[maerF0x0]

If it wasn't so controlled it'd might as well have just been reddit.

I agree there's a balance, and maybe they edged over the line, but I was consistently happy to have the following be the outcomes

1. Answers were reasonably close to correct, usable, informative (teaching)

2. Your site score came to mean something -- I once had a hiring CTO say "Oh you have some popular answers on the techs we use"

3. Progressive unlocks helped guide the path of participation -- it was clear what to start with, and what to do next as you were taught their culture and ways. It's not very popular to say in 2026, but not every culture is good and it's important to curate culture and teach newcomers the culture of the space.

[democracy]

They chose being controlled and not being Reddit - I can imagine lots of ways to do both - still they chose the toxic way and now they are dead, goal achieved.

[theendisney]

Early o. On some irc channels, forums and usenet groups the greatest trolls, clowns and crazy users were also the most knowlegable and the most helpful. They had to earn the right to misbehave. The secret sause was that anything goes but if something on topic comes along that is the only topic.

Also a wonderful formula was to promote your own website in a signature on blogs and forums. If your comment isnt worth having it is just deleted. You had to work for it and the reward was good. If your sig is a giant banner more effort is expected.

Also oddly interesting was moderation depending on how much money you sunk into the product.

[frollogaston]

It's probably as simple as people stopped going to SO now that there's a chatbot that can answer your question instantly and maybe even run your code. Idk what else they could've done.

[zahlman]

> Your site score came to mean something -- I once had a hiring CTO say "Oh you have some popular answers on the techs we use"

This was a bad idea, and worked terribly.

I have over 1800 answers on the site, many of them detailed, well-considered, long answers to difficult problems. But my highest rated answer by far was to someone asking two completely different questions at once (both of which have far better individual versions) in a way that was barely comprehensible even after multiple attempts by the community to rewrite in something approximating proper English.

For reference, the original version, verbatim:

> if I have list of numbers as [1,2,3,4,5...........etc ] and I want to calculate as that (2+1)/2 and for the second (2+3)/2 third (3+4)/2 ...... etc

> how can do as that ? like sum the first point with the second and divide it by 2 .. then sum the second with third point then divide it by 2 .... etc ?

> also how can i sum a list of number ? a = [1,2,3,4,5,......ect ]

> is it:

> b = sum(a) print b

> in i get one number !? it doesn't work with me help me plz

[dannyw]

In my opinion, the main thing was toxic moderation and the general lack of effort in creating a welcoming or constructive environment.

Moderation and community accessibility can exist. I think your points have described the early SO, but moderation has definitely gone downhill as the years went on.

I’m not new to communities with their own culture, expectations, and rules.

I do edit Wikipedia from time to time, and while you can always find drama everywhere, newbies are welcomed not thrown rule books.

If you make a well meaning edit that was formatted wrong as a newbie, you’d most likely get a welcome note and guidance; not threats or whatnot.

It’s like “Go away until you follow all our rules and we like you” versus “Welcome, thanks for contributing to Wikipedia, here’s our rules, feel free to ask me questions or help”.

[wikiiiisksklhll]

I’ve had the opposite experience with wikipedia and have stopped posting there forever.

My edits at wikipedia, for several different topics, were reverted, for bullshit reasons. One was ”the process here at wikipedia is for edits to be mindlessly reverted, then debated thoroughly, and maybe later rewritten as the mods wants it”. I.e. as a topic expert, just adding information as drive-by is apparently out of the question.

Another reason was adding anything about the future, like information about upcoming, scheduled events, was seen as advertising. It’s of course also not consistently applied across wikipedia but the mods couldn’t care less.

It’s far, far worse than SO. Complaints I’ve seen about SO’s moderation rules have always been to keep assholes away, thank god.

[zahlman]

> I do edit Wikipedia from time to time, and while you can always find drama everywhere, newbies are welcomed not thrown rule books.

I've lost count of the times that other editors insisted that I log into my account and stop posting anonymously, for committing the sin of actually understanding policy (after spending inordinate amounts of time reading back-room pages that most people wouldn't even know how to find). And I've seen countless others yelled at for not understanding it.

But imagine if 99% of people who came to Wikipedia sincerely believed that it was completely appropriate to go to the page for dogs, and edit the main-space page to ask whether Rover needs to see a vet. That's how it felt for me on the inside of Stack Overflow. I went out of my way to place the rulebook neatly in their hands and hardly anyone cared.

But the actual "culture, expectations and rules" of SO are not "if you want to know something, you can come and post as if you were using a traditional discussion forum and are not expected to consider anything or anyone outside of that".

[jambalaya8]

These were all good things about stackexchange (and a precious few other places), yeah. Especially the latter two. Whenever I see people using stuff like linkedin to 'vet' things, I think of this. Reddit is much more cliquey and free-for-all, and has a lot more emotional fighting than the egoistic sort of arguments that sometimes took/take place on SO. I still prefer SO.

[kaoD]

> If it wasn't so controlled it'd might as well have just been reddit.

And why do you think most people (and LLMs) just Google "<what they are looking for> reddit" ??