| 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). |