"Who are we?" It's interesting that we seem to turn a bit more often to the deeper questions especially in times of larger uncertainty. 

I'm thinking that I still like this place. Not enough to really invest substantial amounts of energy and time (creation of knowledge is very exhausting but also rewarding) but surely enough to hang out and comment but also simply to read  

What kept me here above all were the incredibly wise insights of many people, above all the original founders of the company, past members of staff and users. Reading their thoughts was a delight that kept me awake at night. 

The platform is well thought out by now, the downvotes are at the core of the high quality. And the biggest cause of friction is insufficient guidance. But we can't hold hands all the time. Q&A isn't the solution to everything. 

For years people ignored the slow demise. Endless discussions about small changes. We are trapped in a local optimum. Not the worst but maybe not the same if we would start fresh. 

But then the company has no clue often enough and favor their pet projects, even if it's quite clear they won't fly right from the beginning (say collectives, discussions). If only they would listen more. 10 years ago it felt as if they listened to their user base, or at least to data/statistics. Lately... I don't know. I hardly understand the management gibberish in the blog or I have the feeling they extreme whitewash (social AI are just buzzwords) and do not always produce coherent arguments.

But it's not completely true either. We have the staging ground and the ask wizard, but maybe it's simply too little too late. One week sprint per quartal may simply be not enough for solving all that needs to be solved.

Many knowledgeable people have left the platform already. Where are they now? The knowledge lives by the people. It's much less alive than it used to be.

My insurance was always the data dumps and the content license. Money is involved so there is always an interest to prefer money making aspects. But I trusted management until some point. That trust is long gone. Making data dumps freely and easily available is the least the company can do. We know the history.

A non-profit like codidact might be much better in that regard. If knowledge and software is both open source and freely available it's unlikely that the service will be misused, somebody else would immediately step in.

The decline of SO predates the advent of generative AI but surely it's a strong disruption in the way how we consume knowledge. It doesn't mean intelligence and the current hype will ebb away at some point but it means that knowledge generators are deprived of credit where credit is due. Is it really fair and legal that machines use the content of every website to make a product and sell its output without financially compensating the knowledge creators in the first place? And what would be a fair compensation? This is a non-trivial question that nevertheless needs an answer. It's a wild West currently and favors the pirates over the farmers, the ones who actually grow the knowledge. That's not good. It's even a trap.

Creation of knowledge still makes sense and it's a worthwhile goal in itself, but the way it will be presented and generated and consumed will all change a lot from today. 

In troubled times I would concentrate on quality. High quality is something not many people (or algorithms) can achieve. Only collaborations of humans supported by technology in a smart way can achieve that. Producing the highest quality Q&A might be a good argument for remaining relevant. 

These are troubled times indeed, not only with changing user behavior (SO started at exactly the right time with the right idea) and changing technology but also politically. Real AI is still very much in the future but economic and political crises are happening right now. That really worries me and posting here sometimes feels like escapism to me.