I think stack overflow peaked a few years ago - its grown more and more useless over the last few years - the last questions I wrote 10 or so years ago have long been modded off topic and locked, despite being within the rules at the time - the culture of the site has got hostile - and no one answers any difficult questions any more and it's full of incorrect misleading out of date information.
I find the most useful information in github issues nowadays....
They wanted no duplicates, and only a single unique question/answer thread. But technology moves forward and there was never only one way to solve most issues anyway.
What we have today is e.g. JavaScript question/answers that pre-date ES6, are high in google search rankings, and also largely bad. People can reply with ES6 solutions to 6+ year old problems, but there's little rep' benefit so few do.
Ultimately SO is a "question/answer" site that's super hostile to new questions and most "answers" will just be a mod close/re-point to the "dupe." Plus they want questions so generic that they are rarely helpful to the question asker themselves.
I understand your sentiment (good tip about GH issues as well), but I found SO to be useful at times.
I agree with the culture, which is why I always state:
1. How my question is different from related questions.
2. How I searched on Google and what I tried.
3. Where my knowledge is lacking, and how it still might be a duplicate of something. I'd then always make the argument that my question is different from an SEO standpoint, which it always is as my question is more "noob friendly".
My questions get closed/locked/duped about one-thirds to half of the time. The other half is upvoted and in some rare cases my questions are really appreciated.
It could be better, but it cold also be worse. I find HN to be quite a good place to ask more opinionated questions (as you can see in my ask HN submissions).
Yeah, I actually find the sister sites more helpful. The main problem is that there are far too many people on that site with their own opinions about how things should be done. There's less traffic on the sister sites like unix and linux, superuser, vi, emacs etc. They should break up the main site for different programming languages and platforms like git as well.
SO questions and answers do sometimes seem ossified now, the ever-shifting flood plain of restrictions and gatekeeper culture having muted and chilled what used to be a more dynamic forum. I increasingly find more valuable and timely information poking around in the relevant subreddits.
New people can not answer questions anymore. One needs one or two reasonably positive questions (AFAIK, within their first 10, otherwise they are banned) before being able to answer anything.
This is completely ridiculous, and absolutely upside-down. The expected result is exactly what you say, questions demanding any effort or rare knowledge remain unanswered, while high-reputation users stay on their comfort zone. The fact that questions are still being answered at all is a bit surprising.
while high-reputation users stay on their comfort zone.
Why does rep have anything to do with this? People answer questions they know how to answer, and want to answer. Having upvotes doesn't obligate you to learn other things so you can give free help on topics you aren't interested in.
Rep isn't a promotion at a company where you get more responsibility and earn more money.
