Why community matters now

Maybe fast forwarding a little bit.

I think we're both still involved in various communities.

And what I've seen is that things have changed, though.

The dynamics within communities have changed, I would say.

I'm not sure if I can put a finger on it per se, but there's definitely more of a...

What can I get out of it? Maybe less of a sharing.

Not that there's not a willingness to share, but there's just less of that drive.

Do you think AI has anything to do with that? I think AI has a lot to do

with that.

Yeah.

I mean, it affects it in multiple ways, I think.

I mean, if you use AI a lot to get your answers, that means you're not ending up on a forum or on Stack Overflow where you previously would end up getting those answers.

So there's this disconnect that you get.

Now it's a machine answering you still based on Stack Overflow or Reddit answers or forum answers.

Those were usually the place you end up, especially if you have a very like a deep technical problem or like...

I have this kind of network at home and this kind of printer, it's not working.

Very specific specs.

It's usually a forum where you would end up getting those answers or hints at answers.

And you would see the people behind it.

You would see a username or an avatar and you would know there's people behind this.

So this triggers your brain somewhat and, hey, there's people behind this.

They put in efforts to have these answers and also gets you to maybe answer back.

Even if it's not a perfect solution, it can trigger you to provide answers to a thread that's already existing saying, hey, this and this worked for me this and this didn't work for me do you have any other ideas for a solution you don't do that with ai i mean you can you still tell the ai this didn't work or this did work to get you to the next point but it doesn't end up in like a central knowledge base where other people can benefit from right so that's i think one thing of that ai is is causing i also think like with AI it really depends on the kind of community that you have if AI has an impact on that if it's more if it's very transactional in that I want I just wanted an answer and the forum gave that to me um that's at a higher risk i think of being replaced by ai than something that's more about the feeling of community and wanting to belong somewhere if that's something that your community can also provide that that's much more sticky thing that's that ai cannot replace and then there's i think a related thing that that's with ai the answers are now free but the trust is expensive you don't know where an answer comes from it's really hard to judge if something i mean it On a forum, you can see if this came from a moderator or from a user that already has a 10-year history on this forum.

It depends on that person.

Did they answer one question before or did they answer 200 questions before on that forum? That informs you about the likelihood that their answer is any good to you and that helps you judge.