It's funny to see what a parallel you have to my story.
my reputation is 29,459, my last answer October 15, 2021, close enough to be considered the same IMO.
For me, the thing that drove me away, is that you'd spend time on writing good answers, to provider lore, etc, but it was increasingly difficult to find "good" questions to answer. There were increasingly many "homework" questions, and far fewer questions where people _had_ put the effort in.
And, an increasing animosity to the people answering the questions.
The community became toxic, and it wasn't the only the gatekeepers, everyone wanted something for free, and StackOverflow suffered from the "open source burn-out" problem.
Certainly I did.
my reputation is 29,459, my last answer October 15, 2021, close enough to be considered the same IMO.
For me, the thing that drove me away, is that you'd spend time on writing good answers, to provider lore, etc, but it was increasingly difficult to find "good" questions to answer. There were increasingly many "homework" questions, and far fewer questions where people _had_ put the effort in.
And, an increasing animosity to the people answering the questions.
The community became toxic, and it wasn't the only the gatekeepers, everyone wanted something for free, and StackOverflow suffered from the "open source burn-out" problem.
Certainly I did.