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“The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”

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  “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead” Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2025-05-20 22:32 -0500
    Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost         dead” Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2025-05-21 07:40 -0400
      Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead” Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2025-05-21 12:48 +0100
      Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost         dead” Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> - 2025-05-21 17:24 +0000
      Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead” Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2025-05-24 10:57 -0700
      Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead” Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-25 01:45 +0000
        Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost         dead” Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2025-05-25 13:35 -0400
      Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead” Ar Rakin <rakinar2@onesoftnet.eu.org> - 2025-05-27 22:27 +0600

#122286 — “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”

“The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”
    https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-134

“Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? 
Data at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:””

“June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity investor, 
Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky – sold 
with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.”

Unreal.

Lynn

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#122287 — Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”

Lynn McGuire writes:

> “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead
>    https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-134
>
> “Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? Data  
> at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:”
>
> “June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity investor,  
> Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky – sold  
> with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.
>
> Unreal.

It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They simply  
failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand the natural  
factors that work to collapse every social media platform that employs  
content moderation. Stackoverflow's content moderation policies pissed off  
their most productive contributors, so they all left, and there wasn't  
enough garbage left to support what's left behind.

If SO grew big enough before their loss of mindshare they might've had a  
chance to carry on by inertia, as a steaming pile of flaming crap. Case in  
point: Facebook. But they didn't. Goodbye.

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#122288

On 21/05/2025 12:40, Sam wrote:
> Stackoverflow's content moderation policies pissed off their most 
> productive contributors, so they all left

Good.

I'm sick and tired of searching for a documentation Web site and 
having to wade through dozens of hits from non-normative Web 
forums that don't quite have the answer for the question I didn't 
quite ask.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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#122289 — Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.lang.c.]
On 2025-05-21, Sam <sam@email-scan.com> wrote:
> Lynn McGuire writes:
>
>> “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead
>>    https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-134
>>
>> “Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? Data  
>> at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:”
>>
>> “June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity investor,  
>> Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky – sold  
>> with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.
>>
>> Unreal.
>
> It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They simply  
> failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand the natural  
> factors that work to collapse every social media platform that employs  
> content moderation. Stackoverflow's content moderation policies pissed off  
> their most productive contributors, so they all left, and there wasn't  
> enough garbage left to support what's left behind.

The main moderation problem on StackExchange sites is the abrupt closing
of questions. This is perpetrated by those contributors themselves.

But a constant stream of fresh question is the lifeblood of the site.
When visitors stop coming to ask quesitons, it dies.

Questions are often closed because they are duplicates. However,
they are often not exact duplicates.

Moreover, people ask duplicate questions because the site's search
function is garbage: the answer is in there, but they were not able to
find it.

StackExchange pushes the narrative that questions and their answers
should be useful to future visitors. But then they rely on Google
for those visitors to actually find them.

When you do that, you are handing (even more) control over your traffic
to Google.

Google served up site summaries without routing visitors to the actual
sites, even before the rise of LLM AI.

-- 
TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
Mastodon: @Kazinator@mstdn.ca

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#122290

On 05/21/2025 04:40 AM, Sam wrote:
> Lynn McGuire writes:
>
>> “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead
>>    https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-134
>>
>> “Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant?
>> Data at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:”
>>
>> “June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity investor,
>> Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky –
>> sold with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.
>>
>> Unreal.
>
> It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They
> simply failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand
> the natural factors that work to collapse every social media platform
> that employs content moderation. Stackoverflow's content moderation
> policies pissed off their most productive contributors, so they all
> left, and there wasn't enough garbage left to support what's left behind.
>
> If SO grew big enough before their loss of mindshare they might've had a
> chance to carry on by inertia, as a steaming pile of flaming crap. Case
> in point: Facebook. But they didn't. Goodbye.
>


Wow, Usenet is mostly dead, ..., news at 11.

The, "Stackoverflow Mafia" bit, or the moderatorrings,
provided that the format of curated Q & A is sort of good,
yet, is what it is.

The at-scale collusion, ....

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#122291

On Wed, 21 May 2025 07:40:31 -0400, Sam wrote:

> It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They
> simply failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand
> the natural factors that work to collapse every social media platform
> that employs content moderation.

I was answering question and gaining points on there for a while, until I 
realized that the points themselves didn’t mean anything (beyond conveying 
some kind of status on the site itself). I kind of lost interest after 
that.

I think my account is still there, and my answers are still accumulating 
points ...

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#122292 — Re: “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead”

Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:

> On Wed, 21 May 2025 07:40:31 -0400, Sam wrote:
>
> > It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They
> > simply failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand
> > the natural factors that work to collapse every social media platform
> > that employs content moderation.
>
> I was answering question and gaining points on there for a while, until I
> realized that the points themselves didn’t mean anything (beyond conveying
> some kind of status on the site itself). I kind of lost interest after
> that.
>
> I think my account is still there, and my answers are still accumulating
> points ...

There's a very telling footnote in one of the FAQs over there. I don't have  
the direct link because, well, I couldn't care less, but the FAQ entry wrote  
about a cryptic reason for a loss of reputation points that says something  
like "Account Closed". The explanation is that someone in ancient times  
upvoted you, but their account was closed so the karma is being taken back  
due to the reversed upvote, as if it never happened.

And here's the telling footnote, that went something like "Ummmm… if closing  
an account would cause too much disruption we have a special procedure to  
close accounts without reversing the upvotes".

Now, why would they have to go through the hassle of implementing a process  
that gets rid of high karma accounts, without backing out the rep change…

Keep in mind that high karma accounts are also more likely to have a large  
number of upvotes of others, too.

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#122299

Sam <sam@email-scan.com> writes:

> Lynn McGuire writes:
>
>> “The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead
>>    https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-134
>>
>> “Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow
>> irrelevant? Data  at the time suggested that the answer is likely
>> “yes:”
>>
>> “June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity
>> investor,  Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel
>> Spolsky – sold  with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.
>>
>> Unreal.
>
> It's not the LLM or AI that made Stackoverflow jump the shark. They
> simply failed to achieve sufficient mind share to be able to withstand
> the natural factors that work to collapse every social media platform
> that employs content moderation. Stackoverflow's content moderation
> policies pissed off their most productive contributors, so they all
> left, and there wasn't enough garbage left to support what's left
> behind.
>
> If SO grew big enough before their loss of mindshare they might've had
> a chance to carry on by inertia, as a steaming pile of flaming
> crap. Case in point: Facebook. But they didn't. Goodbye.
>

Absolutely.  I have had painful experience with StackOverflow every time
I asked a question.  I understand they have to moderate it to make sure
the questions are not garbage, but they kinda went too far.  Their
aggressive moderation often kills the enthusiasm of newbie programmers.
It is easier to either just ask an LLM, a person you know, or just shut
up about it.

I had a feeling someday people *will* move away from StackOverflow.
And, here we are.  Most of the answers that are on StackOverflow are
years old, often not even relevant anymore.  I usually just ignore
search results from StackOverflow for this reason.

-- 
Rakin

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