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Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

The SO is in decline. And decline is caused by its own success.

- The SO was great because answers for noob questions where hard to find. At this point of time (thanks to SO and their knowledge database) there are so many other resources to get these noob questions answered or they are already answered. And some of these other resources are updated to reflect the most recent technology changes while SO answers are static.

- Now people start asking hard stuff - but engineers (I intentionally do not say developers) who know answers on these questions are not interested in answering.

- People who got reputation and they are moderator (they made SO successful) do not know what they do not know.

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> Now people start asking hard stuff - but engineers (I intentionally do not say developers) who know answers on these questions are not interested in answering.

I can't speak for others, but in my case it is not for lack of interest. I don't have enough 'reputation' to be allowed to answer questions and am too busy to find earning it a good use of my time.

Most actual experts don't have the time or interest to amass points on some website. Just like with Reddit moderators, the type of person that is willing to devote a substantial amount of time to rule over an Internet fiefdom often has some personality problem. Add to this the fact that Asperger-like personalities are quite common in the IT field to begin with.

>I don't have enough 'reputation' to be allowed to answer questions

You don't need reputation to ask or answer questions, so this is FUD.

Well, it was when I tried to do it and I haven't gone back to check if it changed. Busy, remember?

So probably mistaken, but hardly FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

You have never needed reputation to answer a question on SO.

> - Now people start asking hard stuff - but engineers (I intentionally do not say developers) who know answers on these questions are not interested in answering.

I suspect part of the reason they're not interested in answering is because a difficult question requires a lot more work to likely get less points as a result. Meanwhile, answering a ton of easy questions can be done quickly and gets more points over on Stack Overflow in the same time frame.

That and yeah, lots of people who could answer your question would rather be doing something that pays the bills or helps them instead.

> I suspect part of the reason they're not interested in answering is because a difficult question requires a lot more work to likely get less points as a result.

I have to admit I have fallen into this myself on both sides.

The (now) rare times I browse the site to find questions I can answer, when I run across one like this, its usually by a low rep user, so I think "hmm, I'll spend fifteen or twenty minutes sharing this, get maybe one or two upvotes, and if I'm lucky the original person will accept the answer" and usually deem it not worthwhile. Partly this is because the correct answer is often "don't do it that way, you should do x then you can do z and completely avoid your problem instead" which understandably people don't like to hear.

What evidence do you have that SO is in decline?

No evidence. Just observation based on unscientific measurements. I could be very much wrong.

It's probably the same evidence that causes people to say Hacker News is in decline, the internet is in decline, society as a whole is in decline. Occasionally those predictions are right, but usually they're not.

At the same time, it's sometimes a good idea to pay attention to qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) analysis, since certain abstract concepts like culture can only be analyzed that way.

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