I think a big problem was how new users had to unlock things like the ability to comment. Probably a lot of new users really should have added comments to previous questions to clarify things, but instead the site tells them to create a new question first to get reputation points. So they do, but what they want isn’t really a unique question, just clarification on a previous question.
Once you get enough reputation to be “in,” suddenly the whole site opens up and you can do everything you need to. But a new user has to get to that point, and that is daunting if they’re new to programming.
I also think that SO selling their data for training AI really rubbed a lot of old timers the wrong way too. If they had not given in to that, I wonder if the decline would have been nearly as sharp. There were users active there daily, finding questions to answer and evaluating others answers. Now there really aren’t.
I think a big problem was how new users had to unlock things like the ability to comment. Probably a lot of new users really should have added comments to previous questions to clarify things, but instead the site tells them to create a new question first to get reputation points. So they do, but what they want isn’t really a unique question, just clarification on a previous question.
Once you get enough reputation to be “in,” suddenly the whole site opens up and you can do everything you need to. But a new user has to get to that point, and that is daunting if they’re new to programming.
I also think that SO selling their data for training AI really rubbed a lot of old timers the wrong way too. If they had not given in to that, I wonder if the decline would have been nearly as sharp. There were users active there daily, finding questions to answer and evaluating others answers. Now there really aren’t.
If they didn’t sell it, it would’ve just been scraped anyway. The AI companies give zero fucks. May as well try to get some money out of it