Question-and-answer sites

Placement: a judgment drawn from the evidence, open to correction (dispute it). As a rung 0 model it carries the family its value is moving toward.

The model

Definition: Sites monetizing people's need to ask a community or database.
What presses on it: Chegg cut 45 percent of staff in October 2025, citing the new realities of AI in its filing; Stack Overflow question volume is reported down about 78 percent year on year (grade C, to be confirmed from Stack Overflow's own data).
What still holds it up: No evidence of recovery found.
Stops working when: The pressure above is the case against it. A stated end condition for retiring models is not yet written.

Companies 1
Evidence items 1
Grades 1A 0B
Latest dated 2025-10-27
Counter-evidence 1

0. Fights · loop gain negative. The curve shrinks what it charges for (seats, hours, heads, words, clicks).

Toward: Owning the scarce human · money lands in original human signal, expertise, likeness.

Network loop · more participants (people or machines), more value per participant.

Company	Claim	Date	Gr	Source
Chegg, Inc. US · public · best A	Chegg cut 45% of its workforce (388 roles globally), stating "the new realities of AI and reduced traffic from Google to content publishers have led to a significant decline in Chegg's traffic and revenue."	2025-10-27	A	Chegg 8-K exhibit (SEC EDGAR)

None found specific to these two companies; no evidence located that homework-help or code-Q&A traffic/volume is recovering or holding steady