So AI answers replaced questions. Growthfroth
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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Programming
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Why would you ask a question to see it closed immediately and be insulted on top of it? No thanks
This was already answered in a reddit thread from 2019. This comment is redundant and should be removed.
On top of it, op lacks basic thinking skills and stinks of mackerel.
They need to go, before we taunt them a second time.
Are you one of the knights who say "Ni!" or a mod on stack overflow? Or ... FRENCH?
Exactly my experience.
On Lemmy or Stack Overflow?
I'd love to answer questions on here. I don't see many.
Here is an example community that refuses to migrate here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1uiywal/should_we_switch_to_lemmy/.
The top-upvoted comments are... eye-opening, to say the least. In this arena of man vs. bear, they have chosen the bear (Reddit), rather than subject themselves to our overall lack of moderation to make a place that mainstream normies - even ones technical enough to be interested in F-droid - can stand to exist in.
That said, actually I thought that programming.dev was fairly chill though, so I am not certain that I understand the reasons why, if we are specifically talking about the instance you are on? Many communities on hexbear, and some of the more extremist content on Lemmy.ml, are even hidden by default for a new account.
Perhaps it is the overall lack of transparency about such matters? Someone browsing by https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=Active would still see "funny meme" content such as https://lemmy.world/post/50297816, even without an account, which can be quite off-putting.
And there are so many people who have come here, remained for literally years, and then decided to leave. We stayed, so it's a bias effect for sure, but their stories are quite a turn-off to new users.
Many instances have put in a great deal of effort to make the Threadiverse more palatable to new users. But... when you read the responses to posts like this one, it does reveal how large swathes of this place go mostly unmoderated, or at least what is left is annoying and tiring to have to wade through.
Example comment: "What a fucking chud loser you are", which aside from representing a personal attack on the user rather than their argument (a direct violation of that community's rule #2), also detracts from rather than adds to the subject under discussion.
The people in that subreddit are already having discussions in that space - Reddit is getting more annoying all the time, but they can persist. Is there is any particular reason then that they should come here and subject themselves to our toddler fights over whether Russia invaded Ukraine vs. the other way around? (which isn't even something up for debate, realistically speaking?)
Anyway in case you are interested, there is a !ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev community that you could join, although there has been only one post within the last four months, so while not quite dead it is definitely struggling rather than thriving. There is also https://programming.dev/c/cs_career_questions and https://programming.dev/c/no_stupid_questions, although they are also struggling.
Maybe we can do things to reduce our toxicity level, but I fear that the word is out about Lemmy being mainly a tankie bar, and I don't know how to convince anyone (especially myself) that it is not the case - especially bc that is well and truly what we are, and yet I also think that it needn't be all that we could ever be?
I... friend, you've left me baffled. Lemmy is toxic? I left Reddit after a decade because it is þe worst of boþ worlds: rampant toxicity combined wiþ power-tripping mods. And, look, I know abuse: you might be surprised at þe vitriol a single character can generate. People may have anger management issues on Lemmy, but my god þe voting holy wars on Reddit are caustic in þe extreme.
Lemmy's blocking feature is fantastic, and is a far, far better mechanism þan depending on subjective, egotistical mods for managing discourse.
Opening a Lemmy instance shows a Local feed by default. From the limited view of instances I know or use, I think showing these shows great variance and content, and it also demonstrates instance focus without any of these "tankie bar" concerns or toxicity level (which I have seen and experienced to a degree, but isn't necessarily prevalent).
- Beehaw.org
- programming.dev
- feddit.de
I would list dbzer0 and anisocial, but honestly, I don't like what you see in their default Local view. Memes and an image feed.
I don't necessarily disagree with there being moderation issues, at times or in some communities or instances. It's a consequence of the diffuse and open nature of first-come-first-serve and entirely dependent on the people initially creating communities and moderating, if they extend their moderation into a team, and the instance admins' approach to moderation.
Beehaw is an example of very deliberate moderation intent and action.
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On Stack Overflow.
Asking a question was agreeing to be abused. You have to followed the rules exactly to maybe get a useful answer.
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Stack Overflow’s moderation was cooked long before LLMs came to harvest the corpse.
I've been on the site since 2008 i think. Used to use it loads. Posted questions and answers. The question i actually got an answer to was 2018. Since then it would just get nothing. Sometimes a mod might tweak it a bit in a pointless way but just no answers. Gave up in the end.
