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points by cowlevel 1 day ago | 0 comments

AI didn't do it to SO. SO's new ownership did it to SO. It's a hostile place with or without AI.

The same decline is visible on all Stack Exchange sites, regardless of moderation policy.

Do you have some graphs for that?

Search engines no longer surfacing useful results didn't help the web in general. Outside of a handful of sites everyone knows the Internet seems to have become a ghost town over the past decade.

[–] moffkalast 14 hours ago

All Stack Exchange sites had the same user hostility problem, though SO was by far the worst at it.

[–] mahboi 1 day ago

Unfortunately they changed ownership very close to when ChatGPT got released, so I can't point to timing, but there's just no way this is not because of AI.

[–] IshKebab 21 hours ago

SO's extreme hostility definitely drove people to the first viable alternative (AI) as quickly as possible, so it might have survived longer if it hadn't been so hostile.

But to be honest I expect that would have just delayed its death. AI is so good now I think I'd use it even if Stackoverflow was really friendly.

[–] grumbel 20 hours ago

I am curious why questions about AI itself haven't had a bigger impact in slowing this all down a little. AI is a whole new field for programming and there should be plenty of interesting questions surrounding AI that are worth discussing on SO.

My attempts at discussing AI related questions with AI itself have been pretty frustrating, especially in the early years, since they are either just uninformed about what's currently going on in the AI space or recite random blog posts of questionable value, often they couldn't even tell what they themselves are capable of.