Stack Overflow is doomed

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Stack Overflow is doomed by Ciro Santilli 34 Updated 2024-11-19 Created 2024-07-29
Stack Overflow does have an super naive reputation and moderation system and overly restrictive subject matter, which Ciro Santilli wants to improve upon with OurBigBook.com.
However, it is the best that we have now, and if you use it like Ciro, you won't get tired:
  • monitor only rare tags that you know a lot about, let others answer duplicates on big tags for you
  • only answer on bigger tags when you find a better answer than can be found on the page
  • accept that sometimes things are bound to go wrong, that reputation is meaningless, and move on
What else would you expect from a naive algorithm system that has 10 million newbies asking stuff?
The key problem of Stack Overflow is closurism. The answer close feature is just not made for purpose. The sole purpose of "closing" should be to prevent easy reputation farming. What it should do instead, is remove points gained from duplicates and off topic questions. But it should not prevent new answers. The disk space costs nothing, and Google doesn't care about the closed status of a question.
Question activity on Stack Overflow has been decreasing since 2020:
As of 2024, the only competitor of Stack Overflow is Reddit (besides LLMs, which do nothing but extract data from those two and other sites). Reddit removed the mandatory thread locking after 6 months, but still lacks the Q&A focus required for greatness. Its community however is much more chill and doesn't close and downvote the fuck out of everything.
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