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    Worth noticing that a line as "Supposing every suspension is accurate, the magnitude raises serious concerns about long-term sustainability for the site" seems to imply that since it is not sustainable to suspend every accurate detection then we should stop doing so. Which is quite in line with the picture that apparently the mods got in the private version of the policy Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 8:42
  • 30
    I gotta say, it's quite interesting to me that the trend of new answer decline happens to start around the same time as the fallout from the Monica debacle. Of course, the pandemic started to ramp up around the same time as well, but I have a lot of uncertainty there. It's hard to suss from the scale of your chart, but it seems like the decline started just before COVID hit its stride. Any thoughts? Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 13:48
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    @BryKKan I'd have expected that traffic to Stack Overflow would increase with COVID. Software development can largely be done from home, so the questions would keep coming. And answers too, because with no place to go after work, you might as well answer a few questions on SO. Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 6:05
  • 7
    I'd say the graph agrees with my expectations around Monicagate (late 2019) and COVID-19 (US lockdowns starting March 2020). There was a weak downward trend before COVID, then a huge uptick, then a stronger downward trend; the Monica incident might have contributed, but then in non-obvious ways which are hard to impossible to decouple from the COVID effects. Finally, starting in 2023 or late 2022, a steeper still downward trend, apparently due to ChatGPT. Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 6:25
  • 2
    The first 2 statements do not necessarily contradict each other - there can be more unanswered question than ever right now, some of them old. Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 11:22
  • 3
    Very instructive answer. In the graph with the ratio of average questions and average answers there seems to be a roughly yearly periodic effect. Are incoming students with lots of questions the reason? Also in spring and summer 2014 SO took a huge hit before stabilizing itself. I wonder why then the number of new questions went down dramatically. GPT want invented yet. Maybe we can learn something from then. The situation looks a bit similar. Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 22:17
  • 4
    I agree with a lot of your comments but I'd also point out Philippe's statement (emphasis added) was "The total volume of questions available to frequent answerers continues to rise". If the number of frequent answerers is falling (which Philippe states is happening) faster than the number of asked questions, then this statement is still true. Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 12:42
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    relation between decreased rate of incoming unique questions, and decrease rate of answers. - I have an 8yo answer that I've linked to twenty seven times. It wasn't GPT, it was getting to 20k, now seeing all the deleted garbage making it look like the rest of the internet. And there's quite a few of my peers who joined around the same time as me who are now ~100k because they keep answering dupes, instead of doing it right. Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 18:48
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    @Zhaph-BenDuguid how so? I'm a frequent answerer. All else being constant, other frequent answerers answering less doesn't mean there are more questions for me to answer. It could mean there are more questions with no answers for me to answer, but that's not part of the argument Philippe presented. And all else is not constant here. As I've shown, questions influx is declining rapidly. Either I'm still missing something (and if so, I apologize), or I think you've falling for a pretty obvious logic trap. Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 20:34
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    eh, zhaph is correct. "Your assertion that the number of available questions is rising is completely contrary to reality" Philippe never made that assertion. I'm all for pointing out flaws in the theory, but lets at least make sure we're pointing out flaws in the theory presented, not one that wasn't. Commented Jun 13, 2023 at 14:19
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    @Zhaph-BenDuguid """The total volume of questions available to frequent answerers continues to rise"" This observation from Philippe is not so relevant. Answerers predominantly focus on questions not older than 7 days. Older questions just hang around and don't seem to be that interesting fruit. Looking at the number of new questions as starball does is the more interesting quantity. The company unfortunately is looking at the wrong thing. Commented Jun 14, 2023 at 4:35
  • 4
    @starball Yes, that's exactly the quote i think you're misrepresenting. The first sentence in that section is "The alternative hypothesis for the above chart is that the number of questions available for users to answer has simply fallen, on account of question rates falling." which more aligns with my interpretation, as does the data he presented to support it. He clearly agrees here that question rates are falling in general. He's trying to disprove that that is why we're seeing a reduction in activity from frequent answerers. Commented Jun 14, 2023 at 4:43
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    put another way, he's literally stating the same data you're claiming disproves his statement in the first sentence... how does that make any sense if he's trying to argue that question rates aren't falling? he literally asserts that they are. Commented Jun 14, 2023 at 4:49
  • 3
    @starball yes, the data he provides next that shows that there are more questions being provided than there are answerers, on average on a day to day basis. He's claiming the falling rate of questions isn't as high as the falling rate of active answerers, and therefore the falling rate of questions doesn't explain the falling rate of active answerers. I agree that this is a weak argument, but it doesn't change that your data in the first chart doesn't in any way disprove it. He accepts that data as fact right out of the gate. Commented Jun 14, 2023 at 4:52
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    effectively, his data shows that, despite the question rate going down by x%, the number of "active answerers", which are answerers who post 3 or more answers a month, dropped not also by x%, but by x%+n, aka more than he expected it to if the drop was solely due to the question rate dropping. There's certainly better arguments for why these rates are different than because mods are suspending them, but the data doesn't prove or disprove that it's simply due to less questions being asked either. that's just another hypothesis Commented Jun 14, 2023 at 5:06