Today, Stack overflow has almost as few questions asked per month, as when it launched back in 2009. A recap of its slow, then rapid, downfall.

Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? Data at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:”

  • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    best answer is the most visible

    no wasting your time

    These two points aren’t always true in my experience. On more than a few occasions, I have encountered posts that look similar to the problems that I am facing, but because of a slight nuance (on the surface), the answers suggested won’t help.

    Usually, my search would hit a deadend here. At this point, I guess the best course of action is to create a new post. Unfortunately, these new posts would then get closed as a duplicate of the similar post - even though the problem in that particular context still hasn’t been solved

    • paequ2@lemmy.todayEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      get closed as a duplicate of the similar post

      I’ve definitely had this happen to be before. It’s annoying.

      What I do in that case is proactively say:

      I’m facing problem X. I’ve tried searching for solutions. I found post X2 and X3 that are similar, but my problem is actually different because of Y.

      Sometimes it helps.

      Also, if you see people being assholes you can report them. There’s a flag for “unfriendly or unkind”. I’ve definitely used that before.