Comment by rkachowski 2 days ago
the gatekeeping, gaming the system, capricious moderation (e.g. flagged as duplicate), and general attitude led it to be quite an insufferable part of the internet. There was a meme about how the best way to get a response is to answer your own question in an obviously incorrect fashion, because people want to tell you why you're wrong rather than actively help.
I don't think it matters. Whether it was a fault of incentives or some intrinsic nature of people given the environment, it was rarely a pleasant experience. And this is one of the reasons it's fallen to LLM usage.
Memories of years ago on Stack Overflow, when it seemed like every single beginner python question was answered by one specific guy. And all his answers were streams of invective directed at the question's author. Whatever labor this guy was doing, he was clearly getting a lot of value in return by getting to yell at hapless beginners.
Why do you think those people behave that way?