Comment by eterm

You're right, the main decline was AI, but it was on a downward trajectory anyway.

This graph shows a distinct change pre-dating AI, starting 2014, there's explosive growth which suddenly stops around then.

A soft decline which carries on until Covid caused a temporary reversal of that.

The soft decline then continues at a pace around where it was, until November 2022, when it suddenly accelerates to its death. That's ChatGPT of course.

But the site was already in decline, against the backdrop of vastly increased software developers and software development, because of hostility.

Software developers used Stackoverflow despite the hostility, because there was no alternative.

The early growth wasn't caused by the moderation, because the early moderation was a lot softer.