I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, reading some of these comments.
It looks like a pretty clear divide between the people that wanted to ask questions to get solutions for their own specific problems; and those who were aware of what the site wanted to be and how it actually operated, and were willing to put in the time and answer questions, etc.
The sheer amount of garbage that used to get posted every day required some pretty heavy moderation. Most of it was not by actual moderators, it was by high-reputation users.
(I have 25K reputation on StackOverflow, and was most active between 2011 and 2018.)
It looks like a pretty clear divide between the people that wanted to ask questions to get solutions for their own specific problems; and those who were aware of what the site wanted to be and how it actually operated, and were willing to put in the time and answer questions, etc.
The sheer amount of garbage that used to get posted every day required some pretty heavy moderation. Most of it was not by actual moderators, it was by high-reputation users.
(I have 25K reputation on StackOverflow, and was most active between 2011 and 2018.)