This is a perfect example of an element of Q&A forums that is being lost. Another thing that I don't think we'll see as much of anymore is interaction from developers that have extensive internal knowledge on products.

An example I can think of was when Eric Lippert, a developer on the C# compiler at the time, responded to a question about a "gotcha" in the language: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8899347/10470363

Developer interaction like that is going to be completely lost.

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tempest_ 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This type of thing often lives in the issues / discussion tab of a github repo now a days, for better and worse.

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dimator 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yuck. I don't know if it's just me, but something feels completely off about the GH issue tracker. I don't know if it's the spacing, the formatting, or what, but each time it feels like it's actively trying to shoo me away.

It's whatever the visual language equivalent of "low signal" is.

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NitpickLawyer 4 days ago | parent [-]

Still gh issues are better than some random discord server. The fact that forums got replaced by discord for "support" is a net loss for humanity, as discord is not searchable (to my knowledge). So instead of a forum where someone asks a question and you get n answers, you have to visit the discord, and talk to the discord people, and join a wave channel first, hope the people are there, hope the person that knows is online, and so on.

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nerdix 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah, I suspect that a lot of the decline represented in the OP's graph (starting around early 2020) is actually discord and that LLMs weren't much of a factor until ChatGPT 3.5 which launched in 2022.

LLMs have definitely accelerated Stackoverflow's demise though. No question about that. Also makes me wonder if discord has a licensing deal with any of the large LLM players. If they don't then I can't imagine that will last for long. It will eventually just become too lucrative for them to say no if it hasn't already.

	▲	chongli 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Discord isn’t just used for tech support forums and discussions. There are loads of completely private communities on there. Discord opening up API access for LLM vendors to train on people’s private conversations is a gross violation of privacy. That would not go down well.

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skvark 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think most relevant data that provides best answers lives in GitHub. Sometimes in code, sometimes in issues or discussions. Many libs have their docs there as well. But the information is scattered and not easy to find, and often you need multiple sources to come up with a solution to some problem.

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fireflash38 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of valuable information lived/lives in email threads that might or might not be publicly archived.

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Philpax 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The second answer cites Lippert's pre-existing blog post on the subject: https://ericlippert.com/2009/11/12/closing-over-the-loop-var...

I agree that there will be some degradation here, but I also think that the developers inclined to do this kind of outreach will still find ways to do it.

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gessha 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe the community has seen the benefit of forums like SO and we won’t let the idea go stale. I also believe the current state of SO is not sustainable with the old guard flagging any question and response you post there. The idea can/should/might be re-invented in an LLM context and we’re one good interface away from getting there. That’s at least my hope.

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yaroslavvb 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I used to look at all TensorFlow questions when I was on the TensorFlow team (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/tensorflow/info). Unclear where people go to interact with their users now....Reddit? But the tone on Reddit is kind of negative/complainy