Stack Overflow reimagined
What the company can do to get back their significance
Since ChatGPT and its competitors have been released, there is much talk (and some data that supports it) about declining Stack Overflow popularity. The website has less traffic, fewer questions and answers are posted daily.
Stack Overflow recently announced that they would partner with OpenAI:
OpenAI will officially use the data from Stack Overflow in their models and products
Stack Overflow will have some benefits when using OpenAI technology for various purposes including their OverflowAI extension
Gergely Orosz in his newsletter mentions that some users are not happy with this collaboration and even delete their answers. The author’s conclusion is that the website has passed its best days and this partnership is a rational step for Stack Overflow.
I obviously don’t know how fast Generative AI evolves and if it soon becomes close to replacing humans at complex jobs like programming. If it happens this way, the world will change completely, and it’s too difficult to even reason about how our lives will look like in it. But if it doesn’t, and AI remains in a helper role to humans, Stack Overflow might have a significant and bright future.
How can it look like? Imagine a Copilot/Copilot Chat like tool that helps you with code suggestions and answers. But the connection between you and the service is not one-directional, but bi-directional instead.
Now you don’t only get help from the service, but actively help it (and other users) back! All while being in your favorite IDE. If a code suggestion has a mistake, you fix it and the data goes back to system. You might write an explanation why it wasn’t good. And you, as a user, get some reputation points for this. The AI can edit the code automatically to make sure nothing sensitive is shared back. It can also adjust the grammar and tone for your answer for you instead of human moderators. And if some other user gets your answer or suggestion later, they can upvote (accept would count as upvote automatically) or downvote it.
If the service becomes popular, you can imagine a possibility of live interactions between users, sharing code snippets, asking questions etc. All this with AI-based tools for privacy and security enforcement when needed. Got a problem where you got stuck and AI cannot meaningfully help as well? Try a live screen share (with sensitive data dynamically hidden of course) with AI-chosen user who definitely knows how to help! Will this person be paid with reputation points, achievements or money is an interesting question here that suggests some new monetization options as well.
So while Stack Overflow still has a big and powerful community, I think they should revamp their service to empower this community with AI and make helping each other much easier instead of just selling data to the companies that will destroy their business in a year.
OverflowAI release shows that the company can create an app or extension needed and the question is if they are ready to execute a much bigger vision of it in the near future.