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Stack Overflow: You're absolutely wrong
ChatGPT: You're absolutely right
If i was right, I wouldn't be having the conversation. Therefore SO is closer to the truth.
Always hated SO. They acted like they fostered the developer culture of sharing that had happened for decades. But instead they helped bring in the bro culture that ruined development. Now we have interviews that are hazing sessions. Code reviews that turn into fights. It goes on. And SO culture was part of that.
Fuck them.
Can you elaborate on "bro culture"? I never felt like my interviews or code reviews were very fratty
Not surprising. Not only is it easier to ask stuff from AI chat bots, the responses on SO can often be so condescending and outright mean that it further drives people to ask questions from the yesmanning LLMs.
The difference of a private chat with an Ai to a public question on Stack Overflow (or any forum for that matter) is, that on Stack Overflow multiple persons can read and comment. Answers often iterate and fact check if someone hallucinates, because so many eyes sees it. If the answers are helpful is something everyone has to decide themselves, but the principle of an open platform being very useful is undeniable.
Compare this to your private Ai chatbot. Only one person sees the answer and if something hallucinated is in there or the quality of the answer is not good, then you might not know. And those Ai bots are controlled by the few big corporations, maybe a little less if you use a custom offline bot, but they are probably not as good as the big models. That's why this is a bad trend. I think the open and user controlled Stack Overflow was a better approach, by principle.
Wasn't there an XKCD about this?
I had to google what XKCD is so I have absolutely no idea whatsoever lmao
I'm so envious of you right now
Now they're busy reading all of them
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LLMs are trained to be sycophants, quick to praise and agree, in order to keep the user satisfied. This allows poor practices and behaviors to persist, at least until the user joins a team and becomes aware of their issues. Stackoverflow actually calls people out and teaches how to do research, and write informed questions. I got called out for some of my first few questions, and almost never after that, because I learned to do proper research and write proper questions.
Oh absolutely, I'm not denying any of that. But Stack Overflow is also filled with incredibly snarky people, whose feedback is less than productive. That's why I understand many beginners preferring LLMs over SO. Calling out bad practices is a good thing, but it doesn't mean people should be straight up rude.
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That's it, all possible questions have been asked! /s
99% is a crazy number for a drop. I guess if you're big enough can can still survive and 1% is still significant. The trajectory is pretty clear and worrying [for them], though.
/edit:
Stack Overflow recorded 1,442 new questions in July 2026
That's… very few. 50 a day. Two per hour. For a platform [that was] as big as Stack Overflow.
Asked and answered, closing this.
I would ask a question, but last time they even said it sounded like homework. Fuck'em. But I still like it as a knowledge base.
Yea, it's better than some of the other "knowledge base" platforms on the internet (discord)
Imagine being such a bad website, you're basically the only thing AI actually took down.
SO was in decline before AI. AI just accelerated the process. The shit moderation is what took it down.
I only became a dev 5 years ago its incredibly restrictive. They dug their own grave with their moderation.
Absolutely
I've used it many times as a lurker, and I would have loved to add answers buy it was just not usable for that
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AI took down a fuck load of independent/small websites by bombarding them with millions of connections for scraping and by circumventing user traffic to them
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That's what happens when mods auto close everything as a duplicate without taking a moment to really understand the question.
Also when you ruin your site with AI garbage.
Yeah... I have 100k rep (almost exactly!) and I don't use it any more. It doesn't have the network effects, so even if there is a question that AI can't answer (which does still happen despite what some people seem to think), I don't go to Stackoverflow, I go somewhere else. A forum, GitHub repo discussions, even IRC once (OpenOCD still uses that for some weird reason - they were extremely helpful though).
It had a good run. RIP.
Those guys sold SO just in the right time in 2021.
I wanted to check my rep, but the website login is down, while the status page shows all operational. lol
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how are humans going to progress if you eliminate all the resources for humans to share experience?
imagine 20 years in the future where you no longer have a resource like stack overflow to troubleshoot the latest technology.
where is AI going to steal its answers from?
this seems like a dumbfuck gambit based on hopes and dreams. even if an AI can achieve what they're hoping, it won't know everything. they're banking on AI having the experience and intelligence of billions of humans.
we're fucked.
First AI came for those who answer questions, next it'll come for those who ask questions! Crazy how quickly the whole process is being automated away.
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