The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
Looking at the graph, it actually looks to me that if we remove the covid spike of mid-2020, there's a very clean almost linear decline right from 2014 (when the dust settled from the change in moderation) all through to the launch of ChatGPT, where it went into a nosedive. Running this on the back of my envelope, StackOverflow would have reached 0 questions per month regardless of LLMs around 2035.
So the lesson for me here is more about how zealous moderation makes a platform better for its existing aging population, while discouraging new members.
Yes; gatekeeping does tend to exclude people who are fundamentally aren't supposed to be there because they're looking for a different place that works differently towards different purposes; and such exclusion is helpful in preventing projects from morphing into things they aren't intended to be.
And, of course, people who aren't "the existing aging population" will tend to see this as a bad thing, because they don't have access to the resource that they want to use for a different purpose. (And, of course, said "existing aging population" will always be in the minority.)
But personally, I strongly believe that people should generally be allowed to make the things they want and showcase them in public without being forced to turn them into something else.