From the founding of Stack Overflow in 2008 to the first quarter of 2014, the number of new questions and answers posted grew steadily before leveling out and ultimately declining. The purpose of…

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From the founding of Stack Overflow in 2008 to the first quarter of 2014, the number of new questions and answers posted grew steadily. From 2013 to 2015, the growth has been stagnant, then accelerated from 2015 to 2017. From 2019 to 2021 was a sharp spike in the growth of new users.

The Strange Death of Stack Overflow

Two other things might be factors. The community got very active in shutting down questions not asked correctly, presumably for quality control. Many developers got turned off if their grammar, language, or presentation of question was the reason they were shut down, sometimes aggressively, and irrevocably. Second factor - as more questions get answered, the ability to find answers increases, reducing the need to ask. Queries about the number of searches would be a nice addition to the research article.

A very poor article as it does not even entertain the most common reason for lack of dedicated user; the community is often described as being toxic. Instead of explaining in an empathetic way how your question is wrong, they often slam it with downvotes, saying it doesn’t contain enough information, that it’s a duplicate question, referencing an issue that was answered 5 years and major versions ago… And that’s putting it mildly. Most often the answers are much more harsh. This is the most obvious reason as to why people create new accounts and then dump them.
They ask their question, they get downvoted and commented out of the platform, and don’t return. Not to mention, if they downvote your questions enough I think you lose the ability to even ask questions, which is a bit odd. It’s like they don’t want new users anymore. Maintain status quo is more important right now.
I gave up asking questions there over eight years ago and simply became a passive reader. Even then it was hostile towards new developers.

Man, it is so hostile. I have to be really careful when I am answering or asking questions otherwise I will be canceled. TBH, this fear is only associated with SO and no other forum.

I wonder what would the data look like for 2022 and 2023 given the rise of LLMs.
IMO Stack overflow should integrate AI bots to provide possible answer to the questions or properly rephrase the questions while user is asking it . This will play a vital role in making it a useful and efficient platform.

I asked only 1 question on Stackoverflow about Linux. I wanted to give just enough information to get answers. My topic got disabled because “too few information”. I edited my question to give every detail possible just to get my question disabled again because “too much information”. I rewrote my question to perfectly fit Stacoverflow’s quality content, and gave an example about my question like “lets say i want to do …” and guess what. My topic got closed down permenantly because my hypothetical example could be “trying to get my real life job done by Stacoverflow users”.
I am still passive user, just reading topics though i would never ask any questions on the platform.
Oh, i don’t even want to mention the toxicity of users.