Disclaimer: I'm in the Top 1% of StackOverflow contributors with 23,315 rep points.
I asked 1 high-quality question in 2024, and it was closed almost immediately, and I haven't engaged with the site since.
If someone with 20,000+ karma has their nicely-formatted questions closed so quickly, what must the newbies and rank-in-file encounter? This is probably a big reason why it's declining.
In March 2023 when this article was published, StackOverflow received 87,105 new questions.
By March 2024, this was reduced to 58,792 (-28,313; -32.5%).
By June 2024, it was 41,616 vs 63,752 in June 2023 (-22,136; -34.8%).
By December 2024, it was 25,566 vs 42,716 in Dec 2023 (-17,150; -40.2%).
From March 2023 to December 2024, it's now reduced from 87,105 to 25,566 (-70.7%).
The site is truly dying and is more outdated and questions are closed more than ever.
The last time it received so fewer questions was in May 2009, 10 months after going live.
That may hint that StackOverflow has less than one year of life left.
Since ChatGPT launced: Nov 2022 (108,563), it's had 82,997 less questions (3.25x less; -76.5%).
SELECT YEAR(CreationDate) AS Year, MONTH(CreationDate) AS Month, COUNT(*) AS NumQuestions
FROM Posts
WHERE PostTypeId = 1 -- Questions only
GROUP BY YEAR(CreationDate), MONTH(CreationDate)
ORDER BY Year DESC, Month DESC;
StackOverflow had all the ingredients to become and remain a success. Why isn't it? For starters, it has become an extremely toxic environment in which to ask questions. Every question or answer is punished by bullies (moderators). I lost a lot of accounts in the last 2 decades and a lot of questions disappeared. The toxic regime punishes anyone who wants to get better at what they love to do. There is no respect for beginners and ‘open’ questions, no matter how well-meaning, are mercilessly punished. StackOverflow will disappear, and they have only themselves to blame. And AI solutions are always willing to help, without judgement, in a friendly matter. People only use bad solutions/companies until something better comes along. Then they leave ... And all those bully moderators spent a lot of time building a fake reputation with fake points for a platform that no longer exists. In a few years, nobody will remember there existence ...