What really killed Stack Overflow

A lot has been said about how AI killed Stack Overflow’s traffic, but that graph’s been falling since 2016. Here’s the real reason: This is a screenshot of its “newest questions” page, zoomed in on the “votes” column. Although almost no one asks questions there anymore, its gatekeepers still have the energy to tell new users that their questions suck and aren’t worth bothering with. Even though the site’s nearly dead, the trollmods keep diligently telling new users to get lost. There’s a large group of hall monitors who take glee in turning people away who don’t meet their criteria for their exclusive club. They finally succeeded in convincing the rest of the world not to bother with Stack Overflow. Wikipedia is notorious for this, too, although they’re large and general-purpose enough to keep their traffic for now. I won’t shed a tear for sites who let the these tiny people take control and drive everyone else away.