Technology

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've always been afraid of opening questions on stack overflow. To the point that I'd rather just figure it out myself.

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".

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.

Yeah, this is a problem with every single platform that becomes successful.

Either Butlerian Jihad or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

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.

MSDN subscription

Came here to say something similar about a local archive.

You can also use the app Kiwix to make it a little easier to download/search (and grab several other doc archives like Python PEP and Wikipedia)

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.

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.

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.

In fact my main reason for stopping to contribute was dramatic decrease of question quality not the AI. Just try to follow the new section for a day and tell me it's not a problem, I'll wait.

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.

Well it might goes both ways. People are not afraid to ask stupid questions to AI. And at the same time, AI will not judge the user.

It does feel like they're going that way. But that's okay. Everyone needs an Expert Sex Change every now and then.

Down side of discord is huge. It's not searchable to start with / its not index. Often it's not even public information.

It's like storing data on your personal hard drive/ssd. It's the worst way to share knowledge.

RIP permanence and discoverability

fuck discord. this is the only thing I want to add to the other 2 responses

and mind me, matrix wouldn't be that much better in that regard. better, but still bad, because it's a bad format for this.