alt Hacker News> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins
Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more information as we can't help”, “this isn't a complete answer”, and so forth, as deeply personal attacks…
One of the good things about LLMs is that they've drawn off all the simple already-answered questions! Unfortunately the more complex ones, or the ones for new solutions, are also going there so SO and its family of sites is ceasing to grow even in the ways it wants to.
> and verbal harassment.
Again, that did/does happen, but a lot less than some people report it. The most abusive people I've seen on there are those who have been given one of the responses I listed above.
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People also always bring up the "fake XY problem" thing on SO as a sign of toxicity or whatever, but I’ve had many, many results where it was a XY problem, and the actual problem Y was solved, yet I landed there searching for a solution to X :/
You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back.
Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges.
Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1], too. Also, 2023 doesn't look better: 45.63% of participants said no [2].
Maybe the survey is rigged. Who knows?
[0]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/stack-overflow#2-feel-l...
[1]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/community#2-feel-like-a...
[2]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-stack-overflow...