Comment by MrZander
12 days ago
While there were many zealots that gave SO this reputation, I don't know if that's the reason it died.
As someone who frequently answered questions in the 'New' queue, the sheer amount of rule breaking, low effort, and obvious duplicates was astounding. I eventually quit answering questions because 99% of them were not worth interacting with. Just vote close and move on.
Ultimately, I think SO is dead because it got too popular and moderation became untenable.
You sound exactly like an enforcer of the cultural problem the GP was talking about. Group think is healthy in small doses, but overdo it and it kills the group.
It's simply not on a new user to understand whatever group interpretation you have made up on top of the written rules. There is no platonic ideal of a good question, the project was doomed from the start if people take that idea seriously. The UX says submit a question about coding while the unwritten rules say submit a flawless peer-reviewed abstract or we close in 3 minutes.
Ironically those 99% asking low effort questions will gain more than everybody who looks at a "high value" question put together. Truly, nobody on SO learned anything writing those questions, they were just regurgitating their phd/previous work. It was grossly performative and I'm glad it's gone.
When I say "low effort", I don't mean "not perfect". I was quite lax actually as I understood how annoying some users were when I asked my own questions.
I'm taking about entirely unreadable posts (not English, or just nonsensical) or posts that were very clearly a copy paste homework question with no code.
I helped hundreds of people of all skill levels for free, simply because I found it enjoyable. I quit when it stopped being enjoyable. It stopped being enjoyable when the quality of question declined to 99% garbage.
It is dead because everybody is asking LLMs now.
Can you imagine ChatGPT terminating a conversation because it thought your question was "low effort?" The behavior wouldn't be viewed as helpful or aligned, and nobody would use it.
StackOverflow was, all too often, not helpful or aligned. It died because the staff were unable to get the moderators to be helpful.
Well there are new users all the time and can’t expect them to now all of the in’s and out’s of the rules while posted there are still hidden rules. It’s become a toxic site.