[fluoridation]

That's rose-tinted glasses. You're not describing a trend of the Internet, but of individual insular communities. It happens in every community that eventually people get tired of answering the same questions over and over again. I was part of a C++ forum for a long time, and I lost count how times I answered that both template definitions and declarations must be visible at the point of usage, and then of mentioning that I'd answered that exact thing many times already.

PS: Though I will agree that SO moderation was simultaneously excessively aggressive when it came to subjective or borderline off-topic questions (or worse still, impossible-to-search questions) and remarkably inconsistent.

[iamnothere]

SO’s policies always seemed like a valid, but failed attempt to “solve” this part of the human equation through policy. It was genuinely useful until it outgrew itself.

Language barriers also didn’t help, you had people who could barely speak English asking questions, and unable to understand the answers. Then those people started giving answers too. I wonder if things would have been a little better with today’s improved translation tools.

[doublerabbit]

You think a teacher gets fed up of having to teach the same units of education every year?

"How can I read a file and split the line obtaining a pipe symbol and send it via a socket server" but the angst of "WHY DO DO YOU WANT TO DO THAT", "You shouldn't do that in X-Lang" ... well maybe because I wish to execute commands on the socket server when based on the value of the pipe.

   [lindex [split $variable "|" 1]

[fluoridation]

A teacher gets paid to do their job.

[doublerabbit]

Bad analogy on my part, but my point still stands. That was the experience I encountered on the early net. Now everyone can use ChatGPT and SO is a coma slowly being leeched to death so you know you no longer have to worry about being asked or tested on your skills.

[someonebaggy]

FYI SO is dead. Not dying, dead. The rate of questions now is lower than its first month of existence when barely anyone knew about it, and they've recently tried to rebrand themselves as a forum for agents to talk to each other.