Over the past one and a half years, Stack Overflow has lost around ~~50%~~ 35% of its traffic (Update: Around 15% of the observed loss seems to be related to the recategorization of the Google Analytics Cookie around May 2022. The chart was updated to only include data after that change). This decline is similarly reflected in site usage, with approximately a 50% decrease in the number of questions and answers, as well as the number of votes these posts receive. The charts below show the usage represented b

Over the past one and a half years, Stack Overflow has lost around 50% of its traffic. This decline is similarly reflected in site usage, with approximately a 50% decrease in the number of questions and answers, as well as the number of votes these posts receive.

The charts below show the usage represented by a moving average of 49 days.

What happened?

  • Greg Clarke@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    There is a lot of Stack Overflow hate in this thread. I never had a bad experience. I was always on there yelling at noobs, telling them to Google it, and linking to irrelevant questions. It was just wholesome fun that briefly dulled my crippling insecurities

  • DataDecay@beehaw.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    Rather than cultivate a friendly and open community, they decided to be hostile and closed. I am not surprised by this at all, but I am surprised with how long the decline has taken. I have a number of bad/silly experiences on stackoverflow that have never been replicated on any other platform.

  • Lmaydev@programming.dev
    0·
    1 year ago

    In my experience many of the answers have become out of date. It’s gradually becoming an archive of the old ways of doing things for many languages / frameworks.

    Questions are often closed as a duplicate when the linked question doesn’t apply anymore. It’s full of really bad ways of doing things.

    I’m not really sure of the solution at this point.

    Also ChatGPT.

    It’s a last resort for me nowadays.

    • malchemy@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      Ironic, since one of ChatGPT’s biggest weaknesses is that it’s an archive of the old ways of doing things. You can’t filter by time on ChatGPT, and ChatGPT isn’t being retrained on the latest knowledge live. These aren’t inherent to GPT, so it’s possible that a future iteration will overcome these issues.

      • stephen01king@lemmy.zip
        0·
        1 year ago

        On ChatGPT, if a solution doesn’t work, you can ask in real time for a different one. On SO, your post just gets locked for being a duplicate.

        • malchemy@lemm.ee
          0·
          1 year ago

          Asking in real-time wouldn’t help in this scenario (e.g. some mirror is no longer accessible). If anything, it’d just lead you further astray and waste more time, because GPT’s knowledgebase doesn’t have this knowledge.