> If I'm an expert, but I can only say something useful once every six months when some super-niche question drops > The other extreme - drowning in "noob" que

> If I'm an expert, but I can only say something useful once every six months when some super-niche question drops > The other extreme - drowning in "noob" questions - is also harmful, which is why you end up with FAQs and rules. This isn’t reflective of what actually happened with Stack Overflow though. These are not equal dangers. There were plenty of reasonable questions, then it became overwhelmed by people who didn’t want to read tutorials or documentation but instead wanted other people to do their work for them or to have the documentation looked up and recited to them by a person not a search engine. Stack Overflow didn’t much care because it’s increased engagement, but the expert users absolutely did care and started to leave. “There aren’t enough interesting questions” is not a danger. “Experts don’t want to be a flesh interface to a search engine” is not only a danger but has already been harming the community for a long time. LLMs have the chance to reverse this damage, and they can do this by selectively reducing the volume of the harmful engagement. So I am rejecting the notion that declining activity necessarily means degraded community.