HN Explorer

Ask HN: What would happen if Stack Overflow shut down?

17 points by anondevvie ↗ HN
Stack Overflow isn't a public good. It can be shut down based on the decisions of just a few people. What would happen if it were shut down? Is the knowledge accumulated in Stack Overflow backed up, beyond the control of the company managing it?

29 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 72.8 ms ] thread
perihelions
Here you go,

https://archive.org/details/stackexchange ("Stack Exchange Data Dump")

smoyer
In addition to there being archive back-ups available, there are tens (hundreds?) of sites that mirror SO questions and answers. The downside of this redundancy is that you get so many duplicates when your search terms lead to an SO result.
snowwrestler
The accumulated corpus of Stack Overflow content is probably worth less than you think. There is a lot of outdated code on SO.

It’s a growing issue for the platform as the community prefers to direct people to existing answers, and Google tends to reward older URLs that still attract traffic. The result is that a lot of searchers are learning how things were done years ago, instead of how they are best done now.

Platforms change, APIs change, languages change. That means the “answer” to how to do things changes too.

Imagine asking “what would happen if libraries threw away all their outdated computer books?” Obviously they do, and it’s good for their patrons as long as there are updated books replace them.

If Stack Overflow went away tomorrow, one of the many other places where people can talk about coding would become the go-to place to get answers. A more ephemeral approach to answers would probably be better in the long run.

simion314
Not all languages/platforms get outdated after 6 months.
mikestew
That's a trivial dismissal. Plenty of stuff gets outdated after a few years, Python 2.x being an extreme example that comes to mind. But because (as a hypothetical example) "the Python 2.x way" answer has 12.4K votes, and the newer "Python 3.x way" has only 200 points, so guess which one is still being implemented more? More generally, there was a day before your favorite language had its version of async in release builds, and there was a day after that. Somewhere in there, probably less than six months, a better way to do some things came about.
simion314
And there are answers that are still correct after many years, if Python2 to Python3 transition is an issue then make sure to google "python3" or something.

IMO a professional developer should be at least competent enough to detect if an answer is for an outdated version of the language, library or framework, we should not delete or hide old answers just because n% of developers jumped to latest version yesterday or implement some policy that works for XLang globally so XLang users don't copy paste like ... invalid code that won't compile without a minor change.

warrenm
>IMO a professional developer should be at least competent enough to detect if an answer is for an outdated version of the language, library or framework

That's mighty tolerant of you: because there can't possibly be a "professional developer" who doesn't realize something's not being done the correct way, right?

Couldn't possibly be the case a Go dev has to do something in Python, and doesn't know they should use the Python 3 method instead of the 2 or 1, right?

Those people just don't exist...right?

simion314
So what is your point? We need to optimize Python answers for the super rare professional Go developer that was assigned to edit some python but he clueless so he must find the correct answer that just works with a copy paste? I would optimize for the larger number of people that still have to use Python2 projects using python2 libraries.

Btw the Go dev since is a Pro should already know to not copy paste the first answer and look at the comments , dates and the other answers

Beltalowda
That older Python 2 answer can be edited/amended to either include the "Python 3 way" (if it's simple enough), or to add a notice that there's a better/newer way of doing this in Python 3, possibly with a link to another answer.

I don't think they way Stack Overflow deals with this is perfect, but there are tools to deal with this.

Someone
Can users other than whoever wrote the to-be-updated answer do that?

I think it requires action by either the poser of the question (if they can change the ‘winning’ answer months or years after picking it) or the user writing the winning answer.

I think it’s unlikely they’ll do that.

Beltalowda
Anyone can edit anything; you don't even need an account. Edits from users with <2,000 reputation and anonymous edits need to be approved, and it's not a wiki where you can radically depart from the original author's intent, but many answer have improvements, additions, etc.
pottertheotter
My experience has been that people update old answers or add new answers so that old questions have current info.
bdcravens
Others have pointed out it is backed up, but if it wasn’t, I suspect it would be less of a loss than you think. Presumably if it shuts down it will have lost relevance, and the data there will have greatly diminished value (like Facebook and dead users, the amount of outdated code on SO grows over time)
b3morales
Other people have pointed to the data dump. All the posts on the site are Creative Commons licensed, and that can't be undone by anyone's decision at the company.

