So I was an early contributor to SO. At one point the top users was Jon Skeet, Marc Gravelli then me [1].
I pretty much came to this conclusion 6-7 years ago (the one in the tweet Jon is responding to). Two things were already happening then:
1. The low hanging fruit (of questions and answers) was gone. Questions were by necessity becoming more specialized. These attracted less attention (and votes). This is a common problem on online forums. Back when HN had public vote totals I'd often see someone put together a thoughtful comment and get a single upvote. Someone else would correct a typo or say the year in question was 1995 not 1996 and then 11.
2. And this is the one I had and have a real problem with: the toxic moderators took over. Those who can, answer. Those who can't, question. Those who can't do either, moderate. So many useful questions I saw getting closed as "not constructive". Useful things like "what are the benefits of A vs B?" The de facto standard became if it didn't have an objective, definitive answer a cadre of mods had decided it didn't belong on SO. Thing is, you can provide a really useful answer to the question of "should I use Python or Ruby?" with some relative pros and cons without saying one or the other.
The argument against those questions was they might be fine questions but they didn't belong on SO (eg maybe on the programmers Stack Exchange). While that might be true for some questions (particularly those career related) I found that ever shifting standard was actually detrimental to the site.
Basically it seemed like the threshold for moderating content on SO was too low.
Answerers provide the most value (IMHO). Good questions matter too. The problem seems to lie in moderators who think they provide as much value as answerers and what they do is super-important. It's useful, no argument, but it's just not on the same level.
Some of my answers have been edited 30+ times over the years for, in many cases, no good reason. Someone decides something should be capitalized. Someone else disagrees. Some of these have actually changed the meaning of the answer and I've had to go and correct the answer.
Don't get me wrong: SO is a fantastic resource. It just has its own Wikipedia editor problem.
I pretty much came to this conclusion 6-7 years ago (the one in the tweet Jon is responding to). Two things were already happening then:
1. The low hanging fruit (of questions and answers) was gone. Questions were by necessity becoming more specialized. These attracted less attention (and votes). This is a common problem on online forums. Back when HN had public vote totals I'd often see someone put together a thoughtful comment and get a single upvote. Someone else would correct a typo or say the year in question was 1995 not 1996 and then 11.
2. And this is the one I had and have a real problem with: the toxic moderators took over. Those who can, answer. Those who can't, question. Those who can't do either, moderate. So many useful questions I saw getting closed as "not constructive". Useful things like "what are the benefits of A vs B?" The de facto standard became if it didn't have an objective, definitive answer a cadre of mods had decided it didn't belong on SO. Thing is, you can provide a really useful answer to the question of "should I use Python or Ruby?" with some relative pros and cons without saying one or the other.
The argument against those questions was they might be fine questions but they didn't belong on SO (eg maybe on the programmers Stack Exchange). While that might be true for some questions (particularly those career related) I found that ever shifting standard was actually detrimental to the site.
Basically it seemed like the threshold for moderating content on SO was too low.
Answerers provide the most value (IMHO). Good questions matter too. The problem seems to lie in moderators who think they provide as much value as answerers and what they do is super-important. It's useful, no argument, but it's just not on the same level.
Some of my answers have been edited 30+ times over the years for, in many cases, no good reason. Someone decides something should be capitalized. Someone else disagrees. Some of these have actually changed the meaning of the answer and I've had to go and correct the answer.
Don't get me wrong: SO is a fantastic resource. It just has its own Wikipedia editor problem.
[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/users/18393/cletus