My stackoverflow question was closed so here's a blog post about CoreWCF

I used to be very active on StackOverflow, it was a great platform.

After a while, I stopped having to post questions about "common frameworks", either because I could do with the official docs of because there was already a StackOverflow answer for my question.

What was becoming more common was that I would have a question similar to an existing unanswered one. Or that my question would never receive an answer (presumably because my questions were becoming more tricky/niche). So what I started doing was answering my own question (or answering those existing unanswered ones) after solving it on my own. Still, it was fine and I was contributing.

And for some reason, a few years ago my questions started being closed for no apparent reason other than "those who reviewed it have no clue and think that it is invalid". Many times they closed even though I had posted both the question and the answer at the same time (as a way to help others)! The first few times, I fought to get my question reopened and guess what? They all got a few tens of votes in the following year. Not so useless, eh?

Still, that toxic moderation hasn't changed. If anything, it has gotten worse. So I stopped contributing to StackOverflow entirely. If I find information there, that's great, if not, I won't go and add it once I find a solution for myself. I am usually better off opening an issue or discussion directly with the upstream project, bypassing StackOverflow's moderation.

I heard people mentioning that LLMs were hurting StackOverflow badly. I'm here to say that what pushed me away was the toxic moderation, not LLMs.

Same here.

I have a rep that is based almost entirely on questions, not answers. I learned to ask questions fairly well (to the point I seldom get answers -there's a price to pay, for questions that are very specific).

In some cases, the question is a basic one, and doesn't need a code listing and sample project. It's still a perfectly valid, pertinent, thoughtful question, but not very verbose.

Those questions almost always get closed.

I have found that asking LLMs doesn't always get me the best answer, but I get an answer. In some cases, I can have an iterative refinement, where I keep adjusting the question, until I get a useful answer.

I've never gotten code from SO, that I can use without modification, but I have gotten some great answers, over the years, and have expressed gratitude and respect.

I have gotten quite annoyed with the "attitude" that is often expressed. There's no doubt that folks who ask questions, are considered "lesser beings" on SO. Just look at the question-to-answer ratio of the high-score individuals. Weird attitude, for a site that is pretty much completely reliant on questions.

Basically, I have just given up on SO, and have found LLMs to give me what I used to get from it.

In my opinion, they have killed SO.