- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
Four months ago, we asked Are LLMs making Stack Overflow irrelevant? Data at the time suggested that the answer is likely “yes:”
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Make no mistake. LLMs aren’t killing stackoverflow. LLMs just arrived to finish it off. The stuff that was killing it are the regular posters there, and their passive aggressive bullshit
Question closed as off-topic.
So here’s what I don’t get. LLMs were trained on data from places like SO. SO starts losing users ,and thus content. Content that LLMs ingest to stay relevant.
So where will LLMs get their content after a certain point? Especially for new things that may come out or unique situations. It’s not like it’ll scrape the answer from a web page if people are just asking LLMs.
The need for the service that SO provided won’t go away. Eventually people will migrate to new places to discuss. LLM creators will either constantly scrape those as well, forcing them to implement more and more countermeasures and GenAI-poison, or the services themselves will enshittify and sell our content (i.e. the commons) to LLM-creators.
Ever ask a question on SO? I tell my students to search there but never, ever ask a question. The unmitigated hostility is not what new developers need or deserve. ChatGPT won’t humiliate you for asking a question that someone else has already asked.
If LLMs just copied stack overflow they’d respond to every question with “Closed as duplicate. Question already answered.”
and link a slightly similar question, which’s answers can’t be used in your case, because of the small difference. also, it’s outdated since four years.
or 13 in case of python questions, and they are about python2
I forget where I heard the quote, but:
Stack Overflow is a great place to find answers. Stack Overflow is a terrible place to ask questions.
Their moderation approach is a big part of why it’s a great place to search for answers.
