The Fall of Stack Overflow

trashhalo@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 341 points –
The Fall of Stack Overflow
observablehq.com

Over the past one and a half years, Stack Overflow has lost around 50% of its traffic. This decline is similarly reflected in site usage, with approximately a 50% decrease in the number of questions and answers, as well as the number of votes these posts receive.

The charts below show the usage represented by a moving average of 49 days.


What happened?

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Honestly.

Stackoverflow is a horrible place to ask anything.

I have had 100% legit, well documented questions, closed as duplicate of unrelated other question.

Its... honestly, just not a friendly place to go. Full of a bunch of assholes....

Most of the answers actually suck too. Many times, you will find the correct answer downvoted, and incorrect or bad answers upvoted.

I found this when I was in college too. I only ever asked a few questions and they were all closed as duplicates and never found why the answers from those threads solved anything closed to what I was asking. Lol

A few months ago I had a 7 year old question of mine closed as a duplicate of a 5 year old question. Just another sign that StackOverflow mods are hard at work.

I don't even know how to answer questions.

I lost my old account and now I don't have points on new account and I can not do anything. I can not vote, I can not comment, I can not answer questions. So I just dropped it. I can not even thank (by liking or upvoting) a person whose answer helped me.

I believe others have similar experience.

I feel you. At this point, its a circle-jerk of who can close tickets with the most non-helpful, ridiculous responses....