SO is the second thing I liked that was broken via "we cannot have nice things". The first one was UseNet.

I was on SO for 14 years, with an accumulated rep of a few hundred thousands. At the beginning the crisp philosophy of the site was great: a question, and answers. Sometimes comments. I believe it set the tone to questions today, without the hello everyone at the beginning and kind regards at the end. The aesthetics of the site were good too.

And then, somewhere around 2018 I think, things started to go south. Meta became a lair of psychopaths with an ego they could not loft. Asking a question over there meant immediate downvotes.

Then came the elitist groups, such as in the Golang section. I asked nice questions that were immediately downvoted at nauseam. This was not the case in other groups where you could find actual help.

Some other SE sites went that way too (cybersecurity, some linuxes) and I gave up completely.

There are however wonderful, more or less niche sites that are still there (LaTeX, cooking, ... ← please do not break them), they thrive because they are small-ish and the egos do not fly too high.

Otherwise I moved to asking questions on Reddit, which is a ht or miss.