Forum Discussion
After seven years of being helped and even offering some help to others ...
... I think AI has effectively put this site out of business.
So although I'll check in a few more times over the next month or so, and will definitely miss the virtual friends (real people) I've met, with whom I've exchanged messages...but other than that, it's a sad farewell.
Thanks for the memories.
6 Replies
I hope you don't all leave! For me getting to know and respect each of you has been a major part of participating on this forum. I am not convinced AI can replace that.
I think the forum is a better place with members like you active! Who will tell people to re-consider creating a workbook with a sheet for every day of the week?
I think AI has contributed to lower forum traffic. Then again, /excel on reddit is very popular. I think the decreasing forum traffic is mostly due to forum updates. Reddit subreddits become popular because the forum is stable and predictable. People can't post attachments, but everyone knows that going in and adjusts for it. Tech community can be a challenge because new members can't post attachments. Some requests require sample data and a workbook. There's too much friction to get help. The site recently updated and seems to have broken the ability to surface discussions with recent replies.
As a newbie who just made both their first post and reply. I agree with this. Having to wait for every reply and post to be manually approved is another layer of friction that doesn't feel great.
mathetes So sad indeed. I "grew up" with forums, starting with the good ol' Compuserve ones. Now that anyone can have an AI burp out reams of text as an answer to a question people don't bother coming here much anymore. There seems to be no more time for nuance and discussion over what a good solution is. Nuance seems dead and buried anyhow by the way.
mathetes I'm with you, 100%. It was a nice hobby while it lasted. The volume of user activity has been dropping steadily for more than a year on all of the major Excel forums. Sad to see it coming to an end, but there's no stopping the A.I. train in a world where instant gratification and instant results (whether accurate or not) are prioritized over hard work, personal growth and the satisfaction that comes from learning, understanding and solving something on your own.
It's a shame how far we've fallen in such a short period of time, considering how far we've come and the time it took to get there. I think the Matrix got it right... 1999 may well have been the peak of human civilization. ;)
Best wishes on wherever life takes you next... Take care! <3
mathetes , thanks for all you done here, that was a great job. Interesting and helpful time when we communicated with each other, not with AI. But that era is in past.
Good luck!
