[Buttons840]

StackOverflow should have focused on linking duplicates rather than forbidding duplicates.

No Boilerplate recently said "writing is thinking"[0], and suggested links are the ultimate knowledge graph organizational tool--not tags, not folders--links[1].

StackOverflow tried to prevent all duplicate questions. This was stifling and reduced writing, reduced thought, and most importantly, reduced user engagement.

The people who wanted to write their problems and ask their questions stopped going to StackOverflow. The people who wanted to write and give answers stopped going to StackOverflow.

Look at Discord or IRC and you'll see that people have their own questions to ask, and the people who answer such questions enjoy answering the same questions over and over. Let the people write their questions, and write their answers and give advice. Instead of preventing duplicates, link duplicate questions together.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqm4-B07LsE [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0yAy2j-9V0

[zahlman]

> StackOverflow should have focused on linking duplicates rather than forbidding duplicates.... StackOverflow tried to prevent all duplicate questions.

Duplicates are not forbidden on Stack Overflow. Duplicate questions are linked together - that's what "duplicate" means in the system. Beyond that, logged-out users who land on a duplicate question that doesn't have its own answers, will be automatically redirected to the target.

When duplicate question are linked on Stack Overflow (and everywhere else on Stack Exchange), they are automatically closed, which merely prevents new answers. The purpose is to allow high-quality answers to be gathered in one place - on the duplicate target, which in turn is ideally a high-quality version of the question (and a focus for curators to improve further, when they notice that it becomes a common duplicate target).

Deletion of duplicates (and posts in general) is not very well understood and people are not all on the same page - see e.g. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/426214 . But normally duplicates should not be deleted unless they are actively harming the search results (i.e.: it causes people to find the wrong target, because it was written in a way that fools keyword search).

Nobody gets formally sanctioned for posting a duplicate. You just get your question closed, and maybe asked to search a bit more carefully in the future (or shown how to do so).

> The people who wanted to write and give answers stopped going to StackOverflow. Look at Discord or IRC and you'll see that people have their own questions to ask, and the people who answer such questions enjoy answering the same questions over and over.

People who want to give the same easy answers over and over to the same easy questions, so as to get imaginary internet points that move them up a leaderboard, should not feel welcome on Stack Overflow. That action is actively counterproductive to what Stack Overflow is trying to accomplish. There are countless discussion forums (and as you say, Discord and IRC channels) already where that behaviour is valued. The Internet should be allowed to have one place where it is not valued - especially when it's a place that was specifically created to accommodate people who want search engines to be useful; who want to write high quality answers once and get many people to read them; etc.

[Buttons840]

Maybe "answered by duplicate" would have been a more friendly way to say it--but I hear you, yeah, the closed questions were linked, which is what I was asking for. Whatever the case, a lot of people decided to never use the site because their questions were closed.

> People who want to give the same easy answers over and over to the same easy questions, so as to get imaginary internet points that move them up a leaderboard, should not feel welcome on Stack Overflow.

I think it's worth asking, why do people give answers on the internet at all? Maybe it's because of internet points, but more often people just like interacting with other humans and teaching.

In the beginning, StackOverflow was a place for people who wanted to interact with other humans, and also a place for people who wanted to build the ultimate knowledge base--for a time their incentives were aligned.

But then over time the space for interacting with other humans got smaller and smaller, and now StackOverflow is almost entirely about maintaining the knowledge base that has been built.

And yeah, like you say, it's okay if StackOverflow isn't the place for human interaction. StackOverflow has built its knowledge base, and some still maintain it, and the long term success of that knowledge base is becoming ever more apparent--which is to say, not very successful--the day may soon come that StackOverflow isn't even hosted anymore.

(Also, I want to ward off the claims that this is because of AI. StackOverflow was in steady decline long before AI was competent at answering questions; even in 2025 the competence of AI is still in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44000118)

[zahlman]

Ah, I forgot I was going to address this one...

> Maybe "answered by duplicate" would have been a more friendly way to say it

That's why the current banner template starts off with "This question already has answers here:" and the link.

> more often people just like interacting with other humans and teaching.

Most people eventually get fed up of troubleshooting for others with the same basic problems, and trying to decipher their overall poor communication, and noticing that they never pick up basic skills when those services are available to them.

This is the failure mode of trying to teach on discussion forums: you don't get to teach because the humans you're interacting with don't actually come to learn.

The few who want to learn, rarely need much interactivity. That's bad for getting basic ground covered, but it's good for actually producing something of value.

> the day may soon come that StackOverflow isn't even hosted anymore.

I'm absolutely confident that the company will make something of the information in the long run. But more importantly, they have been releasing data dumps (mostly as promised - check out https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/data-dump ) that others may pick through in the future, and maybe even re-host. The content is under Creative Commons license; and while the company may reserve additional rights, they can't take those rights away from others.

But beyond that - alternatives exist. I'm a moderator now at https://software.codidact.com/ and while it's been slow going I continue to believe in the project.

> StackOverflow was in steady decline long before AI was competent at answering questions

This is true, but the data trends show clearly that LLMs were an "aggravating" (I would say the opposite; it relieves curators who can now do something more important) factor, and the meta archive shows clearly that it's been a policy flashpoint.

> even in 2025 the competence of AI is still in question

I see only two possible futures: the one where it's always in question, and the one where it's in question right up until shortly before the apocalypse and/or rapture. And I don't consider the latter because there would be no meaningful way to prepare (and I'm a skeptic anyway).