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> The Views Count chart reveals an even clearer trend of constant decline starting in 2013, highlighting significant issues with the model StackOverflow operate
by mike_hearn 2y ago
> The Views Count chart reveals an even clearer trend of constant decline starting in 2013, highlighting significant issues with the model StackOverflow operated under. This is the raw data used for this observation.
This seems to be wrong. According to the graph StackOverflow has nearly no views at all, which can't be right. The link goes to a query that selects votes not views, and does indeed show an enormous decline. But it's possible that people still view the site, they just don't vote.
- vegabook 2y agoIndeed. But one possibility is that these are rate of change charts and that that crucial fact was omitted.
- cybersquare 2y agoThat's because the latest count is on the order of 3M views while the scale of the graph is 1B views, or 0.003% of the full scale. It's dramatic but not wrong if you believe SO's own data. Take a look at the raw data linked in the article.
- gklitz 2y agoThat just has got to be wrong. I refuse to believe that we had a significant proportion of the world population viewing StackOverFlow answers in 2011, either the counting is wrong or the dating or aggregation is wrong. It simply cannot be true. I know a lot of HN readers live in the tech-mindset-bubble, but it simply was never the case that any answers on stack overflow rivaled GangNam styles popularity at its peak breakthrough.
- cybersquare 2y agoThis is number of views, not number of unique users. It also likely includes views by bots. Notice how the viewership drops dramatically around 2014 once you could start downloading the database instead of scraping the site.
- mike_hearn 2y agoI did and that raw data query appears to be counting votes. Is there something odd about the SO schema that I don't understand?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]