ChatGPT is gonna really fuck up SO. I used it just now to figure out some rarely-used Git feature, and got an answer quicker than SO or DuckDuckGo.<p>With the questions no longer being public, the search engines will become outdated.<p>Maybe I should be exporting my ChatGPT chats and contributing them to something equivalent to Common Crawl? I guess I can do that with a machine-readable blog "Everything I learned from asking ChatGPT this year"
This query has a flaw, it does not count deleted questions at all. You can still query deleted questions via the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, see this example for a rewritten query:<p><a href="https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/1881611/2305349/" rel="nofollow">https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/188161...</a><p>This changes the numbers, but not the trend. The trend still looks pretty grim.
This isn't really a surprise, given that there's much lower friction in asking an LLM compared to using Stackoverflow.<p>However it's still kind of a concern. I'd guess that a lot of LLMs used stackoverflow data in their training and if it dries up as a source of data, it will reduce the usefulness of later generation models, unless an alternate set of sources can be created/used.
> ChatGPT is gonna really fuck up SO.<p>about this seems to be the sentiment here.<p>i beg to differ - this is a chance for stackoverflow to raise from the ashes.<p>there are many questions chatgpt or claude can't answer. they just have to be about something very new, a little niche and non-trivial. this is the diet stackoverflow needs and might very well be starved by chatgpt!<p>the peak times of stackoverflow and many of its stackexchange siblings were just amazing. so many smart people asking interesting questions and providing insightful and competent answers. on there i learned how to ask questions precisely. it was like the practical complement to studying math.
Author clearly has an axe to grind, I wonder if declining volume is really a problem. Question quantity may not relate to question quality. Maybe most good questions have already been asked and answered.
I have tried to use SO on a few different occasions in the last year, and I’m running into an issue where (likely due to declining traffic and user interest) the quality of the answers is really poor because a lot of the information is for older versions of tools/languages/systems that have changed.<p>It’s a pretty clear indicator that the site is in a death spiral of<p>1. traffic falls
2. With fewer users, quality of answers falls
3. users can’t find good answers
4. GOTO 1
The linked example of the author's "high quality" question that got closed as a duplicate is in fact a duplicate of the existing question, and doesn't seem like a very good question-as-documentation due to being significantly emotionally charged.<p>The author seems to have been offended by not being lavished with praise for asking such a good question or something.
Last time I asked a question, I put "Thank you for any help, it's much appreciated." A drive by moderator, who did nothing to help me improve the technical content or clarity of the question, edited and removed this. I asked him politely to not change my own words, as it's custom in my culture to thank people. Big in-charge moderator on a power trip's most important mission that day was to inform me that he's in charge, and denied the request.<p>This is incredibly toxic and stupid, contributes nothing, and as such, it's not worth providing your expertise for free. The site years ago was an amazing resource of like minded people helping each other. The only cure would be to stop community moderation and do professional only, as well as guide the noobs to resources like chatgpt first for "how to I write a hello world", while sorting the quality questions onto the front page.
This is classic technological disruption. I can ask ChatGPT the most mundane questions, while it is very high effort to ask questions on Stack Overflow. Nobody really wants to RTFM. ChatGPT hallucinates, but many Stack Overflow results are of questionable quality as well. One major benefit I see with Stack Overflow is that people can score and discuss the answers and can specify alternatives whereas ChatGPT does not have a way of moderating results.
I recently asked a question and was reminded about a strange behavior where people answer in comments.<p>On Reddit the friction for giving any answer is very low. The consequence is you have to wade through unhelpful and vitriolic comments more often they you'd wish. Dad Jokes are obligatory.<p>Here on HN, comments are on-topic or related tangents, with the occasionally risked bon mot.<p>This comment might even be like a question on SO, evoking--Is there even a question here? OK...<p>Are there disincentives on SO to giving answers?
I have about 200k rep and a 15 years account.<p>When I want to ask a question I need to bend backwards in order for the "community" not to downvote and tell me that I need X when I ask Y.<p>Some communities (hello Golang!) are straight toxic telling that if you do not ask a IQ 150 question, get out. I do not think I have question with a positive vote there.<p>In contrast, when asking on Travel or Cooking I get friendly, reasonable answers. I read the TeX community just because they are so nice (I do not even use TeX or LaTeX :))<p>I usually get an answer on Reddit, though the quality varies.<p>I need to use ChatGPT more as it seems to be the short and mid-term future
Maybe they improved their search algorithm, so people can find what they are looking for. It truly sucked before, and I am still using Google to search for answers on Stackoverflow.
excellent! nobody wants answers that a LLM can answer on SO.<p>to be honest, nobody wanted questions that were spelled out on all the manuals either. so maybe LLM will handle all of those and let only the interesting ones.