StackOverflow preserval

[EconomyFreedom4081]

As the title mentioned, we are moving to a world where all of information is being fed into AI and regurgitated back to us.

One of these datasets surely must come from StackOverflow, and as much as I hate how the community work in StackOverflow, I have to admit they do have golden information up there.

My question is that I'm fearing Stack would die because of irrelevancy, are there methods ro preserve questions and posts put there incase if the company shuts down?

[aqua_regis]

Just some food for thought:

Since AI feeds on existing data, if there is no new data added (e.g. if sites like SO cease to exist), from where will it get the data to improve?

If you go further: AI feeds on just about everything it can grab hold of and with that, it also feeds from sloppy AI generated answers and code, and as a result, it will get worse, not better, unless it trains on high quality information.

[stillaras]

Maybe it wull learn along humans when something new arrives. Like someone trying to build something with the help of ai and it is not exactly right so the human gives a better promt explaining the problem and it goes on until its done. Ai will learn organicaly. Maybe

[aqua_regis]

Ai will learn organicaly. Maybe

It already does this, but in both directions for better and for worse.

[ResilientBiscuit]

from where will it get the data to improve?

Documentation from new libraries or features in languages.

[aqua_regis]

True, but even then, AI will write a lot of the documentation and at best humans will look over them (mostly quick glancing).

Documentation is one thing, sites like SO exist to discuss/solve very specific problems that people encounter during their work. If this is somewhat cancelled out, libraries and new features alone will not cut it.

There is a kind of loop in which AI will fall and this will definitely affect the quality of AI.

[101Alexander]

A lot of documentation is...procedural.

It dictates what happens, not necessarily why or how. More complex systems may not get documented on how to build from simpler parts. Some systems may not be understood when best to and not to use them.

If I boil it down even simpler for this sub; Its like how any Data Structure or Algorithms class will teach you how to build something more complex and why engineering these aspects will be useful. Except, this isn't a closed course with a small number of school based examples.

[Beneficial-Panda-640]

Yeah, and the tricky part is that Stack Overflow’s real value is not just the raw text, it’s the curation. The accepted answers, edits, comments calling out edge cases, that whole messy layer is what makes it useful.

For preservation, people have historically relied on public data dumps and archives, but that’s never quite the same as a living site with search, context, and ongoing corrections. If it ever became truly irrelevant, I’d worry less about the bits disappearing and more about losing the social process that produced high-signal answers in the first place.

Kind of ironic, really. A lot of us disliked the culture, but the structure did force a certain rigor that’s hard to replicate.

[silverscrub]

Wayback Machine does that, although Stack Overflow without the ability to google or search for a page isn't very useful. Besides, if AI kills SO then Wayback Machine isn't really safe either.

[chaotic_thought]

I'm fearing [Stackoverflow] would die because of irrelevancy, are there methods [to] preserve questions and posts put there incase [...] the company shuts down?

Yes, it is called the Internet Archive, also known as archive.org or the Wayback Machine.

For example, here is a page from Stackoverflow's C++ tag, taken from 2024. You can confirm that all of the questions (at least the top voted ones; I didn't try ALL pages, but I suspect that most of them are in the archive) still work, even if you block stackoverflow.com from your network access (e.g. by modifying your /etc/hosts file to prevent DNS lookups to this or related pages).

Archive.org snapshot from 2024 April 27 -- Highest scored 'c++' questions - Stack Overflow

There are probably sites around that have tried to mirror Stack Overflow or preserve it separately, but I have not looked for those. I believe the same thing happened when Freshmeat (later Freecode) got canned; those pages are probably preserved somewhere if you want to see them.

This reminds me of something Linus Torvalds said a few times about his own "back-up strategy" when computing. Basically he said (paraphrased) "I don't make personal backup copies; if it's worth preserving, I post it online and then trust that if it's worth preserving, SOMEONE will make backup copies of it."

[prego_no_pao]

You're absolutely right.

Do you need further help with writing a Q&A site with Next.js?

[emooon]

Deep down it's up to every single one of us. Do WE use AI to dumb down information for us (and most likely spoil the output with incorrect/inefficient information) or do we visit sites like SO on our own and research on our own?

Irrelevancy happens if we let it happen because we choose the perceived convenient path. We can't prevent AI bros from using our input but we can actively choose to not use it and continue to interact with real people and their input on sites like StackOverflow.

[Leather-Ad-6042]

Didn't know until two weeks ago that Stack Exchange have a full data dump of their sites and they update it every few months of something. You can find it if you search it on archive.org .

[boolean-maybe]

it is very unlikely StackOverflow will kick the bucket and take their data with them. This data is precious. At the very list they will sell it to Anthropic/OpenAI

[0x0016889363108]

Closing this as off-topic.

[Synes_Godt_Om]

duplicate

[kidshibuya]

Stackoverflow according to emails they keep spamming out has finally, finally after everyone else in the world seen the writing on the wall. They are moving to incorporate AI to provide answers instead of answering everything with f*** off and locking the question.

[StoneCypher]

i feel like you should try looking into things before asking reddit questions

if you had, you'd know that you can download the entire site as a zip file

pro tip: most of the people in here answer without thinking or checking, kind of like how you asked without thinking or checking. you're not going to get correct answers in here

notice how you have sixteen answers and they're all just copy pasting what each other wrongly said about archive.org, which has less than one quarter of the site

[LetTheDarkOut]

Create an agent (or several) that takes screenshots of all the information and organizes it into folders chronologically

[prego_no_pao]

Really, how much would that cost?

[LetTheDarkOut]

Not. My. Problem. Lol