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

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. There is no free lunch, not even in voluntary work. LLMs might scale better there as first response anyway but again they aren't free.

For years people rather ignored the slow demise (of Stack Overflow). 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 today. That's why big organizations sometimes outlive themselves.

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 got the staging ground and the ask wizard, but maybe it's simply too little too late. One week sprint per quarter year 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? How do they spend their time? The knowledge lives by the people. It's much less alive than it used to be.

In case it didn't become clear, the mission is to build a knowledge library. What else could it be? I honestly can't think of anything else. I really wonder what the company sees as its mission beyond making money, but hopefully it's not something nonsensical like community-driven AI. And the knowledge also needs to be consumed, but as long as there is a library, people will always find ways to consume it (if the system is open enough), I assume.

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 there is intelligence and the current hype about AI 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. We might actually destroy our foundations by allowing others to harvest knowledge that they didn't grow themselves. We might end up with a wasteland and worse off than before.

Even if I had the time and energy to invest in public knowledge creation, I might think twice in the current situation. I might instead feel that my work is unfairly used by big companies (and Stack Exchange Inc. is definitely on the side of the big companies there), which anyway have lots of money. I might kind of be on strike (knowledge generation strike) for the time being. I'm not against AI technology in general. I might look more favorable towards it in the future.

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. Adaptation to change in conditions is kind of normal but it needs to be the right adaptation. 

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.

And maybe the human factor is also important. AI generated content cannot offer a human touch, the feeling that there is someone who really cares and enjoys the interaction. And the backside of it is human friction, the feeling that this is a really annoying place. Maybe the system can be designed a bit more towards the first. Can one strive for highest quality and still remain respectful and understanding all the time?

So, get your priorities right and start experimenting because ... not much to lose anyway. Present your data and listen to feedback. Formulate straight to the point. Tell us where you are going. Maybe then people will follow.

Anyway, posting here feels a bit like escapism, given that much, much more is going on in the world. I wish you luck with the continued development of the platform.