Stack Overflow fucking sucks, it's dead.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Is there a mirror for Stacks content? I've been concerned for some time that they are a vital resource that a corporation could ruin at any moment.
You can download pretty much all of stackoverflow as ZIM files for self-hosting.
I've looked into this but they aren't exactly small, it's not a straightforward operation for even the average developer or systems engineer to restore these into a working format.
I was thinking we need something along the lines of a read only public mirror run by the proper open source community - e.g. SourceForge or a major Linux project.. ISP's and universities offer mirrors of Linux packages so this could be a resource offered in the same vein. That's my line of thinking as far as a StackOverflow mirror goes anyway!
Of course they aren't small, but they are probably as small as it gets, since they are pretty efficiently compressed. I am not sure what you mean by
it’s not a straightforward operation for even the average developer or systems engineer to restore these into a working format
since it is really trivial to use them. Just load them with Kiwix and serve them as a website. It doesn't get much easier than that.
I was referring to the file size being the barrier. The 2024 large database size of 202GB is prohibitive for the average person's resource capabilities. i.e. I have a home VPS host and I don't even have that much free space. Your cloud operating costs would also go up with the storage and bandwidth use.
There's also two separate issues I was kinda mixing up. I'm a developer who uses StackOverflow and would like to use a resource that is readily available. I think it'd take a few hours to setup even a smaller copy of SO, which isn't ideal for answering a quick question. I also don't want to setup a whole mirror site with custom work just for myself and because I'm paranoid Microsoft miight buy them and paywall SO overnight or something.
I looked into doing something similar with Wikipedia and the recommendation is also to use Kiwix, and the offline file size is also very large.
Welcome to the collapse! Hoarding "clean data" for personal use is like hoarding clean water and food: you need a place to keep it, and it starts going stale the minute you shelve it. So either buy a digital bunker to load up with what you need or ask the all knowing AI gods for answers like the other poors.
Also the Stack Exchange software used to be open source, surely there's still a fork somewhere. You could certainly run your own Developer QA site, but like with Lemmy, the problem then is getting enough traffic to be able to productively tap into the collective wisdom.
(Edit: sorry, this comes across mean spirited but I'm honestly sympathetic and just nihilisticallly frustrated to be in a similar situation. I foresee a big NAS and a lot of downloads in my future, but I hope we also find ways to share our forbidden knowledge until the day it can be free again)
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When hosting this locally, I don't see how 200 GB is much of an issue. Storage is so cheap these days, if you want to host it locally, just buy a 256 GB SSD just for that data for $20. Anyway, you were asking for a mirror, to which I replied with the information about the ZIM files. I don't really understand the issue. Stackoverflow just isn't that small, there is not much you can do about that.
I think it’d take a few hours to setup even a smaller copy of SO, which isn’t ideal for answering a quick question.
The download? Maybe, depends on your Internet connection's speed. Actually serving it as a website certainly doesn't take hours. It is rather a matter of seconds.
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Stack Overflow seems to be doing a prompt job of that already
Despite having fruitfully contributed to the network he is stripped of his name and his account is now known as “user4616250”.
Inspector Javert aah behaviour.