[0xffffabcd]

Either make a post on meta about the problem and provide a solution if you have on how to fix it OR make your own SO with your own rules. I'm really tired of seeing these off topic (whining) comments whenever SO comes up. It's useless and doesn't add anything to the discussion here.

[isotropy]

There is an endless supply of new users who need to learn, but only limited patience among senior people to repeat themselves. The "safeguards" put in place against repetition, n00bs, decay, etc, really serve the interests of the users who have stuck around, not the users who need to learn something. Newer users talking about getting a different experience than the original users, and not getting the usefulness that the site's reputation implies, is not simple whining.

Any solution has to have the support of the long-term, high-rep community, but the long-term, high-rep community creates the problem - by sticking around so long, they accumulate influence even as their incentives changed. You can see why meta might have a lot of people who don't think there's a problem at all.

The senior-friendly design of SO ignores the fact that the graveyards are full of indispensible people. One huge change would simply be to age out the users who have been around the longest, or have the highest rep. The newest can (and should) be taught by the slightly-more-experienced who aren't yet jaded by the repetition.

[DanBC]

I don't understand your first para. New users don't want to ask questions. They want an answer to their questions, and only if there is no answer they want to ask a question.

SO is not just a question-asking site, it's also a repository of already asked questions.

Many (but admitedly not all) questions closed as dupes make no effort to distinguish themselves from previously answered questions.

(I'm someone who thinks there are problems with some of the SO sites. I'm not a fan.)

[Aldo_MX]

User: Google.com -> How do I ...?

Google: Take this link to Stack Overflow

* This discussion is closed, the moderator left the following message: 400 Bad Request. This is not the correct SO for this type of question.

[msandford]

Yeah man, screw the users! They're just like customers, they're always the problem! You know, except for the little problem that without customers (or users) the entity either wouldn't exist, or would die.

[chris-at]

Meta is for celebrating Stackoverflow, not for criticism.

Mention something that could be improved and you'll see what I mean.