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Of course people reduce their free contributions to Stackoverflow. Stackoverflow is selling then out with the OpenAI API agreement and countless "AI" hype blog

Of course people reduce their free contributions to Stackoverflow. Stackoverflow is selling then out with the OpenAI API agreement and countless "AI" hype blog posts.

zahlman 2y ago
This is on top of an existing long-term trend (since 2014 or so) of increasing frustration at the quality and nature of questions (failure to adhere to site guidelines, nor indeed to put effort into understanding how the site is intended to work).
jeremyjh 2y ago
I think this is more about a drop in questions, than a drop in answers.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  I mean part of the reason to not ask about stuff on SO, there are several types of questions that one might like to ask - such as: I don't know the first thing about this thing, help me get to where I know the first thing. This is not allowed any more. I want to know the pros and cons of various things compared. this is not allowed. I have quality questions regarding an approach that I know how to do, but I want to know better ways. This is generally not allowed but you might slip through if you ask it just right. I pretty much know really well what I'm doing but having some difficulty finding the right documentation on some little thing,help me - this is allowe Something does not work as per the documentation, help me, this is allowed I think I have done everything right but it is not working, this is allowed and is generally a typo or something that you have put in the wrong order because you're tired. At any rate, the ones that are not allowed are the only questions that are worth asking. The last two that is allowed I generally find gets answered in the asking - I'm pretty good in the field I'm asking in, the rigor of making something match SO question requirements leads me to the answer. If I ask one of the interesting disallowed questions and get shit on then I will probably go through a period of screw it, I will just look extra hard for the documentation before I bother with that site again.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    The first one especially is not interesting except to the person asking the question, who wants to be spoon-fed answers instead of making any effort of his own to acquire foundational knowledge. Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. Pro/Con questions are too likely to involve opinion and degenerate into flamewars. Some could be answered factually, but mostly are not. Others have no clear answers.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      thank you for bringing the default SO reasons why these are not the case, but first off >Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. I don't think I've been in any class since elementary school in which I did not have foundational knowledge, I'm talking "I just realized there must be a technical discipline that handles this issue and I can't google my way to it level of questions." If I'm a student, I have a textbook and the ability to read. I'm not asking textbook readable or relevant literature readable in the thing I am studying questions because I, being in a class on the subject I would "know the first thing" to quote my earlier post, that first thing being how to get more good and relevant knowledge on the thing I am in a class in. I'm talking about things you don't even know what questions to ask to get that foundational knowledge which is among the most interesting questions to ask - the problem with SO is it only wants me to ask questions in a field in which I am already fairly expert but I have just hit a temporary stumbling block for some reason. I remember when I was working on a big government security project and there was a Java guy who was an expert in a field that I knew nothing about and he would laugh and say you can't go to SO and ask about how do I ... long bit of technical jargon outside my field that I sort of understood hung together, maybe eigenvectors came up (this was in 2013) Second thing, yes I know SO does not want people to ask non-factual questions, and it does not want me to ask questions in fields in which I am uninformed, so it follows it wants me to ask questions that I can probably find out myself one way or another, only SO is more convenient. I gave some reasons why I do not find SO particularly convenient or useful given their constraints implying this is probably the same for others, you said two of my reasons were no good, but I notice you did not have any input on the underlying question of - why are people not asking as many questions on SO as they once did?
kertoip_1 2y ago
I don't think it's the main reason. People don't care whether someone is selling stuff they create on a platform. Big social media has been doing it for many years now e.g. Facebook and yet it's still there. You come to SO for answers, why would you care that someone is teaching some LLM on them later?
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > You come to SO for answers, why would you care that someone is teaching some LLM on them later? This doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. The people who would be concerned are the ones who are providing answers. They are not coming to SO solely to get answers.
cowsandmilk 2y ago
The time period of their analysis is through May 2023, which was a full year before their OpenAI agreement. The agreement is irrelevant to the findings of the article.

Of course people reduce their free contributions to Stackoverflow. Stackoverflow is selling then out with the OpenAI API agreement and countless "AI" hype blog posts.

zahlman 2y ago

This is on top of an existing long-term trend (since 2014 or so) of increasing frustration at the quality and nature of questions (failure to adhere to site guidelines, nor indeed to put effort into understanding how the site is intended to work).

jeremyjh 2y ago

I think this is more about a drop in questions, than a drop in answers.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
I mean part of the reason to not ask about stuff on SO, there are several types of questions that one might like to ask - such as: I don't know the first thing about this thing, help me get to where I know the first thing. This is not allowed any more. I want to know the pros and cons of various things compared. this is not allowed. I have quality questions regarding an approach that I know how to do, but I want to know better ways. This is generally not allowed but you might slip through if you ask it just right. I pretty much know really well what I'm doing but having some difficulty finding the right documentation on some little thing,help me - this is allowe Something does not work as per the documentation, help me, this is allowed I think I have done everything right but it is not working, this is allowed and is generally a typo or something that you have put in the wrong order because you're tired. At any rate, the ones that are not allowed are the only questions that are worth asking. The last two that is allowed I generally find gets answered in the asking - I'm pretty good in the field I'm asking in, the rigor of making something match SO question requirements leads me to the answer. If I ask one of the interesting disallowed questions and get shit on then I will probably go through a period of screw it, I will just look extra hard for the documentation before I bother with that site again.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  The first one especially is not interesting except to the person asking the question, who wants to be spoon-fed answers instead of making any effort of his own to acquire foundational knowledge. Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. Pro/Con questions are too likely to involve opinion and degenerate into flamewars. Some could be answered factually, but mostly are not. Others have no clear answers.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    thank you for bringing the default SO reasons why these are not the case, but first off >Often these are students asking for someone to solve their homework problems. I don't think I've been in any class since elementary school in which I did not have foundational knowledge, I'm talking "I just realized there must be a technical discipline that handles this issue and I can't google my way to it level of questions." If I'm a student, I have a textbook and the ability to read. I'm not asking textbook readable or relevant literature readable in the thing I am studying questions because I, being in a class on the subject I would "know the first thing" to quote my earlier post, that first thing being how to get more good and relevant knowledge on the thing I am in a class in. I'm talking about things you don't even know what questions to ask to get that foundational knowledge which is among the most interesting questions to ask - the problem with SO is it only wants me to ask questions in a field in which I am already fairly expert but I have just hit a temporary stumbling block for some reason. I remember when I was working on a big government security project and there was a Java guy who was an expert in a field that I knew nothing about and he would laugh and say you can't go to SO and ask about how do I ... long bit of technical jargon outside my field that I sort of understood hung together, maybe eigenvectors came up (this was in 2013) Second thing, yes I know SO does not want people to ask non-factual questions, and it does not want me to ask questions in fields in which I am uninformed, so it follows it wants me to ask questions that I can probably find out myself one way or another, only SO is more convenient. I gave some reasons why I do not find SO particularly convenient or useful given their constraints implying this is probably the same for others, you said two of my reasons were no good, but I notice you did not have any input on the underlying question of - why are people not asking as many questions on SO as they once did?

kertoip_1 2y ago

I don't think it's the main reason. People don't care whether someone is selling stuff they create on a platform. Big social media has been doing it for many years now e.g. Facebook and yet it's still there. You come to SO for answers, why would you care that someone is teaching some LLM on them later?

pessimizer 2y ago
> You come to SO for answers, why would you care that someone is teaching some LLM on them later? This doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. The people who would be concerned are the ones who are providing answers. They are not coming to SO solely to get answers.

cowsandmilk 2y ago

The time period of their analysis is through May 2023, which was a full year before their OpenAI agreement. The agreement is irrelevant to the findings of the article.