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Comment by fluoridation

15 hours ago

It's not really a bell curve. There was obviously a downwards trend from 2016 onwards, but 2023 definitely precipitated the fall to zero. Without AI they might have lasted at least a couple more years, or the activity might have stabilized to a new floor greater than zero.

https://postimg.cc/n9nZGLmb

Goodness of Fit 0.911, Kurtosis -0.849, Skewness: 0.073

It's very much a bell curve

You mean the fall to a thousand questions per month. Now that the volume is low enough someone has a chance of looking at every single one of them, maybe the StackOverflow community can finally collaborate in peace, safe from the onslaught of questions that could be answered by reading the documentation.

I am not sure. I think SO died way before AI and that graph seems incorrect too.

> Without AI they might have lasted at least a couple more years

Nah, their decline was already readily apparent before AI. You only need to go through old discussions and other people noticing it. AI may have accelerated the decay, but the decline happened already largely prior to AI.