We've seen something shift. At KNIME, forum activity is down in terms of volume — and we’re not alone. Stack Overflow, another staple of the developer and data science world, is facing similar changes.
Online forums have long been at the heart of open-source data science communities. They offer an open space to ask questions, share ideas, and troubleshoot in collaboration. But there’s a generational change in how users gather information: Less searching on Google and Forum usage and more use of LLMs or communicating on channels like Slack or Discord.
At first glance, a decline in forum posts might seem like a cause for concern. But when we look closer, the reality is more nuanced.
AI is handling the easy stuff
Our own analysis indicates that people don’t check the forum first anymore, or even use search capabilities once they’re there, but go straight to their favourite LLM.
Here’s a chart showing how usage of ChatGPT starts to increase in 2023
You can see how it matches our own Forum activity going down from 2023
Talking to some of the most active KNIME users on the Forum, their gut feeling is also that they are answering fewer and fewer simple questions, which could be that KNIME is improving in usability, users are actually finding existing solutions on the Forum, or using AI.
K-AI: An in-tool first-stop for help
AI has become a place to get quick answers. Our own AI assistant, K-AI, is a clear example of this shift. While Forum post volume has clipped, engagement with K-AI, KNIME’s AI assistant, is on the rise. We started collecting data on K-AI usage at the beginning of 2024, and since then have seen significant growth, approaching 50,000 interactions a month. These queries are coming from over 3,000 monthly users asking questions.
More and more users are getting real-time responses to straightforward questions without even needing to post on the Forum or wait for a reply.
K-AI’s responses are fast and context-aware, as K-AI has been trained on content created by KNIME. And there’s no extra click to get to the Forum because K-AI is integrated into the platform. You can chat with K-AI easily as you build.
With K-AI taking on first-stop questions, the Forum can focus on what it does best: Providing support through expert knowledge sharing.
KNIME Forum: For expert-led knowledge and discussion
While activity on KNIME Forum has dropped in quantity, its importance as a space for expert-led knowledge-sharing is increasing.
When you ask an AI a question, the answer provided by the LLM may sound very convincing, but they often don’t have the knowledge to answer very specific questions correctly because of the data they’ve been trained on. LLMs can quickly hallucinate as the specificity and complexity of questions increase.
The questions we now see on the KNIME Forum are more advanced and more suited to discussion than quick fixes. These are questions that require perspective, creativity, and sometimes even debate. Things that AI can’t do.
The KNIME Forum also provides a social element that LLMs don't. This allows us to talk about other Forum-adjacent things. For example, users share their solutions to challenges, like the Just KNIME It! Challenges or Community Hackathons, and discuss their different approaches. And it’s not unusual for community members who originally met on the forum tackling a workflow to end up meeting for beers together at KNIME Summit!
You, K-AI, and the KNIME Forum
The way we ask questions online is changing. ChatGPT, Claude, and co. started off looking like a chat interface, but as we start to use them more, they’re starting to look more like search engines – adding in links to their sources to improve our trust in them. And search engines are starting to look more like AIs.
LLMs rely on existing knowledge bases (like the KNIME Forum) to be useful – but as those knowledge bases shrink, so might the quality of LLM responses over time. Will we similarly see an equilibrium as users see value in more traditional knowledge search?
At KNIME, we are committed to ensuring you find answers to your questions the way you want.
If you’re looking for quick answers to simple questions within KNIME, K-AI, our AI assistant, can give you fast answers that are based on our own training data. So you can trust them.
When you need more advanced support, the KNIME Forum is the place to go. It provides an easy way to discuss your workflows and approaches with other experts in the community to get alternative ideas that could improve and optimize your approach.