Stack Overflow Website Traffic

This graph is misinformation

Although we have seen a small decline in traffic, in no way is it what the graph is showing (which some have incorrectly interpreted to be a 50% or 35% decrease). This year [2023], overall, we're seeing an average of ~5% less traffic compared to 2022.

Original comment by jo3rn@discuss.tchnics.de

And yet they didn't show us a rectified or accurate graph.
They’re lying
- Says who? ChatGPT?
- Is this a facts or feelings response?
- You got evidence for that bold statement, ooooor

It will recover when AI learns sneering condescension.

Wonder where chatgpt will get its training data in the future, as it's known not to extrapolate well. Where will it learn new frameworks, languages, ... from?

Its going to starve itself.
- Let it die
I doubt it ever scraped SO, otherwise all the answers would be smth along the lines: "I cannot answer this question due to low quality effort!" closes browser window
The documentation?
The docs. It's what it does now a lot of the time I've noticed.
- Auto generated docs since devs don't document?
- That works when the docs are good and clear. Otherwise, we'll have to revert to communicating with each other for brief periods while the chat-bots train themselves on the new data.
A lot of models are being trained on “synthetic” data now, right?
- Even when a parrot learns to parrot a parrot, the first parrot still has to be taught.
- Armies on paid personal generating content?
  
  I see absolutely no problem with that.

I've been on SO like ten times altogether since ChatGPT came out. It's so much nicer than the condescending pricks of Stack Overflow. My favourite is when some genius links a question as a duplicate of something that's vaguely similar.

The problem is that fewer people are generating the new content for gpt to slurp up.

Free information stops working when people stop caring about creating it.
- Yeah, I've thought about that as well. Doesn't mean I'm gonna miss Stack Overflow specifically. Perhaps something better replaces it when AI gets poisoned by its own output too much.
- Yup. Stopped answering questions as soon as they did that.
This question was already answered 10 years ago in a completely different version of the programming language to the one you're using, and we know it doesn't work anymore, in fact hasn't for 8 years, but we're going to close it anyway because screw you.

Also you should be doing it in Rust anyway
my first thought about it too
What do you ask ChatGPT? I rarely get a correct answer really, it's all made-up bullshit usually.
- I usually have good answers with only minimal bullshit when it comes to coding. If not, it at least points me in the right direction.

Down voted. If you're just going to post a screenshot, you must include a link to the source. This is a link sharing platform.

Here you go.
- I thought I was going to be rickrolled but this is better.

Closed as duplicate

Now that's just a signal for training reinforcement

The irony of it all is SO making deals for AI to scrape their site for machine learning but in doing so more people are using chatgpt and copilot more because it's easier and just as accurate. AI/ML is really going to destroy these websites and yet it's the websites signing off on their own death sentences.

It’s called selling out. I doubt they have any illusions about the future of these platforms, they just don’t care as long as they can cash out.
What I'm still not sure of is this... When these websites die will the LLMs stagnate with no new data to use for training or will they somehow keep up with new technology and eliminate the need for certain basic questions that would originally have required human input?
- The ideal result? LLMs are just early versions of much better things that come later.
  
  The unlikely result: we develop a separate human curated internet somewhere, complete with verification that a human wrote every bit. Basically verifiable digital id and signing on everything. Maybe.
  
  The probable result: the internet turns to shit as AIs are trained on content created by AIs.
I think they see the writing on the wall and they're trying to make a buck while they still can.

It’s also around the time they did away with their jobs board thing isn’t it? I got a job through it in 2021 and somewhere after that they sunset it, which was an insane business decision because it was the best job search platform out there.

Just wait until there's no stack overflow to scrape.

I think it goes further than that. There's two things happening with regard to AI and software development.

1: Stack overflow has become less common as a resource to solve problems. This, as you say has a problem of input into LLMs for future problems to solve.
2: Junior developers are being hired less because of AI. I assume the idea is that seniors will use AI in the same way they would usually use juniors. Except, they've done what business always does. Not think one bit about the future. Today's senior developers are yesterdays junior developers.

The combination of AI performance drop due to point 1, and the lack of new developers because of point 2 makes for potentially, a bad future for the profession.
- As a senior developer I have no idea how I'd get an AI to autonomously keep a small subsystem maintained. If I was replacing junior developers, that's what it has to do.
  
  Everybody in my team gets to own something. What you own depends on your capability. You learn by doing. No dogsbodies doing busy work.
- Junior developers are being hired less because of AI.
  
  Where are you seeing this? I've not seen any evidence of that, yet.
I think the quality contributors are probably not the ones moving to chatGPT..

Isn’t this when Safari and Firefox started blocking third party trackers by default?

That wouldn't stop page views from being counted.

Chat GPT is wonderful as a search engine for SO. It regurgitates the answers in a format easier to incorporate into your own project.

The thing I'm worried about is a lack of new answers. You need data to train an LLM, what to do if nobody is producing it?

It already uses the docs and API references
- I typically visit stack overflow when encountering edge cases and bugs not covered by the documentation.
- But who writes the docs now

But can ChatGPT downvote answers into oblivion?

No it's the one it replies with

Guilty <-

I'm raising their traffic,by slowly poisoning my answers & questions.

Why would you want to also make Stack Overflow worse?
- I didn't consent to ChatGPT using my stuff. So they get 💩.

Interesting. I actually thought of it as a replacement for Google. With Google search being broken for years it's the only easy way to get information now.

yeah it's replacement for google only if you don't care if any of information received is accurate at all
- Which… is google
"New ChatGPT with Ads!

Giving you that Google feeling once again. "
duckduckgo and searx using duckduckgo work fine
- That's what I use too. Can recommend.
They are really bad for getting correct information and putting it in context: Information literacy and chatbots as search
There are other search engines.
- Most of them have the same problem though. The more specific you are the worse the results.

Yeah. When I need additional insights on a difficult technical configuration, it's nice to be able to speak to an artificial insufferable dipshit, rather than a real human insufferable dipshit.

The AI ones continue helping me even after I explain to them how they come across to real humans. (I do my best not to mention it to the insufferable Human dipshits, of course.)

Do they actually publish this data?

Is this finally the dusk of SO? It helps alot, but also suck alot.

Honestly SO fuelled the rise of the cut and paste developer. I won't be that sad to see the end of it, and the LLMs that scraped it soon after.
- You are also underestimating how sites like SO really helped a new generation of programmers learn. Anyone could search and learn things, whether to take a serious approach or just for a bit of fun.
- The amount of people I've been helping out that have copied some code from somewhere and say "it doesn't work", and who are dumbfounded when I ask them to read the surrounding text aloud for me...
  
  Along the same line: When something crashes, and all I have to do is tell people to read the error message aloud, and ask them what that means. It's like so many people expect to be spoon-fed solutions, to the point where they don't even stop to think about the problem if something doesn't immediately work.

The first dip is all of us back filling answers with "F U ChatGPT" and getting temporarily banned :)

I hope every contractor and employee who has ever worked for that shit hole goes bankrupt, loses their home in a foreclosure auction and spends the rest of their life begging for handouts on the street.