alt Hacker NewsIt's ironic/unfortunate they took the moderationazy path right when the site needed to find its new direction.
Some months ago I posted a question there after a long time, something that the LLMs could not give me a satisfactory response. It got deleted for being unsuitable for the site.
I'm not particularly a new user of SO. been using for 15 years and 5.5k reputation, which does not say much more that I know how to ask questions there, or I used to know.
Desperate, I take the question to a meeting with the language team. The guy gets excited: "this kind of question is why we keep holding these sessions"
SO became what it was by setting rules that worked extremely well. They even occasionally let some QnAs slip by, like the famous Jon Skeet Chuck Norris facts[1]. Now those same rules don't work well for a vibrant community, and at the same time they are being followed pedantically.
[1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-fact...
For what it's worth, as bad as the site became for question askers, it got even worse for people who answer.
I don't particularly care for e-points and that sort of things, but SO had whole entire way of telling you you are wrong why did you even dare answering, then creating "classes" of user (I apparently made MORE ranking points after I stopped using it than before ? Giving me more moderation power), then seeing "your" answers being edited left and right by people who add a comma or whatever
The whole joy for me was in answering people. It's just fun, I think many hackers get it, bad questions notwithstanding. But as some point they made that ... Less fun, for a lack of a better description. So I just stopped answering.
I love it for what it brought and the great times I had on it for years, but I've stopped actively using it (as opposed to just finding the answer through a google search) for a while and it was way before the rise of LLMs.