The promise that the data would be available and licensed for reuse was a crucial factor in its success. Its UI has never been anything world-changing. There have been other QA sites that have come and gone. Many of the original contributors would not have spent so much time without the assurance that their material was not owned by the company, just hosted by it.

jeffwask
Someone would step in to fill the void like with everything else.
castis
Several offerings would likely pop up in an attempt to fill the vacuum. It would take months to years for one to clearly come out on top.
laszlojamf
I would start reading docs again, lol
speedgoose
StackOverflow is still very useful to me, but I also use GitHub copilot and it’s very convenient.

For example you want to check if a file exists and contains a string in bash, but you don’t remember the syntax. You will search it in your favourite search engine, ignore the SEO spam, click on one stack overflow link, see that the question is closed because it’s a duplicate, check the other stack overflow question, scroll the answers, find the right one, copy paste it, adapt it to your code.

With the AI completion you write a comment # check if the file exists and it contains the value. Next line is suggested with the bash if statement, the correct file variable, the correct content variable.

gdulli
If you were an engineer back before Stack Overflow existed, you probably have a different take. Before SO I searched for info/answers and found them. After SO nothing important changed. I mean the web evolved in good ways and bad ways and SO reflected both, but overall I was getting my job done effectively before SO, then with SO, and don't worry about post-SO.

Only the location of info will change. The same info will be available because the same people will have the same questions and answers and desire to share. The public good is the sharing, not the platform. The people will still be around.

The next platform will be better in ways and worse in others, but that's the same that can be said about any platform supplanting another. Personally I've always stayed away from SO as a contributor because its whole reputation game turned me off. Maybe the next platform will make me more likely to contribute help rather than only consume.

As for losing the history of data, there's good and bad there. I highly doubt anything important would be truly lost. It would be rebuilt. And in the process, a lot of noise (ambiguously obsolete/incorrect info) would get cleaned out, as a benefit.

Beltalowda
The thing that Stack Overflow changed is that it really encouraged to ask 1) clear questions, and 2) provide comprehensive answers. Stack Overflow didn't really "invent" this (at least Experts Exchange preceded – and influenced – it), but they did popularize it.

Compared to email threads and forums it really improved things: the no-nonsense format and the ability to edit questions and answers to clarify or expand things really made a big improvement. It's just so much better than reading through a 3-page forum thread with bits and pieces of information scattered all over the place.

axismundi
> The public good is the sharing, not the platform.

That! Although the platform is good too :)

iamwpj
I think my code would become clunkier. I rely on the creativity of the masses when I use SO. I know I could solve a problem through a complicated routine, but SO helps filter for the right builtin function or syntax that helps to improve my code quality. I can read the manual all day, but these are the things I don't get from it.
moralestapia
It wouldn't be that bad, IMO. SO was really good in a time where:

1) There were no better alternatives.

2) The community was welcoming and willing to help.

Nowadays, 1) most open source projects put some time aside to write good technical documentation, when they don't, many of them make use of Github Issues, at least.

And 2), SO stopped working for people looking for answers. It is an extremely hostile community that was taken over by each of their sub-communities' pretentious mods. They expect you to know a lot of things before you ask, but don't have enough IQ to understand that if you knew how to do stuff, you wouldn't be at SO looking for answers.

culi
Stack Overflow has been thoroughly indexed and backed up several times over. I also have no doubt something would pop up right away to fill the gap

Perhaps it'd even be for the best one of the numerous SO open sourced clones[0][1][2] would emerge as the replacement. Most likely though it'd be that Quora undergoes some necessary changes to become the main alternative

Here's a shortlist of possible alternatives:

- [Codidact](https://codidact.com/) - open-sourced and non-profit

- [Scoold](https://scoold.com/) - open-sourced and self-hostable

- [TopAnswers](https://topanswers.xyz/) - open-source and non-profit

[0] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/are-there-any-...

[1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/313483/is-stack-ove...

[2] https://alternativeto.net/software/stackoverflow/