In a surprising turn of events, the moderators (mods) of Stack Overflow, the popular question-and-answer forum for programmers, declared a strike on June 5, citing the company’s recent decisions to prohibit the moderation of AI (artificial intelligence)-generated content on the platform. The strike illustrates the delicate balance between human and AI production. 

Stack Overflow Moderators Protest

Stack Overflow mods announced the decision on the platform’s Meta board. The platform had recently introduced a new moderation policy, outlined in a widely criticized post that has received 283 downvotes. The policy states that AI-generated content would only be removed in specific cases, arguing that excessive moderation of posts created with AI was discouraging human contributors.

Stack Overflow’s post also emphasized the need for a structured standard of evidence in managing AI content, suggesting that the current level of evidence did not apply to most suspensions issued by moderators thus far. This directive was communicated privately to the moderation team before being shared publicly. 

However, the website’s moderators are now expressing dissatisfaction, claiming that this new policy will allow inaccurate AI content to proliferate unchecked on the forum and criticizing Stack Overflow for its lack of effective communication regarding the change.

Mods Demand Policy Retraction

In an open letter to the company, the moderators wrote, “Stack Overflow, Inc. has decreed a near-total prohibition on moderation AI-generated content in the wake of a flood of such content being posted to and subsequently removed from the Stack Overflow exchange network, tacitly allowing the proliferation of incorrect information [...] on the Stack Exchange network. This poses a major threat to the integrity and trustworthiness of the platform and its content.”

Like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow relies on volunteer moderators to uphold the platform’s integrity. The mods claim to have expressed their concerns about the company’s new policy through appropriate channels but feel that their anxieties were disregarded.

As a result, they have initiated an indefinite strike, halting all actions, such as closing and deleting posts, flagging answers, and other tasks essential for website maintenance, until the AI moderation policy is retracted.

Declining Userbase 

The advent of AI technology has been both transformative and contentious for Stack Overflow. The platform confirmed to Gizmodo that their web traffic has slowed as programmers have increasingly turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT to debug their code rather than waiting for human responses on the forum.

Web traffic analytics platform SimilarWeb reported a consistent monthly drop in Stack Overflow’s traffic since the beginning of 2022, averaging 6%. Notably, the website experienced a 13.9% decrease in traffic from February to March, followed by a further 17.7% drop from March to April.

Questions Raised

The strike by Stack Overflow mods highlights the delicate balance between AI technology and human moderation. It raises important questions about the responsibility of platforms like Stack Overflow in maintaining the accuracy and reliability of user-generated content. 

As the strike continues, it remains to be seen how Stack Overflow will address the concerns raised by its dedicated moderators and find a resolution that satisfies both human contributors and the evolving landscape of AI-generated content.