While the downturn went from gradual to rapid when ChatGPT released in late 2022, it looks like they’d been on a steady / gradually accelerating decline for a few years beforehand - they lost all their gains from 2012-onward before GenAI really became a thing.
Anyone know why? What was killing StackOverflow slowly before GenAI killed it quickly?
While the downturn went from gradual to rapid when ChatGPT released in late 2022, it looks like they’d been on a steady / gradually accelerating decline for a few years beforehand - they lost all their gains from 2012-onward before GenAI really became a thing.
Anyone know why? What was killing StackOverflow slowly before GenAI killed it quickly?
I think a big reason for StackOverflows downfall where the intransparent and often outright infuriating moderation decisions.
When people started answering questions like it was reddit. SO was already well in decline. AI just finished it off.
It looked pretty steady, normalized to a range of people with highs and lows, until the AI hit. SO was an early adopter of AI.
It’s clearly declining from 2018. They weren’t that early.
I believe software communities migrating to closed, volatile, private groups in discord or similars contributed to the issue