Stack Overflow Does Not Want To Help You
Stack Overflow's traffic has been in decline, and the convenient narrative is to blame it on LLMs.
However, I think developers were already looking for reasons to stop interacting with Stack Overflow. LLMs have massive blind spots. New framework releases, yesterday's OS update, and niche languages are not in LLM training data. These are the problems where Stack Overflow should shine over AI. Yet traffic is declining even in these areas.
I recently found myself caught between these two worlds, trying to solve a problem too new for LLMs, but running into the exact community issues driving people away from Stack Overflow. My experience might shed some light on why developers are leaving, even when AI can't help them.
My Problem
The remote SSH plugin for VSCode stopped working. Like many developers, I use it to connect to a local development server from my laptop.
After some investigation, I noticed I could SSH into the server from my macOS terminal but not from VSCode's integrated terminal. The issue was specific to VSCode.
Search engines turned up nothing relevant. ChatGPT insisted I check my network configuration and SSH keys, completely missing that the problem was only with VSCode.
I turned to Stack Overflow as a last resort. Surely a human with the ability to reason and no knowledge cutoff date could help me figure this out. After all, isn't this exactly the kind of scenario where human expertise should shine over AI assistance?
The Good
It worked. Within an hour, a helpful user posted a link to an issue opened the prior week on VSCode's GitHub. After a recent macOS update, VSCode needs explicit permission to access the local network. A simple system setting change fixed everything.
This was Stack Overflow at its best. When LLMs and search engines failed me, the human element prevailed.
I did what any grateful Stack Overflow user should do. I posted the comment as an answer and edited my question title to be more searchable for the next developer who runs into this issue. This is how Stack Overflow is supposed to work: developers helping developers, building a searchable knowledge base one solved problem at a time.
A win-win for everyone...
The Bad
Despite solving a real problem and documenting the solution, my question was heavily downvoted and closed as “off-topic" almost immediately:
This question does not appear to be about a specific programming problem, a software algorithm, or software tools primarily used by programmers.
Really? VSCode isn't a tool primarily used by programmers?
I shouldn't have been surprised. Like many developers, I've come to expect downvotes and closure votes when interacting with Stack Overflow. "Closed as off-topic" has become such a common experience it's literally a meme. But this particular case bothered me enough to dig deeper.
Stack Overflow's own guidelines spell out what's considered on-topic. A question needs to be about:
VSCode is unquestionably a "software tool commonly used by programmers." I encountered this issue while doing software development. The problem was practical and answerable. Someone literally answered it!
This felt like a clear case of trigger-happy moderating, so I decided to take it to Stack Overflow's meta site. In hindsight, I should have known better...
The Ugly
The meta post went as well as you'd expect.
Almost immediately, someone commented in support of closing my original question:
IDE questions are mostly considered on-topic, as long as the subject is exclusive to programming, and not a general installation/permissions/network configuration issue that can affect multiple applications.
The comment linked to a question asking if VSCode questions should be closed as off-topic and redirected to Super User. Ironically, the linked question is closed and the accepted answer on that question supports my position:
Visual Studio Code is a "software tool commonly used by programmers", so it fits one of the three "or" criteria. Since it's a code editor, I think it's safe to assume that most, if not all, questions also fit the fourth criterion.
There was no mention of any "networking/configuration clause" in sight. When I pointed this out, the response was even more baffling:
If we boil this question down to "I cannot access the local area network in some program", that doesn't seem programming-exclusive to me. If the question is not exclusive to the IDE, it's not exclusive to programming, and thus that remark. The "Most, if not all" certainly is "Most". For example, failing to install a program because you have insufficient disk space certainly is not a good SO question, even if that program is an IDE.
Because the solution ultimately involved a system setting, my question about a programming tool failing during development wasn't "programming-exclusive", even though you can't know the cause when asking the question! If the solution had been to update a setting in VSCode, would the question have been embraced by the community?
I am not asking about filling up my car with gas and claiming it's programming-related because I'm driving to my job where I write code. This was a specific issue with a development tool, encountered while doing development work. And based on the linked GitHub issue, a problem dozens of other software developers have encountered as well.
Not to mention, some of my most viewed questions and answers are about similar developer tooling issues:
- How to stash only some of the modified changes in git
- VS code Remote Container : Shell server terminated (code: 126, signal: null)
- VSCode Remote Container - Error: ENOSPC: No space left on device
None of these are strictly "programming-exclusive" by the same definition. The last question is literally about insufficient disk space, the exact example used to describe a "bad question"! Yet these questions remain open and continue helping developers with tens of thousands of page views years later.
At this point, my frustration peaked. I received many other comments echoing the same message and suggesting I delete my original question. The original question itself received a new wave of downvotes driven from viewers of the meta question, some of my older answers started receiving downvotes and close votes, and the meta post was also closed as off-topic.
A community of people supposedly dedicated to helping developers was going out of their way to shame me for trying to help other developers on their platform.
I made some admittedly childish changes to my profile. I changed my display name to "closed as off topic," copied the closure message into my bio, and set my profile picture to a screenshot of the same message. A petty protest, but one born from feeling powerless in a system I have contributed to for 6 years.
Then I took it further. If my VSCode networking question wasn't "programming-exclusive" and worthy of deletion, surely my similar questions shouldn't be there either. I went through my history and started removing questions and answers about development tools and system issues. For posts with others' contributions, I voted to close them as off-topic instead.
I was quickly given a 24-hour suspension and a warning that my malicious compliance had violated site rules:
You have recently removed or defaced content from your posts. Please note that once you post a question or answer to this site, those posts become part of the collective efforts of others who have also contributed to that content. Posts that are potentially useful to others should not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances.
My original question wasn't useful enough to remain on the site, but when I tried to remove other "not useful" questions, suddenly they were too valuable to delete. All my posts were forcibly reinstated, and my account was locked.
Conclusion
Could I have handled this better? Did I spend too much time and energy caring about something that ultimately doesn't matter? Absolutely.
But I don't think my experience is unique. In fact, I suspect it's a window into why Stack Overflow is in decline. After 6 years, dozens of answered questions, and over 6,000 reputation points, I've seen the site at its best and worst. I've been both the frustrated newcomer and the jaded veteran.
The current narrative is that AI is killing Stack Overflow. But maybe AI is just making it easier to leave a community that was already pushing people away.
I look forward to seeing what replaces Stack Overflow. Whatever it is, I hope it remembers that behind every "off-topic" question is a developer just trying to get work done.