A 100% successful StackOverflow SHOULD show a tapering off of questions. This is exactly what we should expect from perfect success. Now, I don't think perfect success is what we see, but a system where a question can be answered once and then re-read many times should absolutely not keep new question counts high, that would be a sign of a massive failure.
The view counts is harder to explain. I would guess it can be partially explained by search engines inlining stackoverflow answers into the search results so people DO get answers from SO, but don't actually go to the site.
Technology does change though and a decent number of questions I see on SO should have different answers now than when the official answer was accepted. Answers tapering off is true but I think is also due to it being difficult to get new, different answers to old questions.
There does indeed need to be a way to make sure newer information is weighted properly. But this is quite a minor issue compared to the great mass of questions. I mean, statistically it's a minor issue. It's a big issue for certain domains like Swift where tons of the answers are comically out of date.
Diminishing returns.
A 100% successful StackOverflow SHOULD show a tapering off of questions. This is exactly what we should expect from perfect success. Now, I don't think perfect success is what we see, but a system where a question can be answered once and then re-read many times should absolutely not keep new question counts high, that would be a sign of a massive failure.
The view counts is harder to explain. I would guess it can be partially explained by search engines inlining stackoverflow answers into the search results so people DO get answers from SO, but don't actually go to the site.