Abstract
Recently, I felt a change like never before in the questions on Stackoverflow. In order to confirm this, in this report, the trend of “google-apps-script” tag on Stackoverflow in the first half (January 1st to June 1st) of 2023 has been investigated. From this report, in 2023 when the affection of COVID-19 has been reduced socially, the appreciable trend was confirmed to the questions including a tag of “google-apps-script”. It is guessed that the origin of this appreciable trend is due to AI chatbots. The appearance of AI chatbots might give us a phase of major change to the method for understanding the statistical data obtained from online sites.
Introduction
Stackoverflow has been already publicly released before Google Apps Script has been released. And also, Google officially recommends asking the questions to Stackoverflow. Ref From this situation, it is considered that knowing the trend of “google-apps-script” Tag on Stackoverflow will help to understand the expectation of the applications using Google Apps Script of a lot of users. So I have published a report on “Trend of google-apps-script Tag on Stackoverflow” every year. And, I also sometimes answer questions on Stackoverflow. Recently, I felt a change like never before in the questions. In order to confirm this, I investigated the trend of “google-apps-script” tag on Stackoverflow in the first half of 2023.
Experimental procedure
At first, the history of Stackoverflow and Google Apps Script is confirmed. The following list shows the history of Stackoverflow and Google Apps Script.
- 2008-09-15: Stackoverflow was launched. Ref
- 2009-08-19: Google Apps Script was released. Ref
- 2011-08-29: The tag “google-apps-script” was created in Stackoverflow. Ref
- How to get help of the official document says “We use the popular programming Q&A website Stack Overflow to field technical questions.”.
From this list, it is found that the history of Stackoverflow is older than that of Google Apps Script, and also the tag “google-apps-script” in Stackoverflow is introduced by Google’s official document. These indicate that a lot of information about the history of Google Apps Script can be obtained from all questions with the tag of “google-apps-script” in Stackoverflow.
All questions and related data can be retrieved by a tag using Stack Exchange API and Data Explorer. Ref In this report, “google-apps-script” was used as the base tag. All questions including the tag of “google-apps-script” at Stackoverflow were retrieved by the API, and the retrieved data from 2008-01-01 to 2023-06-01 was statistically analyzed.
As an important point of this report, in this report, the trend of “google-apps-script” tag on Stackoverflow in the first half of 2023. In order to satisfy, the questions were retrieved from January 1st to June 1st for each year (2008 - 2023). The data of this report is not all month. Please be careful about this.
At Stackoverflow, users can edit old questions and answers. So please be careful that the data introduced in this report is the data that was retrieved. The data used in this report was retrieved on 2023-06-04.
Results and discussions
Fig 1: Statistics of questions including “google-apps-script” tag on Stackoverflow. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2008 - 2023.
When Fig 1 is seen, it is confirmed the trend of reduction of questions and answers in recent years. This trend has been confirmed for the first time. About 2020 - 2022, it was guessed the affection of COVID-19. After 2023, it is considered that the affection of COVID-19 has been reduced socially.
However, it can be found that in 2023, the trend of reduction is being advanced more. And, it is also found that the number of answers is smaller than that of questions. Namely, it’s the inversion phenomenon. On the other hand, the trends of the closed questions, the number of questioners, and the number of answerers are no large changes.
Here, it is required to remember the paradigm shift that occurred on the last of 2022. It’s ChatGPT. When you see the questions after January 2023 on Stackoverflow, you might feel the change of questions. It is guessed that this appreciable trend including the inversion phenomenon from 2022 to 2023 (January 1st to June 1st) might be due to ChatGPT. And also, in the current stage, AI chatbots including Bard except for ChatGPT have been released. It is considered that the affection of those AI chatbots is also large. In order to confirm the detail of this trend, the number of answers for one question, the ratio of resolved questions, and the ratio of closed questions were also investigated.
Fig. 2: Number of answers for one question. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2008 - 2023.
Fig. 3: Ratio of resolved questions. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2008 - 2023.
Fig. 4: Ratio of closed questions. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2008 - 2023.
From Figs. 2, 3, and 4, the number of answers for one question and the ratio of resolved questions from 2022 to 2023 can be also seen, while the ratio of closed questions doesn’t show an appreciable trend. The number of answers for one question is less than 1 only in 2023, while it is more than 1 for all years except for 2023. And, the ratio of resolved questions is also reduced markedly only in 2023. From these data, also, it is considered that the paradigm shift of AI chatbots is related to the origin of this appreciable trend.
The above data was retrieved from the questions including “google-apps-script” tag. As other information, when the tags of “javascript”, “python”, and “go” are investigated, those are shown in Figs. 5, 6, and 7 respectively.
Fig. 5: Statistics of questions including “javascript” tag on Stackoverflow. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2020 - 2023.
Fig. 6: Statistics of questions including “python” tag on Stackoverflow. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2020 - 2023.
Fig. 7: Statistics of questions including “go” tag on Stackoverflow. Data is from January 1st to June 1st in 2020 - 2023.
Interestingly, the same trend of the inversion phenomenon, which is the number of answers is smaller than that of questions in 2023, can be confirmed in both tags “javascript”, “python”, and “go”. It is considered that these results also indicate the same reason.
Here, it is considered that it is difficult to directly associate the reason for the reduction of questions and answers with the reduction of users of Google Apps Script, because of the following reasons.
- After Google Apps Script has been publicly released, a lot of questions and answers have been posted. Those questions and answers are a very important asset. It is considered that the asset leads to the reduction of questions and answers.
- After 2023, it is considered that the appearance of AI chatbots leads to the reduction of questions and answers.
It could be considered that the 1st reason was the main reason for this reduction before. But, after 2023, it is considered that both reasons have to be included in the reason for the reduction of questions and answers. The appearance of AI chatbots might give us a phase of major change to the method for understanding the statistical data obtained from online sites.
Summary
In this report, the trend of “google-apps-script” tag on Stackoverflow in the first half of 2023 has been investigated. In order to compare the data of the first half of 2023, the data from January 1st to June 1st is retrieved from 2008 to 2022. The following result was obtained.
- In 2023 when the affection of COVID-19 has been reduced socially, the appreciable trend was confirmed to the questions including a tag of “google-apps-script”. Especially, it occurred the inversion phenomenon that the number of answers is smaller than that of questions in 2023.
- Both the number of answers for one question and the ratio of resolved questions were reduced.
- This trend could be also confirmed in the questions including a tag of “javascript”, a tag of “python”, and a tag of “go”.
- It is guessed that the origin of this appreciable trend is due to AI chatbots.
AI chatbots are extremely growing now. So, it is considered that this trend might be changed in the near future. I would like to continue to investigate this trend. And also, the appearance of AI chatbots might give us a phase of major change to the method for understanding the statistical data obtained from online sites. At Stackoverflow, the answers can be always added after the question was been posted. So, I would like to continue to investigate the change of the inversion phenomenon in the future.