I always found it very frustrating that for a person at the start of the learning curve it was "read only"
Actually asking a naive question there was to get horribly flamed on the site. It, and the people using it, were very keen to explain how stupid you were being
LLMs on the other hand are sweet and welcoming (to a fault) of the naive newbie
I have been learning to use Shell script with the help of LLMs, I could not achieve that using SO
Good riddance
I should note that the first time I asked question, I also spent hours reviewing other unanswered requests - and if memory serves me - while I didn't have solutions for any of them, I gave concrete examples of how to debug the problem(s) to narrow down the variables.
I'd estimate that this was around 2012. Never went back after that.
Corporate measured "engagement" and has been trying things to make that number go up.
The curators of the site... if they could have tools to measure would be measuring the median quality of the questions being asked and the answers being given.
People asking questions on the site have changed from the "building a library goal" with the question as a prompt to "help me with this problem" - but rarely not sticking around.
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The sinking activity rates have had alarms going for many years... but remember that engagement was being measured and while that's sinking, comments were engagement so the numbers (ad impressions) at corporate level were getting measured differently.
The reputation has been something, but there's a disconnect between what "hostile" means and what "toxic" means between the people making the claims and how it's being interpreted.
That reputation was interpreted (by corporate and to an extent, diamond moderators) as "people are mean in comments" - and that isn't the case. People are not mean in comments. However, the structure of the site being focused on Q&A rather than discussion for someone who wants discussion with the people who are there to provide answers to questions will find the environment innately hostile.
Without changing the site from a Q&A (and basically starting over - which corporate has tried, but the people who are providing quality answers aren't going there because they don't want discussions - if they wanted discussions they would be commenting on HN or Reddit), that change can't really be done. The attempts to try to change how people are approaching the site run into a "this would reduce 'engagement'" and people asking questions to get help for their problem not accepting the original premise of building a library. ... And that's resulted in conflict and decreasing curation (which are often the people who were the ones providing the expert answers).
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So while they have been aware, (I believe) corporate has been trying to solve the wrong problems at odds with both the people asking questions ("help me now") and the remaining curators.
This feels spot on
Management can be idiots longer than a site can remain solvent.
AI's biggest feature is being able to ask it question and not getting humiliated and judged in the process.