It is worth noting that, early in the release of GPT, we changed the Stack Overflow rules to require new users to wait 30 minutes between first posts, instead of 3 minutes as was originally set for abuse prevention. If this change were causative, we would expect to see a sudden jump to a new lower level, and a return to the prior well-established rate of decrease. However, we do not see this, a strong indicator of deepening attrition. (We would also expect to see a discontinuity in other metrics not listed – this point is established by a confluence of metrics.)

(Emphasis added)

Can you elaborate on this further? I don't I understand how you've been able to determine that this rate limit would have a fixed decrease and not have a compounding impact on the rate of decline in the number of answers and amount of answers posted per user.

From a very human perspective, I would think this limit would be enormously frustrating. Users cannot participate in almost anything on the site without having reputation. Earning reputation is hard and answering questions was previously one of the most effective ways of doing so. Starting from a 1 reputation account, you need to earn 124 reputation to have the rate limit lifted.

Assuming you average 1 upvote per answer (which is honestly quite a high average in some tags, especially for new users) you would need 13 answers to get above the threshold. The minimum amount of time to post these answers would now be 6.5 hours (up from a minimum of 39 minutes prior to this change). I would think that this would have a lasting discouraging effect on users beyond a fixed rate decrease based solely on time.

I understand that users "are obviously not going [to ChatGPT] to answer questions" but that doesn't mean that the rate limit is not frustrating or otherwise deterring our users from contributing on our sites.

It is worth noting that, early in the release of GPT, we changed the Stack Overflow rules to require new users to wait 30 minutes between first posts, instead of 3 minutes as was originally set for abuse prevention. If this change were causative, we would expect to see a sudden jump to a new lower level, and a return to the prior well-established rate of decrease. However, we do not see this, a strong indicator of deepening attrition. (We would also expect to see a discontinuity in other metrics not listed – this point is established by a confluence of metrics.)

(Emphasis added)

Can you elaborate on this further? I don't I understand how you've been able to determine that this rate limit would have a fixed decrease and not have a compounding impact on the rate of decline in the number of answers and amount of answers posted per user.

From a very human perspective, I would think this limit would be enormously frustrating. Users cannot participate in almost anything on the site without having reputation. Earning reputation is hard and answering questions was previously one of the most effective ways of doing so. Starting from a 1-reputation account, you need to earn 124 reputation to have the rate limit lifted.

Assuming you earn 1 upvote per answer with no downvotes (which is honestly quite difficult to do in some tags and especially for new users) you would need 13 answers to get above the threshold. The minimum amount of time to post these answers would now be 6 hours (up from a minimum of 36 minutes prior to this change). I would think that this would have a lasting discouraging effect on users beyond a fixed rate decrease based solely on time.

I understand that users "are obviously not going [to ChatGPT] to answer questions" but that doesn't mean that the rate limit is not frustrating or otherwise deterring our users from contributing on our sites.

It is worth noting that, early in the release of GPT, we changed the Stack Overflow rules to require new users to wait 30 minutes between first posts, instead of 3 minutes as was originally set for abuse prevention. If this change were causative, we would expect to see a sudden jump to a new lower level, and a return to the prior well-established rate of decrease. However, we do not see this, a strong indicator of deepening attrition. (We would also expect to see a discontinuity in other metrics not listed – this point is established by a confluence of metrics.)

(Emphasis added)

Can you elaborate on this further? I don't I understand how you've been able to determine that this rate limit would have a fixed decrease and not have a compounding impact on the rate of decline in the number of answers and amount of answers posted per user.

From a very human perspective, I would think this limit would be enormously frustrating. Users cannot participate in almost anything on the site without having reputation. Earning reputation is hard and answering questions was previously one of the most effective ways of doing so. Starting from a 1 reputation account, you need to earn 124 reputation to have the rate limit lifted. Assuming you average 1 upvote per answer (which is honestly quite a high average in some tags) you would need 13 answers to get above the threshold. This is a minimum of 6.5 hours (up from a minimum of 39 minutes prior to this change). I would think that this would have a lasting discouraging affect on users beyond a fixed rate decrease based solely on time.

It is worth noting that, early in the release of GPT, we changed the Stack Overflow rules to require new users to wait 30 minutes between first posts, instead of 3 minutes as was originally set for abuse prevention. If this change were causative, we would expect to see a sudden jump to a new lower level, and a return to the prior well-established rate of decrease. However, we do not see this, a strong indicator of deepening attrition. (We would also expect to see a discontinuity in other metrics not listed – this point is established by a confluence of metrics.)

(Emphasis added)

Can you elaborate on this further? I don't I understand how you've been able to determine that this rate limit would have a fixed decrease and not have a compounding impact on the rate of decline in the number of answers and amount of answers posted per user.

From a very human perspective, I would think this limit would be enormously frustrating. Users cannot participate in almost anything on the site without having reputation. Earning reputation is hard and answering questions was previously one of the most effective ways of doing so. Starting from a 1 reputation account, you need to earn 124 reputation to have the rate limit lifted. 

Assuming you average 1 upvote per answer (which is honestly quite a high average in some tags, especially for new users) you would need 13 answers to get above the threshold. The minimum amount of time to post these answers would now be 6.5 hours (up from a minimum of 39 minutes prior to this change). I would think that this would have a lasting discouraging effect on users beyond a fixed rate decrease based solely on time.

I understand that users "are obviously not going [to ChatGPT] to answer questions" but that doesn't mean that the rate limit is not frustrating or otherwise deterring our users from contributing on our sites.