[bigjimmyk3]

A few years ago I felt like I should contribute something back to SO (having used it plenty of times for research), but somehow I got routed into a "gotcha" UX where the site would repeatedly tell me that my previous action was against the rules. It felt like being trained via shock collar. I certainly appreciate the goal of maintaining quality in questions and answers, but I hope there are better ways of getting there than what I saw.

Note that the experience I have didn't appear to be human-initiated: I understood it as an automated "feature" of the site itself, a sort of guided initiation process. Maybe that process trained some people a bit too well?

[jazoom]

I tried to use it about 4 years ago and submit helpful answers etc. Apparently I did something wrong and I couldn't submit anything. It was a very hostile introduction.

Over the last 4 years there have been numerous times I would have contributed a valuable answer but since I don't have a working account I cannot.

No, I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to get my account working. I don't care about SO "reputation".