it’s almost like pulling teeth. It genuinely feels like a lot of you can’t comprehend what you’re reading and blame users for having issues you can’t solve.
With AI, it feels more like I’m talking with a normal person than a lot of the people on the internet.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
They don’t allow me to create an account because email restriction, VPN/IP restriction…
If they don’t want content, that’s their choice
BrightCandle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Even if your in and have a history of good questions and responses it is still ridiculously hard to get a question accepted. Stackoverflow is dying due to its own choices and its driven many people away from it. They caused their own peak in 2014 and its amazing it took this long to decline.
gradual@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, this is a problem with every single platform that becomes successful.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Eh, some manage to go around. Steam doesn’t push this BS (but yea I guess they force you to pay an amount)
Proton mail also doesn’t really go out of their way to check you… and Reddit is somewhat okay from what I remember
thatradomguy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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…
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Sure is bullshit. I now and then could have answered a question i am an expert in. But i never had an account and wouldn’t have had the points to do it, because “popular question” and whatnot.
Artisian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
One of the more important knowledge repositories right now… and it’s tied to a corporation. We should probably be supporting alternatives.
Anybody know of data backups? Do we have the whole thing on the internet archive?
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Do we have the whole thing on the internet archive?
Maybe?
Another consideration is that it’s probably a part of many LLM training datasets by now. In fact, I’d say the combination of bad moderation and AI have made Stack Overflow less attractive lately.
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Every time I go to SO I have to deal with CloudFlare checks or captchas. I’m not genuinely not sure why, but it has kept me from clicking SO links from search engines first. Not even using a VPN. Kind of odd.
mint_tamas@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m sure they have all the heuristics in Cloudflare cranked up due to all programming model training aggressively digesting their content. Can’t blame them, honestly.
jdeath@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
sure we can
orcrist@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
The headline is a lie. Developers will be fine. One company will lose users. And rightly so.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
they’re gonna rebrand to ai first or turn it into an experts-exchange aren’t they?
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
It does feel like they’re going that way. But that’s okay. Everyone needs an Expert Sex Change every now and then.
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
but do we have something better? I’m not sure…
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Stack overflow is still useful z it’s just that the vast majority of answers are like 15-20 years old as most questions were already answered by then
0x01@lemmy.ml 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago
RIP permanence and discoverability
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
fuck discord. this is the only thing I want to add to the other 2 responses
d00ery@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Stack Exchange is a business owned by investment company Prosus, and the Stack Exchange products include private versions of its site (Stack Overflow for Teams)
Private equity milking another product dry.
PbNews@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Wow amazing stuff
mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
That graph tells a story.
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 2 weeks 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 weeks 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.
eronth@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yup. Infuriating. I can’t remember how many times I saw a thread of someone asking my version of a question that was then closed as duplicate linking to an older one that wasn’t the right version and therefore the fix was irrelevant or at least not best practice anymore.
CoffeeGhost@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It also doesn’t help when the answer is “yeah just disable this feature that is used for security. That fixes the issue” but that really isn’t the best solution
mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago
The graph suggests it started declining well before AI became mainstream. I’m sure it accelerates it, but it had already long peaked.
i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk 2 weeks 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.
Speculater@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The barrier to entry is silly.
ChillPenguin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve always been afraid of opening questions on stack overflow. To the point that I’d rather just figure it out myself.
RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 2 weeks 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”.
letsgo@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Not in technology, it’s a rapidly evolving field. Answers that might have been absolutely perfect five years ago can now be irrelevant archaic trivia.
WarlordSdocy@lemm.ee 2 weeks 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.
coolmojo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How about this one then